Authority comes to those that willing to share their best advice – even on the overlooked social channels.
It’s why we hear the phrase “move the free line” in affiliate marketing.
People place their trust in those that have delivered value. Over time, this becomes authority.
With authority comes massive communities, email lists, and a strong social following. Eventually, this creates a better chance for a well-received introduction of products, promotions, and new ventures.
Most affiliate marketers will place their efforts, in building authority, with Facebook and Twitter.
These are your usual avenues — it’s where people go, online, so it makes sense to be present on these channels. Yet, they’re not the only locations where you’ll find passionate followers.
In fact:
You may have better success with your affiliate marketing by targeting the overlooked channels.
Why?
Less competition.
In this article, we’ll share a handful of platforms you may want to join if you want to be heard.
These 4 overlooked social platforms could create better engagement than your site, Facebook, and Twitter
In this feverous race to increase FB shares and get more IG likes… we often forget the smaller channels. I’m talking about overlooked social media platforms like Slideshare, Prezi, Scribd, and Wikis. The social media platforms you could be using — by repurposing content — to reach high-targeted audiences.
Think about who use these sites.
Someone going to Slideshare or Prezi are looking for presentations. Who likes presentations? Business-types. The type of people with money… the type of people that would buy products.
You’ve got the Wiki-types digging deep into topics. They’re passionate. This is the same with Scridb — people there want in-depth content.
Let’s look at what these overlooked social media platforms offer — and how to use them:
Slideshare
Take what you know about Microsoft PowerPoint…
…now add it to its own website then attach a social network layer.
You’ve got Slideshare.
Slideshare can become a remarkable tool for your affiliate marketing business, when sharing ideas, because it cuts out all the fluff. It forces you to pick the one or two snippets of knowledge that truly matters to the viewer.
Being featured on Slideshare can also bring thousands of eyeballs to your work and the inclusion of a website link could siphon a great deal of those users over to your site!
Here’s what we’d recommend when getting started with the platform:
- Take your best posts, reread them, and pull out roughly 10 main sentences that truly defined the piece.
- Use a well-designed slideshow template and populate the slides with each of these main items.
- Have someone view the slideshow and provide feedback about its design, message, and effectiveness.
- Publish and promote.
We recommend starting with your best work because it will at least get you adjusted to the platform then it’s just a matter of playing with the formats and message once you’ve established yourself on Slideshare.
Prezi
Prezi would be as if you took a PowerPoint presentation and added a whole lot of glam.
The tool is free to use and has paid options.
Prezi presentations follow a bit like the same activities as we described with Slideshare. Where you’d pull your best information and combine it with eye-catching graphics/video.
However, Prezi comes with a ton of extra features that allow you to create presentations with extra layers of design, movement, and interactivity.
You could add Prezi’s to your site — they’re great for:
- Product overviews
- Business pitches
- Training
- Virtual tours
… and wherever your creativity takes you.
Check out our screengrab for a Prezi presentation.
It’s a little bit like those old “choose your own adventure” type books. The viewer can dig through the interactive presentation at their own pace — but it keeps you engaged how things zip and zoom around.
To get started:
- Head over to Prezi.com and sign up for an account.
- Work your way through the tutorials and documentation to get a grip on using the platform and its features (before you get too far into a project).
- Distill your best information (which can come from a blog post) related to a specific topic into bite-sized chunks which will become the core element of your presentation.
- Create your work and use eye-catching, photos found on free photo sites to keep the work as bootstrap as possible while you’re learning; then, scale up when you’ve got it down.
- Publish and promote (as always).
Prezi is a little difficult to wrap your head around when you first have a go at it. But, you’ll get the hang of it once you play around with the format.
What you’ll like about the platform, as a whole, is that presentations are often featured and can score tens of thousands of views in a matter of days (which is hard to say for a good amount of your work when you’re just running off your site and social).
Scribd
Scribd.com is a document sharing website so right away you know what you can expect with the platform. The best way to think and approach Scribd is to see it as an alternative blogging platform for your work and marketing efforts since you could simply take the written content you have created and republish it to the platform.
Scribd is now (mostly) a premium channel — but you’re still free to upload/download documents! This is a nice blend if you’re looking for great books, audiobooks, and articles on your industry from professionals. Else, look through what the community has shared for freebies!
You should, however, touch up on some of the elements of your work so it’s not just one big block of text; take full advantage of embedded pictures and other graphics to draw attention for your call-to-actions, and be sure to include relevant links throughout the work for people seeking additional resources.
To gets started with Scribd:
- Sign up and populate your account on Scribd.
- Spend a few minutes digging down into your niche using the search and explore features on the platform to get an idea of what’s popular on the network (and how it’s being presented).
- Create a new piece of work or repurpose one of your most popular articles and get it published on the platform.
To add some additional visual flair you could go as far as branding each and every work you put up by including watermarks, contact information, and a similar ‘cover’ which will appear as a thumbnail and will start off the work – much like an eBook!
Go a little deeper into the platform by following other publishers, creating collections, and tracking analytics to further improve your work.
Wikis
You’ve certainly heard of Wikipedia and without-a-doubt put it to good use when doing research but did you know that the Wiki platform is open to anyone to start their own wiki-type website?
You may not know it but there are a lot of wiki sites appearing all over the Web – many of which may be related to your niche!
You could use these to share your knowledge and fill in info gaps in these wiki entries.
The best part?
You could cite your site as the source (as long as it’s thoroughly researched). Some of these wikis have high domain authority. It’ll lend to your credibility, too! You may not receive a lot of traffic from these sources but those that make their way over are deep into the niche (which makes them targeted visitors).
Here’s what you do:
- Go on over to Wikia.com and use the search tool to find your main keywords.
- Sign up for account and begin contributing to the pages.
- Include your website as a source (as long as it’s in academic form).
- Participate in the community!
Pretty simple, right?
Turn your activity on your niche wiki into a regular activity and you’ll see that you can make a great impact at getting your message across to those doing deep research on the Web.
Don’t overlook social platforms because they’re not your usual site mix
Use these platforms as if you owned them which means don’t just dip in, exploit it for traffic, and be on your merry way. Take the actual time to get used to the platform and all its nuances.
Spend time talking with community members and those that are doing big things on the network to learn from their experience. Each of the listed platforms can and will become an influential element in your affiliate marketing business … if you put the effort into them.
What relatively unknown platforms have you been using to get your word out? Share a comment below or join us on our Facebook page.
