November 6, 2008
Affiliate Networks and Social Media
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My post from earlier this week on Affiliate Networks and blogs got me thinking about the bigger social media picture in the affiliate network space.
Engaging clients via social media is pretty much a no-brainer by now, though many businesses remain reluctant to open themselves to a public conversation with their clients for fear of the bad press.
In our small affiliate marketing industry, adoption of social media by the U.S. affiliate networks has been pretty slow but it is improving.
Message Boards
In the beginning, there was message boards. Back in 2001 time frame I was working at Be Free. We grappled with whether it made sense to get involved on ABestWeb. At the time, we were the network that affiliates loved to hate, but we decided to give it a go to see if we could do something about that. First our PR person gave it a try and she was slaughtered. Then our VP of client services went on resulting in a complete firestorm. Finally, I couldn’t take it any longer and I took the baton and ran for the next two years until we merged with Commission Junction. How was I successful where the others failed? I let the conversations happen, listened, and gave real and honest responses. I tried to answer all questions, not the ones I liked. I spoke with people, not at them. I grew thick skin. I dished it out once in a while to keep it fun, but never got personal.
Other networks had similar successes. It seems to take a special kind of person who can be entrusted to actually engage with the public. That’s opposed to the “network rep” that now pushes out promotions and answers the occasional question for CJ and LS. That’s not “social” media.
Todd Crawford was that guy for CJ and after he left was never replaced. Other than that (Todd was a VP), it seems that the owners of the Networks are the only ones who can stand up and take the heat. Linkshare had their owner Steven Messer who was also not really replaced in that capacity when he left. Shareasale has their owner Brian Littleton, who has made a name for his company with his openness. More recently Kris Jones owner of PepperJam Network ends up in a complete fiasco every time he shows his face, only to be exceeded by the next time he gives it a try (if he isn’t banned).
How is it that some company representatives can succeed to brilliantly while another one flames out every time? It’s not just about company’s policies toward things like adware. Todd and Steven showed us that regardless of company popularity, a sort of understanding can be reached between them and the affiliates. Constructive discussions can happen.
Why even bring up message boards in this discussion? I think it set the stage and the bar in affiliate marketing around network communication.
Blogs
To me, this is a requirement of any online marketing company that has stakeholders. Alerts in the interface don’t cut it for communications any more. And this is not only for promotions. Get someone out in front of the clients to post real, honest information about what’s going on with the company. For better or worse. Read my post from Monday to see how the U.S. affiliate networks are doing with their own blogging efforts.
You don’t have to look much past ComcastCares to see the positive impact that a twitter presence can have for a corporation.
Below is my short list of Affiliate Network twitter’ers. Either the “company” account or a personal account of a public figure at one of the companies. I’ll limit it to the ones I reviewed in the previous post AND that I currently follow. This is not meant to be a researched, inclusive list.
Commission Junction is, again, the only one missing from the party. Surely if Todd Crawford, Lisa Riolo, and Brian Caldwell were still there this would be a different story. Or me, for that matter.
It seems to me that the basic pre-requisite to a company attaining a successful social media presence is that they’ve got at least one person who is (a) interested and already heavily involved in social media, and (b) in a position that the company trusts them to represent.
How does that not happen at a company like CJ? This is not to judge (though I’m sure somebody will), but to ask the purely academic question, seriously, why?
