The advent of social media portals such as MySpace, Facebook, and the myriad of blogs out there has made affiliate marketing even more promising as an online marketing strategy. In fact, affiliates can be considered to be very active in the social media scene; bloggers review and recommend the latest products and services, ordinary people making and uploading videos and “marketing” a product or company without them even realizing it… there is undoubtedly some form of marketing going on amongst users of social media sites, whether directly or indirectly. So if you're interested in knowing how social media can boost your affiliate marketing marketing program, then read on.

Social media can help in your affiliate marketing efforts because it makes the presence of your company or product known across various social media channels. This is a strategic method for effective promotion, because if done right, you can attract potential prospects into becoming both your customers and affiliates simultaneously. Once you've earned customers' loyalty they would more than likely promote and endorse your company or product via the same channels you had reached them; that being social media.

Depending on which side of the fence you're on, whether as the merchant dependant on affiliates to get your name out there or if you're the affiliate trying to market a merchant's products, there can be many ways to utilize social media for affiliate marketing. For either the merchant or the affiliate, you can consider using video content and create traffic via platforms such as YouTube or iTunes or even your own website. In the case of an affiliate, this can be done by procuring content from merchants and creating your own viral video or having regular specific podcasts. You can also adapt contents to include affiliate links or combining videos that ends with an ad for the merchant or their products. The most important thing here is to spread the content on a platform that would have the widest reach of audience in the social media landscape.

You can also create constantly fresh content with low maintenance using RSS feeds. RSS is good because its content is updated automatically, and the content can be provided by the merchant or the affiliate network. Again, it's important to note that the content should spread throughout the various social media platforms, so be sure to include links to such feeds in profiles of whatever social networks you involve yourself in.

Now that we're on the topic of social networks, you need to be social and market to friends in social networking platforms such as MySpace and Facebook. Whether you're the merchant or the affiliate, marketing through such platforms can be lucrative because of the number of people you're able to reach. These platforms have the potential to grab people's attention, and you can collect friends (or prospects) and build relationships with them to encourage their loyalty to you as a merchant. Consider having multiple profiles for specific purposes, those that potential prospects might be interested in so it can lead up to you marketing your products to them. Write blogs and include the occasional affiliate links if you're an affiliate. Add pictures or post in guidebooks and include affiliate links here and there.

Whether you're a merchant or an affiliate, using social media to boost your affiliate marketing marketing program is quite possible. The avenues are there; you just need to choose the right one to embark on.