Content collaboration is all about efforts that two or more businesses make to work together and create and assimilate communication. Often, such collaboration happens for a single piece of content, a large project, or a series of campaigns. Small businesses that need visibility can leverage such collaboration efforts to scale up.
Small businesses can use various content collaboration ideas for different purposes — creating awareness, nurturing leads, improving sales, and sampling new audiences. This blog will quickly hover through some key content collaboration ideas driving growth.
First, let’s explore whom to connect with for a successful collaboration.
Starting your collaboration journey
Start with choosing the right partner to maximize your prospects for collaboration. Look for reputable businesses that have successfully promoted themselves and share the same business values as yours.
If needed, search for businesses that complement your offerings. For instance, collaborate with businesses selling fashion accessories if you are into beauty essentials. Or partnering with a nearby coffee shop in case you run a homewares and lifestyle store.
Social media takeovers
Social media is essential if your intended customers are actively using those platforms. Content collaboration over social media often includes account takeovers. It will have partner businesses posting on behalf of each other with the intent to attract more eyeballs.
Here, the third party will create and manage the content for your account and post it as per the planned schedule. You can also choose more than one business or influencer to have exclusive posting privileges on your profile instead of curating information others upload.
Blogging
Creating weblogs is another activity that offers the opportunity to collaborate. Bloggers can leverage the WordPress collaboration plugin to chip in their content and collaborate in real time. This way, you can have multiple experts working on the same content to add value.
Collaborative blogging also takes the form of a guest post that requires posting content on another blog in exchange for a backlink to your own. It’s a great method for crafting content to expand your audience. Moreover, you’ll soon be seen as an authority in your field by creating top-notch blogs since guest posting also builds thought leadership.
Another benefit of guest posting is that it opens collaboration opportunities for your partners. This means you invite others to guest post on your site and get free content to put up regularly.
Newsletters and Guides
Content collaboration can also turn out to be a content marketing initiative. Start with sharing newsletters and product guides across your audiences to spread awareness. Here, your newsletter audience will be exposed to new products and services while you curate your collaboration partner’s audience.
Again, completing content on schedule requires significant cooperation among the partners involved. Right from using collaborative editing solutions for faster turnaround to newsletter plugins, or email list-building themes if using WordPress.
Podcast guest spots
The skyrocketing growth of the podcast industry is a testament to its success. The number of hours spent listening to podcasts is expected to increase from 12 billion in 2019 to 15 billion in 2021. The proportion of Americans aged 12 and above who regularly listen to podcasts rose from 57% to 62% between 2021 and 2022.
Therefore, explore collaboration outside. Find podcasters with a modest but expanding listener base and offer to guest on each other’s shows.
There will always be other podcasts to work with, no matter how specific or obscure the topic of your podcast may be. The trick is to find a way to connect with other podcasters and demonstrate the value of teamwork.
Conclusion
If you’re a small firm trying to expand, forming partnerships with other organizations can be a smart marketing move. It’s a quick way to broaden your influence and attract additional consumers, and it might teach you something useful while boosting your reputation.
Content collaboration involves many moving pieces, from people you work with to business offerings in the market. Adding collaborators can become overwhelming, but planning can help.
You can follow some of the content collaboration methods shared above to get started. Ensure smooth sailing through the different ways by using the right collaboration tools.