I won’t give “grades” this time as it seems to bring out the worst in people. For the fun of it, I will include their publicly visible twitter stats in case you’ve got your own methods for measuring the type of Twitter user they are.
| Network | Twitter’er | Following | Followers | Updates | Comments |
| Commission Junction | C’mon guys. Nobody? Really? | ||||
| Linkshare | LinkShareBlog | 68 | 93 | 23 | Along with the blog, a new effort. A good start. |
| Google Affiliate Network | LarryAdams | 138 | 194 | 462 | This is mostly Larry’s personal stuff. But to me, Larry is the GAN guy. So he gets roped in. I don’t know of any more formal GAN twitter accounts. |
| ShareASale | brianlittleton | 90 | 439 | 328 | ShareaASale’s owner. Mostly personal stuff, but you cannot separate Brian from ShareASale. |
| ShareASaleNews | 5 | 35 | 7 | Shareasale’s newest twitter effort. Follow this to keep tabs on new merchant news. I like the idea of a separate twitter account for the promotinal stuff! | |
| ShareASale | 0 | 141 | 31 | Looks like this is more fun/random stuff coming out of Shareasale, rather than promotions. Perhaps Brian’s effort to extract the SAS stuff from his personal twitter account. possible? | |
| SaraBeeSAS | 33 | 40 | 12 | Sarah’s one of the public faces at SAS. Her personal twitter account, but she does talk SAS stuff. | |
| catango | 218 | 315 | 483 | Last and anything but least, Carolyn Tang mixes up personal and SAS. | |
| PepperJamNetwork | KingPepper | 2,892 | 1,749 | 477 | “King Pepper” is Kris Jones, the CEO of PepperJam. Like most of Kris’ social media activity, this is a mix of him personally and talking up PepperJam. There are surely other PJ employees on the twitter, but I haven’t come across them. |
| AvantLink | Avantlink | 0 | 164 | 104 | Follow this twitter account to keep tabs on all of the new merchants at AvantLink. |
| Buy.at | Buy_at | 70 | 69 | 27 | Not sure who’s behind the twitter account at buy.at, but it’s becoming more and more active recently, and a nice mix of buy.at promotions and announcements and some fun stuff. |
Friend ‘em up!
Scott,
Thanks for posting the above list. I tried to connect with Larry Adams in the past, maybe I will be more successful on Twitter.
I bet CJ's team includes lots of people that are genuinely interested and, if not heavily, actively, involved in social media. The challenge for CJ is trusting its own representatives to actively participate. We know this situation isn't unique to CJ. There are many companies out there that experience a media “generation” gap. Too many executives lack an understanding of the current media landscape. These executives aren't comfortable navigating their brands in online communities that they don't “control.” Which brings us back to the issue of companies trusting its own representatives to effectively build the brand in new(er) media channels.
You have to wonder–what is the significant difference between showing up to a trade show and conveying the company brand and key marketing messages to attendees that drop by the booth vs. having a twitter account that allows a similar exchange to occur online?
One of the many 'reasons' (read: excuses) given those of us seeking to establish a social media presence (e.g. a blog) for CJ, back in 2006, was that Valueclick was a publicly traded company. The resistance came from investor relations and concerns about understanding the many regulations impacting communications. Some publicly traded companies have adopted more progressive marketing strategies–but do move more cautiously. I imagine this remains a concern for the team over at Valueclick.
In any case, any company that depends on partners and outside parties to generate the majority of its revenue ought to have a much higher comfort level with social media. Maybe your risks are a bit higher, and your perceived controls lower–but if you understand your own value proposition and brand message, you should have no more problem engaging a customer or prospect on Twitter than you do speaking on a panel at a conference.
I just took a look at http://usernamecheck.com/ and noticed that CJ doesn't even have commissionjunction as a user name on the vast majority of social media sites, including Delicious, Digg, Disqus, Flickr, Friendfeed, StumbleUpon, Technorati, and… Twitter.
I would urge somebody in Santa Barbara to grab them quick for self-defense, if nothing else.
Also, I noticed that somebody has commissionjunction as a user name on YouTube, but it doesn't seem to be CJ.
They posted a 10 year anniversary video a couple days ago as CommissionJunction10.
I was actually going to register commissionjunction at twitter and give it to them, because I knew this post would prompt someone to grab it. But it's too long a name anyway.
Amen to that.
Thanks for the insights Lisa. That excuse just doesn't cut it anymore.
