This affiliate marketing guide will help you understand exactly what your affiliate company should be giving you in order to grow your business. I have been online for 3 years and I have made so many mistakes when it comes to affiliate marketing.

Like so many people I thought it was great that this company would give me free websites, banners, sales letters and all the tools I thought I would need to make money. I thought they had given me all the affiliate training I would need to be successful.

Boy was I wrong!

By the end of this affiliate marketing guide you will have an understanding of what you need in order to succeed with affiliate marketing. I also want to make sure that you avoid the many affiliate marketing scams that are ever present online today.

The tips in the list below should be used in order, and if one is missing then your chances of success are greatly reduced.

• This is the most important thing and that is to build your list. The company must allow you to build your own list and not theirs. Your financial security is in that list so you better make sure you are the owner.
• They must offer you all the tools you need in order for you to succeed. Might sound a bit obvious but many offer lots of bells and whistles that don’t actually do anything. The tools you need will be the affiliate marketing tutorial videos they will provide you with.
• You need to work with somebody on a proven daily strategy that will get you the results you need. A daily plan is essential to your online success and any reputable company will have one in place.
• They must offer a proven marketing funnel that will have all of the capture pages, different videos, articles and images that you can use in you marketing. This is very useful when you are starting out as you will be able to start adding content and value to your blog while you are still learning.
• And finally they must offer you a support network that answers your questions in seconds and not days. You are working on the internet so you need to move as fast as the internet moves; you don’t want to be waiting a couple of days to get a problem solved.

Let’s just go into a bit more detail about these import points in this affiliate marketing guide. If you do not build your own list and the company goes bust, they you will have to start again. Your list is vitally important and you must own it.

All the tools and training should been provided, and it must include how to set up a blog, how to market on social media, how to do keyword research and advance SEO tactics as well as syndicating all your work.

Once you learn how to generate traffic your affiliate company must put in place a marketing funnel that gives your prospects valuable information they can use with a product at the end so you can earn your commission.

If you follow the steps in this affiliate marketing guide you will have all the success you desire. But please remember that if one is missing they walk away and find an affiliate program that offers you everything in the list above.

Today, if your brand isn’t on Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, and the like, you’re going to be out of the loop and left behind. You’re going to be left in the wake of other brands’ success.

So maybe it’s time for you to jump on the bandwagon. You need to create your Facebook page, start a blog, and create a video for YouTube right now…

Or wait a minute.

Is throwing yourself head on to the oncoming train that’s social media really the best thing to do? Should you just start signing up for all these accounts without considering what’s best for your small business brand?

Of course not.

This is why it’s essential for you to have a social media process. As with any kind of marketing strategy or campaign you’re planning to utilize, you must first understand why you’re doing it and what your goals are in using it, before going ahead with implementation.

This is the reason why some brands fail in their social marketing strategy. It’s because they never had a social media process to guide them. They simply decided to get in while ahead, but they didn’t really have a clear goal on what they wanted to accomplish using these platforms.

So before you can start creating buzz in your social marketing, here are some things you should do:

Review your business goals

Before you can create a social media process, it’s important that you review your business goals. What do you want to achieve in social media? Do you want to build brand awareness, create conversation, generate leads, or sell products?

Remember though that social media is primarily for connecting with your audience, and not for selling. If you do hard selling in different social media accounts, you just might drive people away.

Consider the platforms available

Though you may think it would be better for your small business to utilize all the social media platforms available to you, this may become time-consuming and cost-ineffective in the long run.

Instead, it is far better for you to focus on one or two platforms where you think most of your audience are in. This enables you to really target your audience and connect with them.

For example, if you’re a photographer, it may be more worthwhile for you to be on Flickr compared to YouTube or you might have concerns over copyright and want to review the platform terms of service. Perhaps a site like Deviant Art suits you better? Or if you’re a professional looking for clients, LinkedIn may be the better choice compared to Facebook.

Understand the platform you’ve chosen

You’re not going to be successful in your social marketing if you don’t understand the platform you’ve chosen. Once you’ve determined what platforms suit your brand best, you need to study them and understand how best to engage your audience using them.

One of the worst things you can do for your small business brand is to botch up your social marketing presence because you don’t understand the platform you’re using. So study it first before jumping in.

Remember to measure

Now that you’re ready to start your social marketing campaign, it’s also important to determine what you’re going to measure. How are you going to measure the success of your campaign? If you aren’t measuring it, then how will you know if your campaign is succeeding or not, if you’re getting a return in your investment?

There are many tools that can help you measure the success of your campaign. Google Alerts and Social Mention are some of the more commonly used ones. Of course my personal favorite that I’m an affiliate with is Sprout Social. So don’t forget to measure, since this is going to determine if you should soldier on with what you’re doing or if it’s time to re-evaluate and re-assess your campaign.

Without a social media process, your social marketing campaign will be destined for failure. So make sure that you start right. Plan ahead, and plan well. Don’t just jump into social media without reviewing your business goals, considering and understanding the platforms available to you, and having ways to measure your success.

Using social media is a great way to create buzz around your brand, but without a process, your small business brand isn’t going to go far.