When it comes to affiliate marketing, the most common places people promote affiliate links are through blogging and YouTube videos. If you’re someone who may be thinking about alternate places to post your affiliate links, you may be wondering if you could promote affiliate links on LinkedIn or not. So what’s the answer to this question?
If you are using the blog post feature of LinkedIn it’s totally acceptable to use affiliate links.However, using affiliate links in places like your bio or in LinkedIn groups is against their terms of service. Be careful not to spam affiliate links in your content to, as LinkedIn doesn’t like this behavior and may remove your post or ban your account.
Below we will get into the strategies you could use in order to promote affiliate marketing on LinkedIn without breaking any of the platform’s rules.
Why Is Using LinkedIn For Affiliate Marketing So Powerful?
The reason why using LinkedIn for affiliate marketing is so powerful is because Google deems LinkedIn as a reputable source. Therefor, if you’re going by the rules of LinkedIn and posting good content, there’s a high chance your post could be seen by a lot of people.
There’s also a search engine within LinkedIn as well. So if people happen to search the topic that you wrote about, there’s a chance that the post you wrote may come up within that search.
Last but not least, it’s also a platform where many people share their career and business related content, so it’s a great place to network with professionals who may be interested in the products or services you are promoting as an affiliate.
What Are The Best Strategies When It Comes To Affiliate Marketing On LinkedIn?
Posting Full Blog Posts
The blog post function on LinkedIn is great because it lets you take advantage of Google without creating a full blown website. Creating a website involves buying a domain name, finding a hosting service, and designing the website itself.
All you have to do on LinkedIn is have a profile and you are able to post whatever you want.
What Are The Downsides Of Posting Full Blog Posts On LinkedIn?
The biggest downside to posting full blog posts on LinkedIn is that it takes away another income stream for you. When you have your own blog, you’re able to pair affiliate marketing with display ads, which can earn you more income. However, with LinkedIn, they do not allow display ads on your blog posts and therefore limits your earning potential.
The second downside, is that since LinkedIn is not your own platform. When you run a website for yourself, you can grow it over time and bring in more traffic. But with LinkedIn, you are at the mercy of their algorithm and therefore can’t control how much traction your posts will get.
Utilizing LinkedIn Groups For Affiliate Marketing
We mentioned above that you can’t post affiliate links within LinkedIn groups. This is looked at as spammy, disruptive behavior and therefore shouldn’t be done.
However, you could use LinkedIn groups to post a landing page or a blog post that does contain your affiliate links.
It’s a little bit harder to get people to your links this way, but if you provide value within the group, you will encourage people to click on the links you share.
Using The Post Update Section To Push Blog Posts With Affiliate Links
So there’s a difference between writing a blog post on LinkedIn and just posting an update.
When you post an update, it’s a much shorter version. If you have a lot of connections in your industry and want to utilize LinkedIn for affiliate marketing, it’s a good idea to post updates summarizing the content of the blog post and then putting a link to the full blog post so people could click through and see the full content.
Why is this a good idea?
As stated above, this is a good idea because if you have display ads on your site, the traffic coming to your post won’t only be monetizable through affiliate links, but they will also be monetizable through display ads.
What’s The Biggest Challenge When It Comes To Affiliate Marketing On LinkedIn?
The biggest challenge is growing a following. You need to post content on LinkedIn day in and day out in order to get more connections and followers in your industry who will actually see the content you are sharing.
This includes video and visual content that will draw the attention of your target audience, as well as going into different groups and showing that you’re an expert in your field.
Don’t just post two times and then give up, LinkedIn takes some time to build momentum and get where you want to be.
Last but not least, you need to take the time to post valuable content. Valuable content to me is content that allows people to think deeper and want to learn more about the topic.
What Are The Best Kinds Of Blog Posts To Post On LinkedIn?
You wan to approach it the same way you would if you were looking to get blog traffic on a brand new website. You want to try and find topics that you could easily rank for on Google so that you can drive organic traffic to your post.
There are many strategies you could use to find these keywords. The first one is by using AHREFS or SEMRUSH. You could filter for keywords with low competition and high search volume to find ones that would be easier for you to rank for.
You could also tools like keyword chef, that give you questions that are not really answered in depth. They find these keywords by finding forum posts that are ranking #1 on Google, as people usually ask questions in forums that are not being answered in depth elsewhere on the internet.
Just because you’re blogging on LinkedIn doesn’t mean you should treat it any differently than trying to rank on your own website.
Conclusion
LinkedIn could be a great place to do full on affiliate marketing, or it could be a place where you could just drive traffic to your own website. Either way it’s an affective tool to use. The key is to try different things, and through process and error you will get your strategy down pat.
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