Affiliate Networks and Social Media

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.

Twitter

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.

Friend ‘em up!

Tagged as: avantlink, buy.at, commission junction, linkshare, pepperjam, shareasale, social media, twitter