In 2016,

But, social media can be confusing. Especially when just starting out. Sure, you may have used Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest to share photos and keep in touch with friends. But how do you use social media as an effective marketing tool?

Good question! There’s a lot of trial and error. And just when you find something that ‘works’  — bam, you’re hit with an update that makes your way of doing things no longer effective.

But don’t worry — there are tried and true basics that you need to know, and it all starts with a plan.

1. Concentrate Your Efforts

Deciding where to focus your marketing efforts is just about as important as how you will implement your networking strategy. So, before jumping into the social-media waters, decide which social networks you’ll use to better your online business.

It’s ideal to focus on a few social media channels. Trying to be the best on all platforms is, well, exhausting and typically ineffective. Think about where your customers hang out and focus your efforts there.

For example, if you’re a wedding photographer, your time would be best spent on Pinterest or Instagram where pictures take center stage. If you’re a freelance writer who specializes in blogging, you may benefit most from Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook.

Whatever it is you do, think about where your clients spend their time online and go there.

2. Create (and Keep) A Social Media Marketing Calendar

Once you know where you’ll concentrate your social media marketing efforts, it’s time to start, well, getting social! And, honestly, this is easier said than done.

Sure, with personal profiles it’s easy to share — upload a few snaps of your weekend, share a funny meme, comment on a post or two and done. But as a business, you’ll need to share and post with purpose, each and every time.

Whether you’re sharing blog posts you write, current news related to your industry, or a silly gif just for fun, you should be following a social media content calendar. A calendar ensures you’re not posting too much, effectively annoying your followers. But it also helps you see if you’re not posting enough which can lead you to alienate your audience.

Whichever platforms you’re using — Pinterest, Facebook, Twitter, etc. — decide how often you’ll post to each network every day and stick to it.

3. Repurpose Content

If you share something on one network, share it other places too. This is especially true for bloggers who painstakingly craft posts — it would be a shame not to get new content in front of as many eyes as possible! But freelancers, direct sales pros, and online business owners benefit from this strategy too. It helps keep all your channels consistent and will save you tons of time tracking down and finding things to share.

My favorite tool for seamlessly sharing one piece of content across multiple channels is Canva. You can take one blog post and create custom share-worthy images meant for different platforms. On Pinterest? No problem! Twitter? Easy peasy. Facebook? Covered. Really, Canva will save you tons of time and energy creating images to share across all your different social channels.

4. Find and Define Your Social Media Voice

When using social media for business, you need to find your social media voice and stick with it. If you start out using a casual, conversational tone but then switch gears to a very formal and businesslike approach only to go back to a more light-hearted style, you’re going to confuse your followers.

Make sure you define your social media voice early on — Will you be helpful? Funny? Sincere? Dramatic? Professional? There’s no right or wrong answer. Just keep it consistent — social followers (aka potential customers/readers/followers) will come to rely on a certain style and tone — don’t disappoint them with a completely different approach each every time you post.

5. Include a Human Element With Your Social Media Marketing

Yes, you’ll be using social media as a business or professional but you shouldn’t abandon your sense of self in the process. That is, let followers know there’s a real person behind your social media accounts — even if you’re acting as a business entity. The whole point of social media is to be social. Respond to comments people post on your profiles and pages. Interact with followers. Ask them questions. People will appreciate your personal approach to social media, even if you’re acting as a business or brand.

6. Don’t Over Promote Your Products/Services/Self. Ever.

The whole point of social media marketing is to drive sales or promote products, right? Wrong! Yes, when done correctly, sales will surely follow. But you shouldn’t be on social media just for the sake of making a buck or two. In fact, you will alienate followers and turn off potential customers super quickly if all you do is promote or try to sell on social media. Plus, you’ll look spammy — not exactly the image you should strive to create as a professional.

Instead, focus on building relationships with people first. And then, when appropriate, sell them on things that will actually provide value to them. Once you establish a trusting relationship with followers, they will be more apt to buy what you’re selling.

7. Authentic Automation Is Your Friend

I know I said the whole point of social media marketing is to be social and that you should be the human element behind your profiles. But when you’re a one-woman (or man) show, it’s impossible to be glued to your computer 24/7 waiting to send out the next post, tweet or update.

Instead, rely on automation to help you be ever present as a business. Buffer and Hootsuite are two great (and free!) options to consider as a beginner. And if you’re ready to slay your Pinterest presence and flood your site with traffic, Tailwind is your new best friend (and exactly the tool I used to gain 30,000 followers in under 2 years). You can give Tailwind a try for free to see just how awesome it is at authentically automating your Pinterest presence. 

These tools will also help you create a consistent content calendar that you and your followers can come to rely on.

Keep Trying Different Social Media Marketing Tips

And last but certainly not least — don’t give up! Social media marketing is tough. There’s not a one-size-fits-all solution that works for every business, blogger and brand. You’ll have to dive in and get your hands dirty to figure out what works and, more importantly, what doesn’t. And keep trying — don’t expect overnight success and don’t give up when the going gets tough. Try something new. Change up your approach. Learn a new technique. And, if you have any questions, ask away in the comments section below! 

