Engagement tips for TikTok affiliates
Two things have grown in leaps and bounds over the past couple years: the social video-sharing app, TikTok, and affiliate marketing. Another area experiencing major growth? Nurse entrepreneurs! If you find yourself noticing this timely intersection as well, but aren’t sure how to increase engagement on Tiktok as part of your marketing strategy, then this is the guide for you!
Let’s explore affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing is a simple concept: you recommend products, services, or organizations and earn commissions on any sales generated as a result. You’ve probably seen tons of blog posts and articles lately that contain affiliate marketing links; they all contain a disclaimer that says something along the lines of this: I really like these products, but you should know I’m also getting a small commission from any sales generated by this post.
For affiliate marketing posts made on social sites—like Instagram for example—there will be a #ad or similar designation alerting you to its transactional nature as well. Transparency is important (and legally enforced!) when it comes to this type of marketing, and TikTok is no different.
While commission rates may be low, (on average, 15%), affiliate marketing has the potential to be extremely lucrative as a form passive income. This makes it appealing as a side job for nurses who may already be working in a more traditional role full-time. For it to work well, however, you need a large audience who stay engaged with your content.
Let’s examine why TikTok makes such a good fit for this purpose and exactly how to keep your viewers’ attention for the long haul.
The intimacy of TikTok
TikTok provides several appealing elements when it comes to using it as a forum for affiliate marketing. It has a large user base — 80 million+ in 2021 — and its format encourages video-sharing between those users. It also features videos that are short in length; compared to YouTube, for example, this allows you to capitalize on your viewers’ short attention span for relatively little effort (i.e., no fancy recording video or editing equipment needed).
But the real magic of TikTok lies in the power of its intimacy. Users are often close to the camera, which alone conveys a conspiratorial mood. As an authority in your field—nursing—you have the ability to convey “insider info” in a way that people will trust. Video allows for better visualization of product recommendations, and your genuine emotional reaction to them—something that isn’t as easily conveyed with the written word—is what will captivate people’s interest…and hopefully their clicks.
Proven engagement strategies
Nurse Rich promotes his affiliate link in his linktree, easily accessible to anyone who come across his profile as well as to his existing followers.
To get the most out of TikTok as an affiliate marketer, it’s best to go with a strategic approach. Anyone can learn how to work these tips into their videos, it just takes a little practice!
Know your audience
TikTok is the land of the young, that’s the first thing you should know. In general, younger folks have fixed budgets, short attention spans, and good BS detectors. Consider products that would benefit the lives of students, or young professionals. As you build your channel, learn about your followers. TikTok provides helpful metrics to see who’s engaging with your content in meaningful ways. Be prepared to be flexible in what you offer based upon what your audience is responding to—it may be different from what you predicted!
Be authentic (be, be authentic)
If you set out to make a sales video, that is all it’s ever going to be. And people—in general—do not like being sold to. What they do like is being in on it. In on trends they want to learn more about, in on speciality products they may not have heard of, and in on what other nurses—specifically YOU—are using. Use this tidbit of human psychology to your advantage organically by only promoting products, services, and organizations that you genuinely like. What’s more, you’ll want to include these items in your videos in the most natural way possible.
For example, let’s say you’re promoting an insulated mug that you think night shifters would love because of how long it keeps your coffee warm. In this case, you could create a video of you heading into work, mug in hand, talking about what kind of coffee you love. Your viewers are interested in these personal details, but they’re bound to be curious about the mug, too. In other words, the mug is secondary, but noteworthy. The hope here is that your viewers will be keen to pick one up for themselves, without explicitly being told to. (This is a foundational principle of attraction marketing, which you can learn more about here.)
Love the playa, love the game
Once you have your audience in your pocket, and an idea of the products you’d like to promote, it’s time to switch gears. Now is the time to get into research/workhorse mode. Since affiliate marketing success comes down to being a numbers game, you want to be constantly building your channel. Plan to dedicate time to studying trends, viral content, and popular hashtags.
One of the best ways to build engagement with your followers is to ‘go live’—TikTok allows users to do this once you hit 1,000 followers. During your lives, your goal is to interact with your viewers as quickly and consistently as possible. Here you are laying the groundwork for your future promotional content. Just like in nursing, the better rapport you build with your viewers, the more likely they will be to trust in your product recommendations down the road. As your impressions build, so will your sale conversions.
Prudent paid promotions pay off
Can you say that 5 times fast? It’s meant to give you pause, because that’s exactly the right amount of restraint you’ll want to exercise when it comes to using paid video promotions. TikTok does offer several paid options for increasing your impressions, but this platform is known as one of the costliest social spaces to advertise in. When ads are purchased sparingly and effectively, you’ll be guaranteed a bump in video impressions, but be careful not to go overboard spending money to make money.
We hope these tips improve your reach on TikTok and help you to see the value in engagement as an affiliate marketer!