Yeah, there are lots of douchebags out there who love to either jump on unclaimed social media domains or just use them to prop up their own businesses. CJ and all networks need to really be on top of that sort of thing since the barriers to entry are so low!
I've been begging CJ to blog for a while. I'm not sure if it will ever happen. However, I know they watch Twitter, blogs, etc so maybe there is hope for them… especially now that Linkshare is blogging
“commissionjunction” is too long.
I just registered “commjunction” and would love to hand it off to Kerri and the team…
It's long, but CJ is taken and I think a cryptic abbreviation would be bad for branding.
If nothing else, they could get @commissionjunction and post a single message instructing people to go to their shorter user name there.
Another great post Scott.
I mean technically it's too long. Twitter won't allow it. 15 Character limit.
Thanks Jim. Hey, where's the gold tie? You need to change your disqus avatar!
Wednesday at Noon, Nov 12th. The complete assimilation will take place then.
Yeah, I heard that Commission Junction was having a lot of problems regarding the advertisers paying their affiliates. I was going to sign up with Commission Junction, but I didn't like the fact that you had to pay your own affiliates instead of CJ just taking a cut out by themseleves like Clickbank does.
Well, let's not compare CJ with Clickbank in terms of social media involvement. Talk about apples and orangutans.
Sam,
Couldn't agree more - total douchebags. LOL
Scott,
Very thought provoking post.
BTW - we have a few dozen Pepperjam users on Twitter. In fact, our current Director of SEO Todd Butcher @tbutcher80 and I became friends by following one another through Twitter. I randomly posted on Twitter one day that PJ was hiring and if anyone was interested in a job to send me a private message.
I received several private messages within a few hours, including from Todd.
Long story short, but for Twitter I would have never met Todd - he is one of our top employees.
Social media is too powerful not to be actively involved - network or no network.
+ it's fun.
Kris
As always Google leads the pack. What's new? I wonder if could have the same numbers of followers like Google have in my twitter account
This is very interesting, thanks for sharing this table!
I am sure Twitter will get all kinds of competition, but I seriously doubt they will get truly tested.
Interesting post Scott.
Makes me think about all the voices that could become part of the social conversation:
Networks as Brand (old school this would be PR)
Network reps - working with Advertisers and Publishers
Advertisers as Brand
Advertisers as legitimate and personal voices (think Tony at @Zappos)
Advertiser Reps - working with Network and Publishers
Publishers
Consumers
So I wonder, at what point would a social conversational engagement by, for example, a Network Rep with a Consumer, impede the actual goal of the Publisher/Consumer relationship? Would this type of social engagement cause confusion? Would it reduce or enhance conversion rates?
I'd suggest that while in general the Networks might not have the savvy leadership to comprehend all the implications of Social Media, or might justifiably be concerned over legal exposure, there is also another side to consider. Affiliate marketing is traditionally a closed loop system. It's possible that (if applied with a broad brush) the social conversation loop could alter the traditional loop in a bad way. I dunno. I'm speculating here, but maybe this opens up a new line of thinking about this. I do believe that exploration of new ways to engage is a healthy and good thing, but using a scalpel is probably the best way to apply any ideas discovered.
Definitely good to look at all sides, Brian. And caution
I think I see your point, but practically speaking, I'm having a hard time picturing the scenario where a Network Rep would be talking to a consumer, unless a consumer stumbled accidentally into a B2B social circle. It could happen, I guess.
Of course there may be justifiable concern over legal exposure, but to me, that argument falls short when I look back to what they allowed you, and Todd, and me to do for years. If that continues to be the reason, I hope they're re-thinking that one.
great and interesting information.. i'll go back to this one by the time i will be joining an affiliate network site!
hi
gr8 articles.
thanks a lot for share the information.
It was something which i was looking for since long time, i like the portion which u covered in twitter..i never though the way you explained there.. such a wonderful information..
thanks for sharing