By Annika Bansal 
Affiliate marketing has grown in leaps and bounds over the past decade and has become one of the most useful and efficient customer acquisition tools for online retailers of all kinds. The ill fortunes of stores and brick and mortar companies over the last few pandemic-filled months has captured the attention of many.
As these physical stores face the onslaught of dwindling reserves of cash, online stores, and e-commerce, in general, have never been more important. And affiliate marketing has proven to be the key to continued growth and sustainability for any business that not only wants to survive but thrive as well.
The new push towards less conventional marketing strategies such as affiliate marketing pays off for businesses that do it right. That’s why social media and affiliate marketing are such a match made in heaven.
Marketing your affiliate links via social media is by far the fastest, cheapest, and most straightforward way to increase website traffic and thus revenue. Smart affiliate websites also rely on social media to build brands as well as establish a community and audience.
However, for social media to work for any affiliate website, quality content has to be shared, otherwise, you risk losing potential sales instead of attracting the web traffic that you so desperately need.
But first, what exactly is affiliate marketing?
The concept of affiliate marketing is one that’s simple to grasp. Generally, affiliate marketing allows business owners to sell their products from anywhere at any time- even when asleep. It is a tactic that is popularly used to drive sales as well as generate considerable online profits.
What’s so great about affiliate marketing is that it benefits both businesses and the affiliate marketers themselves, which probably helps to explain why it’s burgeoned in the last couple of years. Affiliates earn commissions every time they sell a company’s or person’s product.
The affiliate simply needs to find a product that he or she enjoys and then promotes it to earn a piece of the takings from every sale made. All sales and purchases are easily tracked through affiliate links from one website to the next.
Which social media platform works best for affiliate websites?
There is no one size fits all approach to using social media to drive website traffic. However, the beauty of social media is that it allows for testing and experimentation before settling for a particular platform. You can practically use any social media platform for driving traffic, as long as it meets your marketing objectives.
Before you select a particular platform, it is important to first consider your target audience. Which social sites do they frequent? Are you more likely to get your links seen on Facebook or Instagram? Which channels are your competitors using? Which platform will work best for the type of content you want to share, that is videos, photos, or blogs?
As an affiliate marketer, you must ensure that you set up your marketing with the most suitable social media platform from the very first day. Once you settle for a platform, you can then start to think of smart ways to increase your web traffic. To help you out, here are 5 smart tips that can help you generate the traffic and sales that you have been longing for:
Promote your content in niche-specific forums and groups
For instance, if you wanted to promote ping pong gear, you wouldn’t do it at good housekeeping. Pingpongetc.com, on the other hand, would be an excellent affiliate site in the sports gear market that can generate the kind of quality traffic that you need.
Ensure that you are delivering value with your content
The content that you are sharing on social media to drive web traffic needs to convert. As such, it must be superior above all else. This means that you must give your audience exactly what they need, otherwise, they will look elsewhere.
Great content should pique your target audience’s interest and draw them in time and time again. That’s how you build a loyal following and the surge of traffic that you need to succeed.
Include high-quality images where needed
If your links or products contain images, make sure that they are high-quality ones. The best performing content on social media contains images and videos. The use of high-quality images not only conveys to your followers and potential customers that you are legitimate, but they also have a high engagement rate, which is exactly what you need if you are trying to increase your web traffic.
Create shortened URLs for redirecting
Potential customers don’t want to deal with lengthy affiliate links and URLs because they are not appealing. That’s why it is so important for you to cloak your URLs to make them more enticing.
Research shows that shorter URLs are not only more clickable, but they are also more likely to get shared. The good news is that there are plenty of services that have made it easy to compress URLs such as Bit.ly and Owl.ly.
Promote enticing offers
If you want to increase your web traffic, then you should make promoting enticing offers a priority. People like a good deal and if yours is a great one, consumers and target customers will be naturally drawn to your website. This means that discount offers, sales, and giveaways should be promoted regularly
Final Thoughts
Affiliate marketing has been around for some time now and unlike traditional marketing tactics, this is one tactic that shows actual results. Add social media to the mix and what you have is marketing gold.
Distributing affiliate links through social media is an excellent way for businesses to boost engagement as well as increase visibility, which all work positively towards increasing overall website traffic.
The good news is that a boost in web traffic can be attained on almost all social media platforms. With these smart tips shared above, you shouldn’t have any issues utilizing your social media to drum up some much-needed business. Good luck!
SME Paid Under
Sitetrail Research Team 
Doug Brown