A new era of internet sales and marketing has dawned and a whole new industry is emerging that is desperately short of skilled people. The places of higher education are just coming to terms with the skills that are required for this online industry. In this situation the students often become the teachers.

Today, consumers are in control of products, brands and messages. The leaders of this seismic shift are the members of the world wide social web. They are the bloggers, microbloggers, forum posters, social networking participants. These knowledge era leaders who produce and use products and services (producers and consumers or prosumers) spread messages, influence people, and drive global demand (advocates).

Prosumer Advocates (also referred to as online publishers, affiliates and promoters) are the online influencers that organisations must now acknowledge, respect and develop relationships with if they want their brands to thrive. The high level step for you to leverage your power as a Prosumer Advocate is to learn about online marketing from successful online companies, like Google, Amazon, Ebay and WallCann.

Online Marketing is where a business rewards you for each new customer and sale they gain from your research, editorials, advocacy, advertising and or promotion. Basically a well managed way of earning money for products and services that you promote.

The concept of revenue sharing — paying for referred sales— predates affiliate marketing and the Internet.  When you buy advertising space on TV, Radio and Newspapers you are paying the advertising media owners for sending you their viewers and readers. You pay for the media in advance, regardless of sales generated from the advertising.
By comparison, the internet provides an excellent mechanism for tracking, measuring and rewarding the delivery of customers. So in a win win for organisations and Prosumer Advocates payment for promotion occurs once the sale is transacted. This helps relatively small organisations to compete more effectively and introduce many new products.

Amazon is an example of an early Prosumer Advocate (affiliate) program. Amazon launched its associate program in July 1996. Amazon affiliates placed banners or text links and added relevant reviews on their own site for individual books linked directly to the Amazon webpages. As visitors click from their affiliates’ websites through to Amazon and then purchased a book, the Advocate (affiliate) is paid a commission.

Online marketing has grown quickly and WallCann has many programs offering payments for Advocates. These Advocates just advertise directly to our websites or build their own websites, with research content and comparison reviews.

WallCann Head Office is in Adelaide and employs a team of talented people building and managing online marketing solutions. WallCann also works with over 500 Prosumer Advocates worldwide. To get started as a Prosumer Advocate the cost is minimal and mainly requires time.  It is not physically demanding so suits those who have restricted mobility.

Social media trends that are evolving support the prosumer advocate marketing of the future. A concept WallCann has worked on since 2002.

No doubting the importance of mobile in social media – however, the evidence also shows just like writing paper letters, emails have their place. For much of business transactions, confidential information, documentation email transfer will not easily be replaced by mobile phone transfer. Just as most kids like cartoons most adults like movies, while lots of blurring occurs fundamentals remain. As gen Y and Z grow up and move to management and commerce situations they will need a more formal confidential communication documentation that twitter and social media currently does not provide.

All this means is that companies who continuously explore beyond traditional marketing will move ahead of the pack. The new customers we are winning are testament to that growing need.

1. Choose a good Username

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Be sure to pick a username that’s relevant to your brand or campaign and easy to remember. Your Username then becomes part of your customized Twitter URL such as twitter.com/yoursite or twitter.com/yourtopic. Doing this creates a static address for future search indexing, which also helps usability for other cross-channel promotions.

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2. Select an account name wisely

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Optimize the Twitter account name to best reflect your brand. Your name is what appears next to your profile, which can be different than your URL. You obviously want an account name that promotes yourself, your company or your brand. You should also consider which variation of you brand name has the most search frequency every month.

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3. Make your bio count

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Optimize your Twitter page’s “Bio” line so it includes the most important, mission-critical phrases for your brand. Take advantage of all 160 characters! They give you 20 more characters than a normal tweet.Your bio is consistently indexed so its contents are what provide your Twitter page with its core relevance.

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4. Spread the word

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Now think about ways to build the link reputation of this newfound social web address. For example, you can integrate your Twitter URL into your website by placing a call to action on the site for your customers to follow you on Twitter. You could also integrate your Twitter URL within your site’s Global Footer, which appears at the bottom of every page of your site. Both of these options offer usability to your site visitors and help drive your Twitter URL up in the search engines.

