We’ve just come down the home stretch of the London Affiliate Conference and for some, its been one solid week of conferences and parties between ICE Totally Gaming, London Baby Party, Fire and Ice, AND the iGB Affiliate Awards. And what a week its been.
The second day of the LAC is a bitter sweet experience for most, its a fun time on the expo floor, yet we’re all approaching the burn out stage and craving the couch and a movie.
Thankfully there was a lot of activity today to stimulate the senses, including…the trusty Paddy Power Guinness bar, a boxing ring at Coral, guys dressed as monkeys, sexy ladies and an open bar after 3pm.
Throughout the day old friends and business partners chatted in the expo hall, yet the noobies also had a valuable experience on the floor. Jim Dee of GSN Games was an LAC virgin and spoke at the event as well, a man who was very pleased with the affiliates he was able to meet and educate on his unique product.
The theme of SEO continued during the second day of the LAC, with another full day of sessions dedicated to the subject and all moderated by SEO legend Dave Naylor.
In today’s link building session Danny Ashton of Neo Mammalian Studios pointed out that affiliates are at an advantage when it comes to building a brand. Affiliates are smaller, they can make quick decisions, they can quickly test things- who are their FB users, who are their likes, who are their customers that come through- these are all pieces of data affiliates can easily gather.
“Some of my biggest clients are affiliates”, he said.
A quick tip from Ashton revealed in the session was if you’re creating infographics, a quick way to test the content is to post it on reddit- this way you’ll get honest feedback from anonymous people and you can make the necessary changes before releasing the infographic to the world.
Another point covered in the session is that affiliates need to start spending more time on creating quality content targeted to a specific persona, about 80% of their time, and save the remaining 20% for relationship building with journalists, other blogs and PR people. “Keep your relationships to a minimum”, Ashton said. If your content is not getting picked up, you know that you need to change it- simple as that.
Naylor agreed that 80% of an affiliate’s time should be dedicated to identifying a persona and creating quality content to suit that persona. He suggested that affiliates attend a PR conference, spend time with some PR experts- see what makes these people tick. For example, telling a story of how you got kicked out of five online casinos is interesting and journalists will likely cover a story like that.
A nugget from Naylor emerged during the sessions, something that he claims will be the best advice you’ll hear at the whole conference: don’t rely on someone else to build the relationships- keep direct relationships with the journos, he said.
Also, check out LAC 2014: Opening Party Highlights Video, LAC 2014: Day One Recap, LAC 2014: Closing Party Highlights Video, and iGB Affiliate Awards 2014 Highlights Video.
