Unlock the potential of blogger collaboration and harness the power of collective growth! Discover the strategies, benefits, and practical tips for collaborating with fellow bloggers. Propel your blog to new heights through the art of collaboration.
IE 352: Power in Numbers: The Art of Blogger Collaboration for Amplified Success
The first thing that I want to start off with is that, I personally have seen that blogger collaboration is what has helped me over the course of 13 years of being in the online space, propel my business forward as a lifestyle blogger.
When I first started off with The Melrose Family and now even with the JennyMelrose.com, podcast, and all that goes into it, there is still a ton of blogger collaboration that goes on.
If you want to hear a food blogger’s perspective definitely go and listen to the episode with Amy Katz, where she talks about the idea of collaboration over competition, because again, it really speaks to this idea of how collaboration can benefit you.
Benefits of Blogger Collaboration
We are going to start off with the benefits of blogger collaboration because what it allows you to do is to have multiple perspectives when you collaborate with others.
You can get the perspective from them, from their business as far as the way that they see it, as well as their audience.
Now, when you’re looking for a blogger collaboration, part of the benefit can also be the idea that some bloggers may be further along in their journey and using different strategies that you might not be.
It’s not necessarily about a veteran blogger compared to a new blogger.
What it’s really about is the strategies that they have implemented into their business and have seen growth from.
So when you can actually take a look at what it is that they have done in their business and see if you can then apply it to your own, it is a huge benefit to you.
Finding Collaborative Opportunities
One of the big things that I want to talk about is finding collaborative opportunities.
When you’re looking at this, the first thing that I would recommend is to start with looking at bloggers within your niche.
Start off with people that would have the same audience, because when you are looking to grow your audience, whether that is your email list, your pageviews, or your social media engagement, you want people that have a similar audience.
You also want to find collaborative opportunities with bloggers that do not have the same audience.
One of the benefits that I had as a lifestyle blogger on The Melrose Family was that I was able to run in different circles, different niches, and see what the food bloggers were doing, what the DIYers were doing, what the parenting bloggers were doing and I could look at their different strategies and implement them for myself.
When you are looking at these, I would recommend if you are looking for the bloggers that are within your niche, try to find them in the Facebook groups and with content that might be somewhat similar but not exactly the same pain point that you were answering or the way that you set yourself up as that expert within your niche.
Then as far as finding collaborative opportunities with others outside of your niche, that’s where I would recommend finding something like a mastermind or a membership where you can see different bloggers in different niches and hear how they are benefiting and still gaining different strategies from the coach that might be running it.
There’s lots of different places like this.
Many of you are familiar with the fact that I have Influencer Entrepreneurs Insiders as my membership site where we do weekly strategy calls and a monthly group coaching call.
I also run masterminds with six women, where we actually work together and are able to grow your businesses by coming forward with hot seats so that you can ask a question and get the perspectives of those women.
So those are the two different ways that I would definitely recommend finding collaborative opportunities.
Same niche.
And not same niche.
Types of Collaboration
The types of collaboration are going to be different based upon your goals
When you are looking at the types of collaboration that you could be doing, it could be something as simple as being able to potentially be a guest writer on their site.
Maybe you are going to create content for them and they’re going to allow you to have a back link by doing so and that way it’s going to help your domain authority with that as well.
Another way that you could collaborate with them is to put together a bundle giveaway.
Maybe you’re going to host it and that would be a great way to be able to grow your email list.
You’re going to want other collaborators, bloggers to be a part of that bundle giveaway so that you can benefit from their audience as well.
Another way you could collaborate with other bloggers is a summit.
This is something that we’ve talked a lot about inside of my Insiders group.
I’ve walked you through exactly how to set up and reach out to bloggers, how to really put it all together and given you all of the pieces to make sure that it’s simple and easy with a system.
A summit allows you the opportunity, again, to grow your list, but then also to show you as the expert, as the host, as well as then potentially the ability to be able to monetize the summit with sponsors as you continue to grow an audience there.
One of the other ways that you can have collaboration is to have a mastermind type of community where you’re able to ask questions and answer them for them as well.
This is another great way to be able to collaborate with them where it doesn’t necessarily require as much work as guest posting, a giveaway, or a summit, it also will not have the same amount of impact.
Obviously, with guest posting, you’re hoping to get that back link and with your giveaway and summit, you’re also looking to grow your list.
If you are doing a mastermind or a Facebook group with someone, you are just trying to gain strategies that could potentially help you grow.
So really thinking about, what is going to be the most amount of time that you’re going to be able to put in and actually get the resources out of that program or out of the collaboration that you have created?
Approaching Other Bloggers
Now the biggest piece that a lot of questions come up about is how to go about approaching other bloggers.
How do you not step on their toes and make them feel like you’re trying to take their audience?
What if I only have a certain amount of followers and I feel like this person is much bigger than me?
One of the smartest things that I did as a lifestyle blogger when I had The Melrose Family was to reach out to other bloggers that I considered to be professional expert, and probably a year or two ahead of me in the strategies that they were implementing, as well as the way that they were setting up their businesses and monetizing.
By reaching out to them and offering up anything I could do for them.
At the time, I was trying to put together a Pinterest strategy that we could all benefit from.
This was back when group boards were really popular and also the amount of times that you pinned and where you pinned it to mattered.
I had come up with a strategy that I could see working really well.
If you had bloggers that had some that had a larger, some that might have a smaller audience, but across the board it was about the amount that you were doing it.
When I approached them, I was very straightforward.
I told them how much I appreciated all that they had done with trailblazing as far as for us to be able to be monetizing our own blogs and how I looked up to them and would love to work with them.
I have a strategy that I would love to tell them about and see if they might be a good fit.
Surprising to me, out of the eight women that I reached out to, every single one of them agreed.
In my mind, and still to this day, I still think of them as huge bloggers.
They’ve only gotten bigger so with that in mind, don’t feel like you can’t reach out to someone that you see as an expert or you see as someone that’s further along than you are.
We are all always looking for different ways that we can grow our sites, and then we can’t all always know exactly what the changes that are going to happen, whether it’s on social media, whether it involves AI.
With that in mind, being able to reach out to them with advice that they could potentially use, not only with their own strategies, but also potentially with the audience that they have.
When you can trade audiences, even when your audience is small, by potentially doing, let’s say a list swap.
A list swap is a great way for them to have a very targeted audience that is engaged.
So don’t be afraid to approach a blogger because you feel like they’re larger.
You bring a benefit to them as long as you know who your people are and what problem you solve for them.
Approaching another blogger with that is what’s important, and I promise you, if you do it from a place of trying to help them,they are going to look at it as a benefit to them.
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