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5. Remember your URL

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In the account settings, be sure to add your website’s URL or perhaps use it to promote your presence on another social platform, for example, yoursite.com. This is a great way to drive traffic back to your destination of choice; although, truth be told, the link does not provide any offsite reputation – a.k.a. SEO link juice – due to a “Nofollow” attribute that Twitter has in place.

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6. Select the initial characters of each tweet carefully

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The “lead-in” of each tweet appears to be important for SEO as it will determine what appears in the tweet’s title tag when it shows up as a search result on Google. Approximately 42 characters are factored into each tweet’s title tag, including the account name, as well as the initial characters of each tweet. Keep in mind that your full tweet and all its characters are still being indexed by major engines, though.

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7. Write keyword-rich tweets if possible

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Wherever possible, start your tweet with a primary keyword phrase to theme each message. Take advantage of any “active lingo” or buzz words as this will enable you to capitalize on timely searches on those terms. Of course, this doesn’t mean you should fill your tweets with buzz words at the expense of providing value to your followers! Rather, think carefully about which word choices will best convey your message and also allow you to leverage the real-time and long-term index relevance across the engines that continuously spider and index tweets.

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8. Mind your retweetability

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Make sure your tweet’s character limits allow for optimal “retweetability.” If you want a message to proliferate on Twitter, it’s ideal to keep it under 120 characters so your followers can easily add RT @YourHandle in front of the tweet. However, the exact number is different from everyone as it depends on the number of characters needed for someone to include the phrase “RT @yourname” in their re-tweet.

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9. Provide some Back Links

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Insert back links to redirect users back to your content. Twitter has proven to be a significant traffic driver for bloggers and others using the space to share links. If you do share links, use one of the many URL shorteners available (TinyURL and Bit.ly () are two common shorteners).

Recommend using the URL shortener Bit.ly, as it tracks click-throughs for the specific links you share on the platform. Bit.ly even has the power to track links in aggregate. For example, if multiple Bit.ly URLs were created and shared by separate users, all leading back to the same URL, the service can track and report click-throughs for all of them in aggregate. Bit.ly also tracks clicks over time, so you can see when people are clicking your links most.

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10. Redirect to Good Content

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When providing Bit.ly links or any other URLs, make sure the redirection leads to pages which provide a richer content experience. Twitter users are hungry for information and accustomed to getting it “right now.” Send users directly to the details instead of having them fish around for it.

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate Marketing is an internet based marketing practice where a business rewards an affiliate for each customer resulting from the efforts of the affiliate. Basically a well managed way of earning commissions on products you promote.

Affiliates are also called promoters, publishers or associates.

The concept of revenue sharing —paying commission for referred sales—predates affiliate marketing and the Internet.  The internet provided an excellent mechanism for tracking and rewarding the delivery of customers.

An example of an early affiliate program, online bookstore Amazon, launched its associate program in July 1996. Amazon associates could place banner or text links on their own site for individual books, or link directly to the Amazon home page. When visitors clicked from the associate’s (affiliate’s) website through to Amazon and purchased a book, the associate received a commission. This program used the basic principles of affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing has grown quickly since its inception. The ecommerce website, viewed as a marketing toy in the early days of the Internet, has become an integrated part of the overall business plan and in some cases grown to a bigger business than the existing offline business.

Affiliate marketing is an excellent way to generate income. It can be built gradually whilst holding down a ‘real job’.  Costs are very minimal and mainly requires time. It is not physically demanding so suits those who Kevin Rudd is making work longer. The more time you put in the more you learn and the more you make. It can provide pin money to retirement income to lifestyle of the rich.

This is how WallCann started. Affiliate income built WallCann and now WallCann employs a team of talented people building and managing online marketing solutions.  It has become a ‘real job’.

Also WallCann has built an affiliate system that provides what affiliates need. Built by super affiliates to create super affiliates.  Join Now.

We get a lot of positive feedback from our customers. All appreciated like this recent gem.

“Thank you very much Andrew. I appreciate your prompt and comprehensive
response. I have had a happy time viewing your website and will be making
some very much needed purchases soon. I have looked at a large number of
websites and yours contains products I haven’t seen anywhere else.
Thanks again.”

This customer was referring to the Life-BestBuys site. Testimonials like this remind us why we make the effort we do to provide great informative sites and good customer service wherever we can.

Thanks right back at you.