Carrying over the initial discussion post in the Affiliate Training Center, I wanted to continue on and explain some of the aspects and benefits of using Social Media with CPA Marketing.

The main reason I use them is to get around the Facebook Ad Approvals ( or disapprovals to be honest). I really dont know what is going on there but when I really think about it, they must have hired some of the most inexperienced people to ever work in advertising. Aside from the fact that they are trying to protect their userbase (yea, I get that) I think they do it on purpose. If they wanted to really protect their users then they would not allow so many spamholes to be flowing throughout their network.

Anyway…

Facebook nukes ads. They do it with a passion. One way to get around this is to realize that not all Advertisers are created equal. I’ve seen Adbrite ads, Microsoft ads and of course Social Media ads flowing thru Facebook with some of the crappiest and sometimes “dirtiest” ads I have seen. How do they get away with it? Big and reputable companies such as these do not get the same restrictions just because of the amount of dollars they put into Facebook. Use this to your advantage and make it easier on yourself.

Of course we dont want to give up on Facebook completely so if your a die-hard Facebook advertiser then using Social Media will only help increase the exposure you have already created for yourself. Here are a few tips to use when using Social Media as an advertising source. Keep in mind that they do serve ads to Facebook, Bebo, Myspace and Hi5 currently. You can also geo-target by country.

You can literally get a ton of traffic fast. You can burn dollars FAST. Use some of these tips to help maximize your returns and you should be able to make some easy money.

1. Single most important thing - Tell people what to do in your ads. Let’s face it. Your ads are going to show up in some really shitty places. One example is that on Facebook App pages your ad is located above the application. A lot of times people mistake the button and think they are installing the application when they are really clicking on your ad! How pissed would this make you? Tell people EXACTLY what you want them to do in the ad.

2. Your call to action on the button - On the last line of creating a Social Media campaign you have the call to action which actually resembles a button. People mistake this for installations of the applications and tend to click on it and only end up with an advertisement they were not planning on. This is wasted dollars. Instead of saying “click here” “continue now” or something lame like that, put something such as “Enter Email Now”, “Enter Zipcode Now” or even “Get Free Trial”. This little tip alone will save you a bunch of potential wasted ad dollars.

3. Know the demographics of the sites your going to advertise on. Jeez, this should have been first probably but if your not mining data and demographics on potential sites you want ads on then you dont belong in advertising in the first place. Use sites such as Quantcast, Compete or even Alexa and start gathering as much data as you can on percentages of sexes, ages and whatever else you can come up with. Although, you cannot choose what Apps to advertise on at least you are armed with some information to tell you a lot about the demographics of the people visiting these sites.

For more information on using Social Media, feel free to join the ongoing discussion.