Many of us who are students of this space continue their learning throughout the year and not just at Affiliate Summit.  So it’s important for people like me to remember that just because I didn’t really learn anything new from this panel doesn’t mean there weren’t some newbies that learned volumes.  I can’t speak for them, of course. The panel consisted of:

• Ted Murphy, Founder/CEO, IZEA (Moderator)
• Rob Key, CEO, Converseon
• Stephanie Agresta, InternetGeekGirl.com
• Chris Brogan, VP Strategy & Technology, CrossTech Media

Hopefully you’ll learn some more things than I did.

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• 70% of people online last month watched a video.
• The top rated websites are the social media networks.
• There really are strategies to using social media.
• Seeing how the flow of conversation is going is hard to track, but when cross conversational tracking becomes available it will be exciting.
• This is a marketing channel just like any other; it can work well with other channels to a brand or company’s advantage.
• Tracking is coming soon… and will be immensely valuable.
• A comment on a blog or a good blog post as social value.
• Brands are starting to bring enthusiasts in to help market.
• FriendFeed could be taken more advantage of by affiliates.
  • It allows for more nuanced opportunities.

Points brought up during the Q&A

• Personally I asked if there were any tools to help manage a social media strategy (knowing slightly that there weren’t any I knew of) and the answer was “don’t get caught up in tools”.  Fail.
• Social media may bring rise to a different kind of content.
• There are listening tools like Radian6, BuzzLogic, lots of deep dive listening tools for brands to hear what the conversation is.
• Twitter isn’t a good place to recruit affiliates but it’s good for conversions (no real expansion on that was given).
• Will we see a change in the code of ethics regarding transparency & disclosure?  Not sure but disclosure breeds trust.
• Interesting argument – more and more people are giving kudos to those that disclose affiliate links however no one in television bothers to disclose even blatant product placements so it’s a fine line & unresolved argument.
• Recognize the conversation AS a conversation – treating it like a traditional marketing venue doesn’t work.
• Look at social media like a picnic, says Chris Brogan.  Don’t just run up & start selling your product to people hanging around having a good time.
  • “Turn your stupid bullhorn into a party hat”.
• Give something to the social media community before you take – content + trust (+ conversions).
• Try to think just a hair outside your brand.
• Conversion rates coming through social media sites are 4 times higher than traditional channels.
  • Note: Since there’s no standard of tracking it’s very difficult to isolate this.
  • The social media forerunners are working on an open wiki to open up discussion on how to isolate.
• Many brands are worried about the affiliate channel cannibalizing other in-house channels like search.
• It takes a high level of comfort to let go of the brand & get into social media.
• There’s a big education process for merchants before jumping into the pool.
  • “We’re really afraid of this because we don’t want people pooing on the brand”.
• Listening to the conversations that are out there is the easiest “gateway drug” to get companies hooked on wanting to participate.
• If you’re going to disclose your affiliate links, at least do so on your about page and possibly at the end of every post.
  • At IZEA when they decided to make the disclosure banner mandatory, conversions surprisingly went up 20% – 15% of the clicks were on the “Sponsored by” button itself.

Overall it seemed like a lot of the conversation was “when we get tracking… ooh boy watch out!” and tried to steer away from the fact that there is NO real solid way to track any social media “strategy”.  I had an interesting conversation with Wil Reynolds, another speaker at Affiliate Summit who is an “SEO guy” later in the day about the pannel – tracking really is the KEY to having companies on larger scales start to really dig into social media.  Without it, they’re going to go spend their budget on an SEO firm instead of someone who’s talking to them about Twitter & Facebook.

As I mentioned… this may not have been the best session for me.  They didn’t talk much about just HOW social media is changing affiliate marketing, so name fail.  I’m pretty versed in social media at this point, so a lot of this was the same song & dance – but I really do hope that somewhere in the room there was a newbie who learned a lot.

So, like I said… overall, I only learned of a couple of new tools for “listening to the conversation” from this and I was actually pretty surprised that they didn’t mention Trackur.com, a really great tool touted as an “online reputation management” tool – really other than the name I can’t see how it couldn’t be beneficial for listening in on the online conversation about your brand.  But I hope you learned something from the recap!

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