A great way to get started as an affiliate is by creating content on social media! Social media has so much untapped potential and is an amazing way to grow your reach.
I’m Keely, the social media manager here at ClickBank; I create and post a lot of the short-form video content for the ClickBank brand. I also do my own affiliate marketing through my personal social media channels with video content!
Social media channels are the wild west of content creation, with fast-moving trends, new types of content to create, and nearly unlimited ability to reach people in all corners of the world. That’s why social media content creation is so great as an affiliate!
Join more than 117,000 affiliate marketers!
Get expert affiliate marketing insights delivered right to your inbox. Plus, subscribe now for a step-by-step guide to getting started on ClickBank!
One of the best types of content, with the greatest capacity for reach, is the short-form video. Creating videos for social media can feel daunting and like a lot of work. However, there are many very simple, easy, and fun ways to make video content on social media that allow you to reach your niche’s audience in a new way!
Let’s chat about how to make reels and shorts for affiliate marketing! (Below is a short video breakdown you can check out on our Instagram!)
How Short-Form Videos Work
Short-form videos on platforms like TikTok and Instagram work differently than YouTube. These are bite-sized bits of information that people engage with – and these videos quickly tell the story or get your message across. With short-form videos, you have to be able to easily condense information to be delivered in under 3 minutes on TikTok and under 1:30 on Instagram, and make that content easy to consume!
In a world where people can easily scroll past, making your videos engaging and worth watching to your viewers can be a challenge. That challenge can be bypassed with videos that capture attention and tell a great story!
NOTE: If you want to get started with TikTok, we have a TikTok affiliate marketing guide for you!
Or if you want to get started with Instagram, check out our Instagram affiliate marketing guide.
How to Set Up Your Instagram and TikTok Accounts
If you’re here, you’ve probably already created your TikTok and Instagram accounts. But if you haven’t, let’s do a quick outline of how to create your Instagram and TikTok channels for affiliate marketing!
For Instagram, you can head to Instagram.com or download the app on your phone. Click the “Sign-Up” button, input your email, create a password for yourself, and come up with a unique username. You want your username to be applicable to your niche and to you – something that is unique to you and your interests is great!
For example, if I’m within the health niche, and I wanted to reach an audience that is interested in supplements for their health, I might pick a username like “HealthWithKeely” or “StayWellKeely”. You can use an Instagram name generator like this one to find a username that fits to you and your niche. Once you’ve done that, add a great biography that embodies yourself and your niche so when people come to your page, they know what to expect.
For TikTok, you can head to TikTok.com or download the app on your phone. Click the “Sign-Up” button, input your email or phone number, create a password for yourself, and come up with a unique username. If you’ve already set-up your Instagram account, you can try to use the same username, if it’s available! Add your biography, and you’re ready to start making content!
Once you’ve created your Instagram and TikTok pages, make sure to create a link-in-bio to add to the links section of your profile. Here’s an example from ClickBank’s Instagram:
Your link-in-bio should include the tracking link to one or more affiliate products you’re promoting, which will get more free traffic over to the vendor’s sale page and generate more sales. Your link-in-bio almost acts as a sort of online store to host your products. Use your tracking links throughout your content!
5 Tips on How to Make Reels for Affiliate Marketing
Now that your accounts are set up, it’s time to follow 5 simple steps to find success with shorts and reels for affiliate marketing. You’ve got this!
1) Research Your Niche
The first thing you need to do is start researching your niche. If you’re unsure what your niche is or how to find one, check out this reel on finding your niche for affiliate marketing.
Once you’ve got that sorted, it’s time to start researching what other people in your niche are doing. It’s always super helpful to know what message they are giving to their audience and how you can speak to that audience in a different way. At the beginning of your content creation journey, research is everything!
Let’s take our above example of being in the health niche. I would start by finding other content creators that post within that niche, whether that’s with multivitamins, supplements, or exercise, and take stock of what those content creators are doing. How do they speak to their audience? What kind of content do they post that performs well or receives a lot of engagement? How often do they post? Write down lots of notes and top takeaways during your initial research.
