A year ago when blogging about communication with affiliates at Econsultancy.com I summarized that while electronic messaging is by far the most preferred method (by affiliates), “the second avenue you want to be actively utilizing is your own company’s website” because almost 22% of affiliates [AffStat 2010 data] chose it by voting for either company site (13.8%), or affiliate program’s blog (8.1%) as their “preferred method for finding out information from an affiliate manager”.
I do not see much difference between the two options highlighted above, and allow for a possibility that some of the respondents assumed affiliate program support blog to be a part of merchant’s website (as is often the case) when voting for “company website”. So, that’s your first good reason why an affiliate program manager must blog.
Speaking of the second reason, let me illustrate it with a real-life example. Every time we take a new affiliate program management client on board, we recommend starting an affiliate program support website (if they don’t already have one), with blog being an integral part of it. Some merchants agree, others don’t. A health insurance company, that we’ve worked with some time ago, agreed. Pulling some SERP analysis reports earlier this morning, I’ve also checked on their affiliate program support blog, and guess what? While there definitely is room for improvement, they are doing pretty well (on a very competitive search term) for a website that has under 20 pages, and last blog post made a year ago:
So there you have it… Two good reasons to maintain an affiliate program support blog:
- Affiliates prefer that you do
- There is huge SEO benefit in it
If you have anything to add, I would, of course, be grateful for your input (which you may submit through the “Comments” area below).
This is great! Perfect timing. I literally made my first post on the GovernmentAuctions.org affiliate blog yesterday!
Glad to be of help, Olga. Good luck with your new affiliate blog!