Personal Branding in Affiliate Marketing

Of all things that you could do to improve your affiliate marketing campaign, personal branding is one of the most important.  Your affiliate career isn’t based as much on the products that you promote as it is on what people think of you.  Since your focus should largely be on your public image, here are some pointers for keeping it positive.

Let Your Personality Shine in Social Media

Social media platforms are the best place to show your personality.  While there are elements of what you want to have as a professional, it’s what you say and do outside of the professional context that attracts people.  Your blog, Facebook, and Twitter accounts are great places to be “a normal person.”

One fact of business is that people don’t think of marketers as normal people.  If all you do on the Internet is marketing people will think you’re a spammer, whether you actually are or not.  Showing that you have interests and a life outside of business goes a long way to dispel the idea that you’re the sub-human species called “spammer.”

Don’t Avoid Your Niche When Blogging

With that said, you shouldn’t go out of your way to avoid your niche when you’re blogging.  You should chat about your work like everyone else does.  You should endorse your products.  The trick is to not have too much focus on any particular area of your life.

You do, after all, want to draw people to your products.  Blogging and social media is a delicate balance of your everyday life and your professional one.  The main difference between you and a lot of other people is that they might complain about their jobs.  For you, complaining about your job is shooting yourself in the foot as far as business goes.

Life as an Affiliate Marketer is Great

Since griping about being an affiliate marketer would be against your interests, singing its praises is a benefit for it.  Most of the time, you will be able to honestly say that life as an affiliate marketer is great.  You and your family just spent the entire day at the beach—on a Wednesday.  You just made six figures today.

This may be difficult for the beginning affiliate.  Six figure days haven’t happened yet.  You haven’t quit your day job yet, so you don’t have the luxury of spending a day at the beach with your family.  That’s all perfectly normal, just don’t talk about it.  Some would go so far as to lie about having a great day.  That could be a fatal mistake.

It’s usually pretty easy to tell when a person is lying.  Some time back on a forum, a marketer was complaining about being a single on Valentine’s Day.  For some odd reason, he thought to make it a point that he was eating a “steak dinner” while being disgruntled seeing other couples.  The mention of “steak dinner” is awfully gratuitous (I mean—who cares?) and it seems like it wouldn’t have been a point if he hadn’t been making it up.