I’m a big supporter of developing a strong community with your affiliate niche. This might be a circle of other affiliate marketers you work with behind the scenes to get feedback on content and other communal tips, or it might be engaging in a community of readers and bloggers related to your topic.
Regardless of how you approach the concept, developing a sense of community is extremely important to your blog in the long run and is an essential marketing tactic. In this post I’ll focus on how to find a community for your given niche and participate in the conversations involved within it.
Engage with Related Blogs
Many affiliate marketers are hesitant to engage with other blogs that are related to their site. I think that a lot of people fear that by participating in conversations on other sites, they’re really just supporting and promoting their competitors.
While I’m not recommending you go out and start advocating that your competitor is the Alpha and Omega expert on your topic, it’s important to engage with their community.
This process will help you better understand your niche community and what people are writing and talking about within it. Keeping up with the latest blogs will also help you keep current on any trends or changes in the field, and help you maintain your position as an expert within it.
Additionally, engaging on third-party blogs is likely to bring you exposure, directly within the group of readers you’re targeting. Don’t hesitate to comment, support or refute the author’s opinions, or offer further suggestions. By doing this consistently, you’ll gradually attract more readers to your site.
Engage Social Media
The second technique to use is to engage with social media. By this, I don’t mean creating your own personal social media accounts for your site and ceaselessly promoting your content.
Instead, try to connect with topics that are related to your blog. Find and join existing communities and answer other people’s questions there, just as you do on your own site. This tactic will establish you as a voice to be trusted, and you’ll find that kindness (in sharing or discussing other’s topics) will ultimately be paid forward.
For one example of this, think of Twitter. It is extremely common for individuals to tweet a post tagging the handles of anyone who retweeted their content. This gets your name directly in front of their audience, with an opportunity to convert their followers into your followers, and ultimately get them onto your site.
At the end of the day, it doesn’t matter what mechanism you use to engage with your community and whether you use push marketing or pull marketing to do so.
The important point is that you spend time engaging with them, developing a better understanding of your audience’s needs, wants, and objectives, and getting your name in front of them as a leader in the space.