Social media and affiliates, a match made in heaven?

Social media is the darling of our customers. People spend countless hours with one eye on Twitter, upload their lives to Facebook in real time and fiercely compete to expand their LinkedIn networks. eBusinesses know this, fighting for attention as consumers spend their time socialising online. Yet for all the attention and all the investment, most of us can’t really account for the benefit that active participation on social media is bringing to our bottom line.
We know it works, but we can’t see it working. However, there is an opportunity to make at least some business sense from our investment on social media: affiliate marketing.
Like any other form of conversation, social media is peppered with references to commercial entities. Products, services and brands are routinely mentioned in a social context. Indeed it is those mentions that we as eMarketers crave. So, is it so bad to turn those mentions into a measurable revenue stream by offering cash to the people building those links?
I guess it depends who you ask, how you do it and what you call social media. Flogging your wares out of context is a big no. Faking independence is also out of the question. But being upfront and transparent about commercial relationships has been tried successfully by heavily-trafficked, highly popular sites. After all, if you genuinely think a product is good enough to write about, what’s wrong with being rewarded for the trouble? People have been doing this with amazon books for years with no apparent backlash. Why should the mainstream adoption of this model be any different?
I’ve been around long enough to remember the first online ads. A similar rebellious undercurrent could be felt at the time: fear the commercialisation of the net and the end of free online will!
In the end, and not without mistakes and the odd horror story -some of them still being perpetrated today- the introduction of advertising online have given us countless high-quality free services that we enjoy today without question.
The Internet would be a much less useful resource should doomsayers had triumphed. Likewise, social spaces will flourish only if they pay for themselves. Social media and affiliate marketing. A match made in heaven.