When it comes to social media it can be a little tricky to find your voice and create good engaging content that resonates with your audience. It’s actually a skill. Operators and Affiliates have been using social media to advertise their wares for years, but few are using this channel to engage and convert audiences in unique and innovative ways.
We’ve searched the social channels to have a look at what’s happening in this channel and who is innovating to engage audiences and build their brands and here’s what we found:
Vegas Slots Online – Talk about the product, not just the HARD sell.
This affiliate site focuses on the fun of playing slots and providing reviews of all the latest games. Their 33K strong following on Facebook tune into this brand specifically for the latest news and gossip from developers. They don’t do the hard sell on social media, instead providing an informative platform for those that love casino gaming.
They entice users from social media onto their site with the promise of free games, while there they can provide partner offers to play for real. Their social media promos are all lighthearted and garner attention with users that want to test the latest games.
Lad Bible – Know your audience and target your content to what’s relevant to THEM
Believe it or not, this is one of the largest pages on social media and they’re making their money from affiliate links. This, and their sister site Sport Bible, are both drawing in revenue from social media by bringing in new deposits. Both of these pages have grown rapidly in the past few years and now have millions of followers to advertise to.
They use affiliate links and promotional banners on relevant stories to drive users through to their partner sites. What started out as small, humorous channels have since expanded into traffic generating machines that have a solid base of engaged users. They have a tone of voice that resonates with their viewers. Their content is fresh , unique and visually engaging. They are truly creating innovative content that is valuable to their target audience without doing a blatant upsell.
BingoPort – Build an online community that builds loyalty for your brand
In terms of bingo affiliates, this brand gets a lot of attention from players. They offer free bingo with real prizes, all promoted through their social media channels. They sponsor their own awards show and are some of the biggest in the bingo affiliate world. They provide great content and engage their community on a personal level.
With a primed Facebook page with more than 10K likes, it’s clear to see why customers would want to engage with them. The free bingo acts as an incentive and data capture method, while the social media allows users to interact with the brand. This organic strategy has allowed the brand to become much more popular with users and brands, as they have the perfect following to advertise to.
Tipsters Portal – Provide good quality content that gives customers a value-add
The emphasis of this brand is to provide sports betting tips to their serious punters. Then, they direct users to partner sports betting sites where they can sign up and deposit. The key thing about the tips they give on social media is that they are well researched and authentic, which builds trust with the user.
They allow users to buy full tips and advice on their site, and of course these tipsters will also have suggestions of where to wager your money. It’s a comprehensive machine, that’s primed to make money at every stage of the transaction.
What’s the secret sauce?
Social media is not another channel to spread news or bonus offers.
The truth is that there is no secret. It’s really just about adding value, creating content that audiences want to read, or need to know and provides an additional service to what they are receiving anywhere else. It’s a place to engage an audience and get to know them. It’s not a one way conversation. Brands that don’t put in the effort to stand out and show what makes them different won’t be able to use these channels to their greatest effect.
Twitter is flooded with brands using #casino and #bonus tags to reach their followers, but the reality is that not many users are actually browsing for these tags. Just using the same tags and publishing promotional posts is similar to shouting into the void, as it won’t get you anything.
You can spend money on promoting on Facebook, but be forewarned that without a licence you risk having your page banned. These licences can be tricky to become approved for, so many brands prefer to go down the organic route to get new followers. If this is your intention then you’ll need to think of innovative content strategies that people will actually want to engage with and spend time reading.
The most important thing to remember when growing your social channel is remember that you are conversing with your target audience not shouting at them. If they’re not likely to convert through to an operator brand, then there’s no point appealing to them. Freebies and competitions can get people to like your page, but if they’re not the right people then they won’t do anything for you longer term no matter what deal or bonus you throw at them.
Social media is a valuable outreach tool to drive and target new conversions, but you really need to know how to use it. If you’re an affiliate and you want to learn how to reach an audience in social media,come and meet Sarah Sangster at the Affiverse Bootcamp taking place 21 March 2018. Her social media intensive workshop will give detailed insight on how to make social really work for your brand and how to create engaging content that your audience will value and respond to.