The post 7 Simple Social Media Marketing Tips That’ll Ignite Your Online Business, Blog, or Brand appeared first on Work from Home Happiness.

Some of those schemes are legit and others are pure scam, I myself have fallen into the trap of those scam websites that promise you money for clicking on stuff.

I was on a mission to find a real way to make money online, and I was willing to put in any amount of work needed to make that goal happen.

This is when I found out about a great concept called “affiliate marketing”.

Simply put, affiliate marketing is about trying to sell products you don’t own and get rewarded with a percentage of the product price as a sale commission.

The below diagram can better explain to you the process of selling products as an affiliate marketer:

For a non tech savvy person this provides a great opportunity to start an online business without having to worry about product development and customer service.

You can pick any product you want to promote as an affiliate marketer and sell it on your own website using your affiliate link.

After this point your job as an affiliate marketer is done, and it will be up to the product owner to take care of the customer you referred.

In this guide I will show beginners and wannabe affiliate marketers how to build their first affiliate website.

How to Setup Your Affiliate Blog

Since all you need to sell any product as an affiliate marketer is your affiliate link, you don’t necessarily need a website to sell from.

You can simply launch paid ads campaigns with your affiliate link and still get paid your affiliate commission.

But the problem with this technique is that you limit your advertising opportunities to paid ads.

Depending on paid ads to sell your affiliate products is a big mistake if you are a beginner, there is so much that you need to understand about affiliate marketing first.

That’s why you need to build your affiliate website and do your selling and promotions from there.

Setting up a blog is the best kind of affiliate website you can build.

Running a blog allows you to focus on building a reputation in your market and at the same time sell your affiliate products via product reviews and banner ads.

It is rather easy to start your affiliate blog, although it will cost an average of $60 a year:

• $10 a year for a domain name
• $50 a year for a web hosting account (give or take)

These are the basic costs that will get you started.

You also need to install WordPress on your newly bought web hosting account, it is free and easy to install and your web hosting company will provide you with any assistance you need.

Once you setup your affiliate blog, you need to start thinking about which niche market you want to target.

Finding a Profitable Niche for Your Affiliate Blog

It is very important to turn your affiliate website into a niche blog, and don’t try to sell products in different niches all from the same blog.

Having a targeted website increases the chances of making affiliate sales.

You want everyone who visits your blog to find different solutions for different problems in the niche.

Turning your affiliate blog into an information rich source will increase the trust level with your readers, which is something you desperately need to sell your affiliate products.

Top affiliate marketers build an insanely high level of trust which makes many of their visitors buy pretty much any product they recommend.

There are many ways to find lucrative niches that bring in high affiliate commissions, but you need to pick a niche that you know a lot about.

Targeting a niche just for the sake of high commissions will limit your ability to provide in-depth solutions through your blog posts.

And it could make people perceive you as an average person and not an expert in your niche.

That’s why you first need to find which niches you are passionate about and then find out if they are profitable or not.

Use Google.com to find a list of niche ideas you can choose from.

If you want to promote software products then Google “software to a” replacing “a” with any alphabet letter:

If you want to promote ebooks or physical products you can Google “how to get rid of a” also replacing the “a” with “b,c,d…etc”

All these are techniques that will give you a massive list of niches you can promote products in.

Another way to find niches is to find out what life experience you have.

So if you know how to play a guitar or how to do fishing or even how to quit smoking then you can target those niches as well.

After you choose your niche you need to find out if it is profitable or not.

Let me take a niche like “losing belly fat” as an example, I am going to use the affiliate competition as an indicator of the niche profitability.

That means that if there are many affiliate marketers promoting products in the niche then it must be a profitable one.

To do that, search Google for (NICHE “money back”):

This will return to you a list of product names in your niche.

Do another Google search and search for (PRODUCT review):

The more reviews you find for the product means there are many affiliates promoting it, and that the niche itself is profitable.

Find High-Paying Affiliate Products in Your Niche

By now you should have your affiliate website and niche ready, and all what is left to do is to find products that you can recommend and sell on your blog.

You can search the marketplace of any affiliate network and browse through the collection of products they have.

Affiliate networks are companies that allow affiliate marketers to promote products, and they will be the ones sending the commissions to the affiliate and generating the affiliate link for them.

These companies host hundreds and sometimes thousands of products because they have contracts with many product owners to run their affiliate programs.

Clickbank is one of the most successful affiliate networks out there, and you can go to their affiliate marketplace to find products in your niche.

Type in your niche keyword to find affiliate products to promote:

The prices you see are the affiliate commissions that you will earn and not the product price, so find the product that can earn you the most money.

There are other affiliate networks you can use to browse for products:

• Amazon
• ShareASale
• Plimus
• com

At the End

Becoming an affiliate marketer is one of the best paths you can take to earn money online.

But affiliate marketing is also like any other online business in so many ways, you still need to work hard and commit to your plans and goals.

Beginner affiliates could find it easier to follow a reputable affiliate marketing course (like affset.com).

Such courses provide affiliate tools and advanced affiliate marketing strategies, but most importantly they provide step by step study guides for beginners.

The post How to Pick a Profitable Niche as a Brand New Affiliate Marketer appeared first on Work from Home Happiness.