Next, take some time to find an influencer or two within your niche. They are great examples of how they’re targeting their content and what kind of products, links, podcasts, news, and other types of media your audience enjoys.
Once you’ve looked into other content creators in your niche, it’s time to figure out WHO your audience is. With this example, my audience is probably going to be women from ages 20-35 who are into exercise, fitness, and nutrition.
They watch reels that have to do with exercise and taking care of their body, they repost inspirational quotes, and they engage with other fitness people and influencers. Therefore, I’m going to want to implement a lot of exercise, fitness, nutrition, and inspirational posts into the type of content I’m creating.
Next, you’re going to want to do plenty of research on the products within your niche that you want to sell as an affiliate. How would it benefit your audience and why would they want to indulge in your products? If I’m selling multi-vitamins to my audience, what benefits do those multi-vitamins provide to their daily goals and lifestyle – or how would these multi-vitamins alleviate their biggest pain points?
Once you’ve gathered all the research you can, from competitor research to consumer analysis, it’s time to begin implementing all of your research into a content creation plan that works for you and your niche!
2) Create Your Content
Okay, it’s time to start creating your content for making TikToks and reels for affiliate marketing!
First, you’re gonna want to decide how often you want to post. Some things to consider are your niche, your audience, and what messages you want to put out into the world. You can use all your research to make the most educated decision on this. It’s super helpful to put together a content calendar to help you stay on track with your posting schedule.
Your content calendar should include dates for when you want your reels and TikTok videos to go out, what the copy will be, what kind of post it is, and if you have a call-to-action on the post and what that call-to-action is. Using a content calendar as an affiliate marketer is one of the easiest ways to create reels and stay on top of your content creation.
You don’t want to worry about boosting your sales YET. That should be your overall goal, of course; but your main goal at first is simply to grow your audience to find the people who are interested in your product.
In fact, one of ClickBank’s most successful social media affiliates is TikTok star Brett Boles – he built up his audience for 2.5 years before he started monetizing it with affiliate products on ClickBank. You probably won’t need to wait THAT long, but it’s a good reminder of how important content quality is in growing your audience and building a trustworthy relationship with them!
I highly recommend using a content calendar as a driver to create your content. You can find templates online or even create your own using Microsoft Excel or Google Spreadsheets. Here is an example of one I created in Google:
You can start making Instagram content by recording yourself doing generic things. Even just taking a walk, making lunch, or getting ready for the day, you should start creating content that applies to your niche. Take long videos, short videos, and even videos you can replay on a loop.
It may feel awkward at first, but recording yourself in your day-to-day is the key to building momentum with content creation! In this health example, a lot of the content I’d be creating is about working out, eating, exercising, or finding ways to inspire my audience.
Talk to the camera, share information about your niche, record yourself using products you’d like to promote, and more! Creating your content is all about getting into the mindset of the person who might purchase your products and finding ways to connect with them!
Additionally, try to create a backlog of content to use. Taking videos of your day-to-day and small, looping videos is a great default when you’ve run out of content for the week but still want to post. Creating a backlog of content to use when you’re running low is SUPER helpful!
In addition to posting the videos you’ve created yourself on reels and shorts, you should repost your videos on your stories to gain more views and traction. You can even link to your products from your stories to help promote your affiliate products.
Example: Here is a great example of a content creator who shared some of her best tips on creating content online!
3) Post Your Videos
At this point, you’ve already decided who you’re talking to, how often you’re posting, and what kind of content you’re creating. From here, you should start posting your videos using trending sounds and text to find your audience and deliver the right message! Play around with the captions, hashtags, and tagging locations until you find the messaging combination that sticks.
A great tool for getting started is to find and save trending sounds and videos. The more you use sounds or create videos that are similar to those that are currently trending, the more you’re able to reach a larger audience!
Some of this information can be established during your research phase, but since trends move so quickly, it’s easier to follow along and post as they come up. That way, you’re staying on top of the trends on the internet which can help bring you more consumers and expand your audience reach.
