You might have read about this somewhere else but let me explain for the benefit of anyone who is unsure of what social media marketing collaboration is. Collaboration or otherwise known as collaborative partnerships, are agreements and actions made by consenting organisations to share resources to accomplish mutual business goals.
In order for collaboration to happen effectively, organisations in a social media collaborative partnership must share common business goals and rely on the participation of at least two parties who agree to share resources which include knowledge, people and finances. The essence of collaboration is a win-win situation where all parties involved benefit from mutually working together.
As the saying goes, teamwork makes the dream work. Collaboration is also about teamwork and if you are fairly new to this, don’t worry.
Here are 4 keys to help you succeed in social media marketing collaboration:
1. Find the right brand to collaborate with
The goal is to expand your reach and acquire new potential customers but in order to do that, you need to find and partner with a brand that will not only help you to achieve your goal but most importantly, care about your products or services too.
It is not just about working with the big boys or established brands, no doubt numbers are important but so is quality. Eg. If you own a salad company, you may want to partner with a gym because many people are health conscious nowadays and hence the collaboration between a salad company and gym makes sense because the concept of a healthy lifestyle is being advocated.
This social media marketing collaboration will expose your business to new people who will by default, be interested in your brand because diet and exercise go hand in hand together to create a healthy lifestyle.
Something to note is that you should look for brands who are already active on social media because when you do a collaboration, it is about sharing resources and responsibilities together to achieve mutual business goals. If they are not active, most probably it is safe to assume that you would not benefit much from collaborating with them.
2. Set clear goals, expectations and deadlines
It is good to have collaborations but collaborations without measurable metrics equals to having none at all. There must be clear goals, expectations and deadlines. Eg. If your goal is to grow your email list, then you should focus on email marketing so you can use a contest or giveaway to achieve this.
The more people there are working on the social media campaigns or projects, the easier it is for things to slip through the cracks. Accountability is of utmost importance and crystal clear deadlines should be set on deliverables as well as individual roles from participating companies.
Don’t just assume that the other party knows what to do and in order to prevent the collaboration from backfiring, craft a clear concise strategy and description on roles, responsibilities and deadlines so everyone knows what is expected and will work together to achieve the same goals.
3. Social media style guide
Once the business goals, roles and deadlines are outlined, you can further refine the processes by writing a social media style guide. This will cover the look, feel, voice, tone and language so it will be consistent among team members.
That means whenever a graphic or document is produced, there must be uniformity in the fonts, colours, logos, formats and product names etc. You could also consider having an adapted style to showcase the two brands working together.
This social media style guide must be available to everyone involved in the collaboration so you can spend some time to plan and do the writing up. Once it is completed, you can upload into a common folder where everyone can refer to the guide any time.
4. Work with influencers
We mentioned giveaways so both parties can consider working with influencers to increase your reach and branding. You can reach out to a relevant influencer and encourage them to run a giveaway post for their audience. It is an effective way to gain new followers and raise brand awareness. We call it the 3-fold effect!
Another common method to increase brand awareness via influencer marketing is asking them to do paid posts. When doing paid posts, consider their audience quality, correspondence of their audience and engagement rates before choosing the right influencer.
If you offer the influencer more than they demand, chances are they will offer you better discounts and options. Instead of asking them to do one-off partnerships, you can ask them to give you more discounts for another few more posts and due to retargeting options and algorithms, it will convince people to make a purchase when they see the influencer talking about your products or services more than once.
There are so many ways to market your business and joining forces will definitely benefit your business tremendously. We hope these tips have put you on the fast track and happy collaborating!
