Social media has, without a doubt, grown exponentially in recent years with apps such as Facebook, Instagram and Twitter dominating the sector. This has been especially good news for those in affiliate marketing, given the rapidly evolving tools and increased user base.
It has been estimated that 73 per cent of online marketers utilise social media marketing as a means of growing their brand’s exposure, although this doesn’t always have the desired impact or result. Often this is because tracking doesn’t provide enough data on what is working and what is not.
Here are four quick and easy tips to ensure you are using your social media platforms and any influencers you might be using are tracked to their full potential:
Use MTM codes to improve social performance
Native analytics tools are a performance measures that work through the figures surrounding your post engagement and reach. However, these figures aren’t always enough to help gain a clear picture of your social media ROI. It tends to steer away from saying how much traffic your campaign is creating through social media – which leads to incomplete performance data on the content you are posting. In order to make the process of tracking your social media marketing campaign standards, the campaign-specific UTM parameters are a great way to keep track.
A UTM code is a simple cos which can be used to attach a custom URL, in order to track a source, medium and campaign name. This will enable Google Analytics to inform where searches come from, as well as what campaign has directed them to you. A use of UYM codes is to create a vanity URL for each offline campaign, then redirect the same URL to a forwarding address which you decide to assign it – it will most likely be your main domain. This gives the ability to track how a weekly ad, is working without having to create custom landing pages for each campaign.
If you don’t know how to create UTM parameters, that’s OK – you can use a really simple tool called UTM.io. This will save you time with current UTM templates that are customisable for your campaign. The codes will help keep track of the performance of your links, the creators, the time they were created – making it much easier to organise your social data.
Then, focus on what works and what drives results
If native analytics are the way you have been measuring your media performance, a clear picture of what works for the people engaging with your posts will be received. These insights can be used for the optimization of your social media content strategy, along with the posting schedules.
By focusing on tasks that are delivering better results, the performance of your ROI is much more likely to improve as a whole. For example, if your article links are getting much more clicks when they are shared attached with a relevant photo, then you should definitely use this tactic consistently for higher click-through rates.
Another way that is effective, is if you have managed to gain a huge amount of new followers when you have launched a giveaway or promotional campaign, a lot of these followers have stayed rather than unfollowed the page once the giveaway has finished. You could start doing giveaways more often, once a month maybe – as a great way to gain more exposure.
Pick the right social influencing partners
Within social media, it is clear that influencers are the ones that rule the platforms. Social media users look up to these influencers but are still bound to relate to them as daily consumers. This can be highly impactful when influencing people’s decisions on purchases as their opinions are seen as more authentic. So how are you going to use influencers in your sector to help boost yours?
Right now this isn’t as prevalent in iGaming as it is in retail, but already there are a number of brands building a solid following. Are there opportunities to engage these influencers to promote your offer or site or service in a non gaming way? Consider the brand building effect of a promotion or prize give away or even a real life experience tying qualified users back to the channel and to you site.
It has been seen that 68% of marketers in the previously-cited State of Social survey found influencer marketing to be an effective way to boost the appearance and reach of their business. The most crucial thing to remember when working with influencers is that they can have massive followings. This impacts your ability to ensure compliance and social responsibility for over age targeting.
Whilst they have the power to improve your campaign reach, they can boost the visibility of your brand and they can most importantly increase your ROI.
Understand what people your target audience resonates with and find and find the perfect character that will help direct your brand and expand it into the right direction.
Good influencer platforms good influencer platforms will help you find the most relevant influencers in your sector. By conducting a search using keywords within specific verticals, the stats of influencers will appear, where you will be able to decide if they are the right fit for your brand.
User-generated content needs to be shared as social proof
The trust between players is sacred. People are more likely to trust social media images shared by other customers seven times more than regular advertising, according to a recent study by Visual Commerce, Olapic Study 56% of the respondents stated that they were more likely to buy something after seeing it via a user-generated image. This adds to how impactful user-generated content can be on social media. Sharing images of your product or service on social media, where they are being used by other people, is a very effective way to gain the trust of potential new customers. It’s why slots streaming is becoming so popular to watch as well.
Sharing branded hashtags or a product-specific hashtag with customers, while asking them to include it in their posts, is a very effective way to expand your brand reach. This helps keep track of your new user-generated content, and while you reshare your customer’s images, it will help strengthen your relationships with them by giving them a real sense of appreciation.
This is a win-win situation as it will also bring your brand more exposure through introducing you to their networks.
Social media can be a useful tool for capturing niche audiences, but you have to be clever in the way you use it to get real results. Using these 4 quick tips can help you keep track and learn from the content you are sending out to the masses.
If you want to learn more about social media and how to harness this for your affiliate business, come along and join us at the Digital Marketing Forum in September