Since we’re talking about how to make reels for affiliate marketing, it would be an amazing idea to engage with and collaborate with fellow affiliates! You can do this through duets and stitches, which is a great tool to reach more people and even connect with like-minded creators! This will help you connect more with other people’s audiences who may not have otherwise been exposed to your content!
The more you post on social media, the more your followers will grow! Be consistent with your posting and build your community up! It won’t happen overnight, but when you take the steps to post consistently, follow trends, and utilize data to continue to evolve your content, posting schedule, and types of content, you’ll see your success really start to snowball!
Don’t be afraid to experiment here. Social media is sort of like the wild west for content creation and the more you’re willing to try new trends, the more you’re likely to reach your audience. It can feel like a challenge at first, with so much saturation in the content creation world, but keep your head up and keep going strong to build up your followers!
Example: Here is a great example of posting content that is trending and engages with other people within their niche!
4) Engage With Your Community + Build Your Audience
Once you begin posting, make sure to engage with your community! Comment on other people’s videos, have conversations, and reply to comments on your content as well!
This step is one of the most important parts of building out your brand and keeping your content alive and trending. As an affiliate creating content for your business, you have to be able to maintain your image. The more you can keep your brand image up with comments on other people’s posts, re-posting other people’s content, and engaging with the people that comment, like, and follow YOUR content, the more you can build your business as a brand!
Not to mention, when platforms like Instagram and TikTok look at content creators, they’re looking not only at the kind of content you’re creating, but also at the way you interact within the platform. The more you engage with other pages, influencers, and brands, the more the social media platforms will boost your content within other people’s algorithms. They want to see creators who are active on the platform, not just people who post their content and immediately leave!
As an affiliate on the internet, a great way to earn trust and build your business is to continue to engage with your people. Don’t be shy! Chat with people in the comments of your videos. Have fun and enjoy yourself! The more authentic the connection, the better!
5) Monetize With Affiliate Products on Instagram and TikTok
NOW, it’s finally time to start monetizing and making an income with your affiliate products!
By this point, you’ve taken the time to build up your brand as an affiliate, develop your voice as a business, and get ready to start making sales on the product or products you’re promoting. You’ve created your link or links to add to your link-in-bio, with a link to your product that works with your niche.
The next step is easy. Once you’ve taken the time to do your research, create your videos, post on your Instagram and TikTok channels, and engage with your audience, you’re ready to begin making income as an affiliate.
How do you do this? Easy: get your audience to be interested in and purchase your affiliate product. You’ve already established your base audience and now it’s time to begin selling to them and make sales.
The good news is, it’s easy to find products right on ClickBank’s marketplace. If you don’t have an account yet, click here to sign up for free!
If you’d like to understand more about how affiliate marketing works, you can check out this reel on Instagram where we break it all down!
And of course, if you want to understand the business of affiliate marketing and how to monetize your social media presence with the affiliate product(s) you’re promoting, check out our blog on the best ClickBank link strategies.
Example: Here is an amazing example of someone who uses great calls to action (CTAs) to make sales as an affiliate.
Frequently Asked Questions
Where Do I Make My Videos?
You can create your videos straight in the Instagram or TikTok apps on your phone. Both are super easy and intuitive to use and make creating videos a breeze! You can add text, music, and even transition effects! Don’t overcomplicate things – just get started and have fun!
Can I Create a Podcast as Content?
Yes! If your podcast content can be snipped into short and easily shareable clips, anything can work for reels, shorts, or TikToks.
Can I Make Faceless Video Content?
Yes! You can learn more about how to make faceless video content in our blog post all about it!
Create Affiliate Marketing Reels Wrap-Up
Lastly, have FUN! The more you have fun, the more people will enjoy your content!
It may feel like a chore to get started, but the more you enjoy yourself throughout the process – from research to creating, to engaging – the more that energy will come through in every part of the process! Your audience will feel your joy through your content, and you’ll enjoy making your videos!
Now it’s time to get out there, make reels for affiliate marketing, create content, and build your brand as an affiliate! Good luck, and be sure to tag us when you start making content!