All Those Social Media Knockers: Start Listening

It's amazing how many times recently I've read people say that they "don't understand social media" and then in the next paragraph they'll say "it's of no benefit to business or to me as an affiliate"! It's got to be one of the funniest things I've heard since the UK and US went into Iraq because they've got weapons of mass destruction.

People are deluding themselves. They're stuck in their ways because their methods are still working. What these people lack is "vision". They can't see the the impact that social media is having on the internet. People are caught in the mindset that the only company that can impact their business is Google - be it algo or Adwords rules changes.

The growth of blogging is getting faster and faster. Consumers are communicating with each other about products and merchants - and their voice is swamping the voice of the affiliate. People are less reliant on affiliates to create content to affect buy their buying process as they are using blogs to do this.

I use face book to build communities around products which drive traffic to my sites. It would take me a huge amount of cash to build useful technologies that achieve the same results and I would hate to think how much it'd cost me to get my sites out in front of 34,000,000 people!

It also amazes me that people slag off Google because they believe their results are crap and then wonder why people turn to blogs with their rss feeds, forums with their fresh content and social media with their informed information!

Why do you think that Google is interested in buying Facebook and why they bought Youtube? They're not daft! They know the importance of communities and user generated content.

It's about time that affiliates started to join the dots and realise that the time of relying on Google and other search engines for natural and paid traffic is over. Successful affiliates will watch where the herd is going and get their first.

If anyone wants a good read on this matter then take a look at "Future Trends in Affiliate Marketing and the Web" by Anita Campbell. It's an interview with Sam Harrelson - you've probably heard of him - if you haven't, find another career!