How to use Twitter with Social Sales Force

February 27, 2014

Twitter has rocketed to fame over the past few years, and it’s a great place to make new connections and build your network.

Some of our Social Sales Force members are heavy Twitter users, and some of members don’t even have an account. But if you are serious about building a network and making money with affiliate marketing, it’s definitely a network you want to be participating in.

How to use Twitter for referral marketing

Here are 4 tips on how to use Twitter for referral marketing (for the Reliance Social Sales Force, of course!)

1. Be real.

If you follow the Reliance Twitter account (@RelianceCares), you’ll know that we often use our account to engage in discussions with our customers. Sometimes we are helping customers solve issues, and other times we are interacting with members of our social media community.

The point is that Twitter is a place where you want to make real connections with people.

If you asked 10 social media experts the best way to use Twitter, you’d get 10 completely different answers. However, I’ve found that can keep the ratio of “engagement” tweets and “promotional” tweets to 10:1, (1 promotional tweet for every 10 engagement tweets), you should be fine.

2. Market yourself first.

In the referral marketing game, trust is king. The people in your network are going to click on offers that you send out because they trust you. That means that the main task you have as a referral marketer is help increasing numbers of people view you as a credible and trustworthy source.

You could be a credible and trustworthy source on pretty much anything. It could be your favourite sport, music, cooking, wine – whatever. The important part is that a large group of people trust your judgement, so that when it comes time to share a promotional like with the (like you’ll be doing in the Social Sales Force), that they pay attention and trust what you say.

3. Send out your Social Sales Force links with care:

Creating a tweet with your Social Sales Force referral link is quick and easy.

Second, you can grab your link on the right side of your Ambassador account (it’s the link that starts with: http://mbsy.co/RlPQ), and put that directly in your tweet.

Third, if you prefer you can use the social widget in your Ambassador account to send the tweet. Simply click on the Twitter icon in the account, which will launch a pre-filled tweet that you can send directly, or modify any way you like.

Send the tweet and you are on your way.

4. Use an automation service

As you are progressing into your referral marketing journey, you might want to consider using a service like Buffer to help you organize your social media life. Using that service will allow you to schedule tweets for later times, which means you can schedule a full day’s worth of tweets ahead of time.

How not to do referral marketing on Twitter

Now that we’ve covered some of the things that you should do on Twitter, let’s cover some of the things that you should avoid.

1. Don’t just sell

If you are serious about referral marketing, you’ll want to be in it for the long haul. And eventually, if all you see from a connection of yours is a constant stream of sales pitches, you’ll eventually want to stop interacting with that person. Treat your followers on Twitter like you would in real life – have conversations, build trust, and be wary of selling too much.

2. Don’t just send out links without context

You’ll notice that in the tweets that we pre-populate for you, we try and keep it as natural and conversational as possible. Merely sending out a link without any context behind it probably isn’t going to work very well. Although you only have 140 characters of space to work with, it’s important that you use some of that space to let people know why you think they should click the link you are sending out. Always think “what’s in it for them?”

3. Never try and trick somebody into clicking a link

Sometimes you’ll see affiliate marketers use shady tactics to try and get people to click on links. A lot of those people will try and convince you 140 characters that you can become a millionaire working part-time at home.

Make sure that whenever you send out a link from the Social Sales Force that you tell people exactly what they are linking to.

And remember, if you ever need any help with anything to do with the Reliance Social Sales Force, you can email me at rmassingham (at) reliancecomfort (dot) com.