Ecom Access » Social Media

Coffee with Nicky – Episode Four: Twitter and Affiliates

Nicky — Fri, 08 May 2009 14:34:15 +0000

With Twitter having exploded into the mainstream, just about everyone is discussing how to use it toward their marketing goals. But where brands are focused on simply building awareness or managing their PR, affiliates need to focus on actual conversions. Well, in this latest episode of Coffee with Nicky, I decided to discuss exactly what the potential of Twitter is for affiliate marketers, and how they should consider using it toward their affiliate marketing goals.

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Coffee with Nicky – Episode Three: Twitter Brands

Nicky — Fri, 01 May 2009 19:16:02 +0000

The more that I use my Twitter account, the more uses I see for the medium. As a social medium, Twitter can be used toward a variety of objectives. And this is no exception for brands. Twitter allows brands to reach out to a targeted market, connect and build relationships with it, and get out their message. In fact, it reminds me a lot of having a client- or journalist-list like so many of us did before the internet exploded into the world of marketing-communications.

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Coffee with Nicky – Episode Two

Nicky — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 15:48:19 +0000

I’ve been traveling quite a bit over the last month, so it’s been a while since the last episode of Coffee with Nicky. In this episode, I discuss my experience with social media, as well as my observations of how it pertains to my relationship with both friends and family. For instance, I recently signed up for a Twitter account, so I touch upon how that’s working for me. I also discuss my experience with Facebook, and how it affect my comfort level with the public/private/professional divide in my life. I hope you enjoy…

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Podcamp Toronto Presentation

Nicky — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 18:34:55 +0000

A couple weeks ago, I attended Podcamp Toronto and delivered a session titled Monetizing Communities: Ethics and Strategies. In fact, my experience at Podcamp was the inspiration behidn my last blog post. Well, the footage of that session has finally been posted, so I wanted to share it with everyone who could be there in the flesh. The organizers of Podcamp have also posted a media archive of all the sessions. With other presenters including the likes of Chris Brogan, Dave Fleet, Mark Blevis, Terry Fallis and Michelle Sullivan, it’s an archive that’s well worth checking out for anyone who’s interested in new media and online communitiy.

The Ethics of Monetizing Communities

Nicky — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 17:27:16 +0000

I recently wrote about the difference between markets and communities on OneDegree.ca, and explored how brands should approach online communities, but it’s also occured to me that there is little said about how community hosts (such as bloggers, forum moderators, and podcasters) could effectively monetize. In other words, how do these individuals generate a return all the passion and hard work they’ve poured into a hobby, and turn it into a business. Brands that can answer these questions for community hosts will be in a great position to build lasting and profitable relationships with some of the most influential consumer on the web.

Essentially, these community hosts have built content communities. They’ve (1) generated content, (2) put that content its context by building community around it, and (3) generated conversation around that content. Well, if these community hosts do decide to monetize, they face many of the same ethical constraints that brands who want to engage their communities do. The only difference is that these community hosts are all too well aware of what those ethics are. Their challenge, rather, is in finding revenue model that can offer them the control and flexibility to monetize their communities without compromising them. After all, if the community dissolves, they have no source of revenue left.

Well, I believe that affiliate marketing can offer both that control and flexibility.

It’s performance-based model means that community hosts are in complete control of how much they want to push monetization — i.e. there is no pressure from sponsors push certain kinds of content.
By finding an affiliate program whose products are relevant to community interests, affiliate promotions can actually add value to the community experience.
Affiliate marketing offers more flexibility because community hosts can choose from a variety of channels to feature promotions — i.e. email, banners, sponsorships, text links, coupon codes, etc.
Community hosts retain complete control over what their members are exposed to — i.e. they don’t have to promote all of a brand’s products, just those they endorse or are comfortable with.
Affiliate tracking codes mean that community hosts can even integrate promotions with multi-media content (such as podcasts) by offering a coupon code.
And more custom support means that community hosts can get creatives that complement their community’s spirit, rather than just pushing the brand and its promotions.

Just over a week ago, I attended Podcamp Toronto and delivered a session (presentation below) on just this topic. Relationships are becoming an increasingly more important factor in the sales process, but some of best online relationship brokers and brands are still struggling to find viable and sustainable ways of working together.I think that affiliate marketing may just be part of the answer.

For community hosts, finding the right affiliate program that features products that are relevant to the community can be an effective way to both monetize and add value to that community. For brands, setting up an affiliate program that offers dedicated support can offer a stepping stone to establishing long-term relationships with communities and their hosts.

Monetizing Communities: Ethics and Strategies

View more presentations from Share Results. (tags: monetization online)

Online Communities & Business

Nicky — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 18:42:46 +0000

There is so much discussion in the world of marketing, these days, about the power of online communities. Well, I think that communities have always been this important. It just so happens that now that we have the internet, many of the communities have moved online or have an online component to them. Something that I once brought up in an article on Markets vs. Communities:

when members of any demographic (market or otherwise) are able to interact, they become a community, and when anyone interacts with that community (brand or otherwise), they become a member of it.

Well, here is the final installment of the five video series that the communications team Shanghaied me into doing, and it’s all about the importance of business communities. For me, business communities have been playing an important role for much longer than Web 2.0 has been around. It’s just that having community interaction archived online really adds value to community experience.

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