How to Choose a Merchant to Promote

Affiliate marketing is great, but you have to be careful when it comes to choosing which merchants you’re going to promote. There are definitely good and bad merchants out there. I don’t mean to scare you, but people have been burned by not investigating a particular merchant thoroughly enough before promotion.

And, even if a merchant is good and does pay well and on time, there may be other, even better merchants out there for you. Some merchants convert better than others. Some merchants pay faster than others. Some merchants pay more than others. You have to investigate and weigh your options, and it doesn’t always come down to who pays more than others.

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Map Out Your Instagram Brand & Posts in a Weekend!

In today’s online marketing world, being on social media is vital. Clients are on it, even the competition has utilized it. And right now, Instagram is one of the hottest and most utilized platform out there.

So if your business isn’t taking advantage of this free marketing method, you’re really missing out!

But we get that social media can feel overwhelming, especially getting started on a new platform. There’s so much to set up! Luckily, it doesn’t have to be difficult. With this planner, you can quickly and easily map out your Instagram brand and first posts … in as little as one weekend!

The Step-by-Step Planner Covers:

  • Step 1: Sync Up Your Inst Presence With Your Main Brand
    Social media can be loads of fun but if you’re using any of the platforms as part of your business marketing, consistent messaging across all platforms is vitally important.

    • Exercise: Plan your branding board here, then create your board in Canva.
    • Exercise: Using your new branding board and the checklist below, look at all your social profiles plus your website and make all the profiles consistent.
  • Step 2: Dream Big When You Set Your Instagram Goals!
    A common problem among adults these days is their inability to dream big. A limited growth mindset seems to be prevalent, where we feel like we can only go so far in life, like we’ll hit a ceiling and can’t go any further.

    • Exercise: Find Instagram inspiration by searching for influencers you want to follow. Take notice of their message, their consistency, and their number of followers.
    • Exercise: Plan your Instagram strategy by answering these questions.
  • Step 3: Peep on the Competition to Spark New Ideas
    Your business doesn’t survive in a vacuum; you’ve got competition in your market and you need to constantly improve your products, services, courses, etc. so your followers stay with YOU and don’t deflect to another coach offering similar products.

    • Exercise: Check out what the competition is doing and take notes.
  • Step 4: Plan For IGTV Videos That Dazzle
    IGTV stands for Instagram TV and you can compare this feature to YouTube. Anyone with an Insta account can post a pre-recorded video to IGTV and then promote it to get more views.

    • Exercise: Create an editorial calendar for your IGTV videos. Decide how many IGTV posts you can reasonably create each month.
  • Step 5: Get on Board With Instagram Carousel Posts
    In order to engage with Instagram users you need to catch their attention. So, your posts need to be eye-catching and your videos needs to be passionate.

    • Exercise: Plan our your first carousel post. Rinse and repeat for others throughout the month.
  • Step 6: Get Personal With Instagram Stories
    In addition to posting your business photos in Insta, you also have the option of posting to your Insta Story. While it may seem like a duplication of efforts, both publishing options have their own benefits.

    • Exercise: Create a plan or strategy for using Instagram Stories.
  • Step 7: Connect Authentically With Your Tribe Using Instagram Live
    It’s no surprise that after Facebook purchased Instagram, some of the most popular features of each platform showed up on the sister site. Facebook integrated Stories while Insta started offering Live video streaming.

    • Exercise: Create a plan or strategy for using Instagram Live.
  • Step 8: Craft Captions That Thrill for Insta Microblog Posts
    Did you realize that Instagram allows you to use up to 2200 characters per caption? That’s quite a bit of social media real estate that you should always use to your advantage. In addition to your photo or video, you have the opportunity to create a microblog with each posts to reinforce your message even more.

    • Exercise: Plan microblogging posts for the month.
  • Step 9: Hone Your One-Month Plan to Master Instagram
    I know you already know what I’m about to say, but it bears repeating: Growing a substantial Instagram following takes time! Don’t expect to take off like wildfire with your numbers exploding after you post your first photo or Story.

    • Exercise: Map out each of your posts, stories, lives, IGTV, microblogging, and carousels in one place so you can create themes or cross promote via each of the formats.
    • Exercise: Create your master editorial calendar for all the Instagram formats you plan to use. Update the calendar each month.

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Figuring Out What You Bring to the Table in a Joint Venture Relationship

There are lots of different people you want to work with in business. You’re sure that you could grow your business by leaps and bounds if you could leverage the assets of those who are already successful in your niche. And you’re right—there’s simply no faster way to grow your business.

Those you could joint venture with have their own customer lists and reputation. If you can get a prime spot in front of that audience, you can instantly improve your own lists, customer numbers, and reputation.

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Instant Payment or Long Term?

There are so many different things you can promote as an affiliate. It’s exciting and freeing, really.

You’re always looking for ways to maximize your earnings. You want to make sure you’re promoting high quality products that your customers will really love. But, beyond that, you want to earn as much as you can, with as little effort as you can.

One of the questions you have to ask yourself is whether you prefer to have an instant payment as an affiliate or if you are okay with promotions that don’t pay you instantly.

There are pluses and drawbacks to either method.

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