Many small businesses miss the importance of expanding their reach by establishing and nurturing strategic partnerships. If you are not actively pursuing collaboration opportunities for your business’ social media program, then you are doing yourself a disservice.
While building a social media marketing plan for one of our strategic consulting clients, we stressed the importance of identifying collaboration opportunities. As a startup business, they rapidly acquired new Instagram Followers at launch but flattened after their first year. During our quarterly business review, we reminded them of the importance to collaborate and they subsequently completed their first collaboration which resulted in a 90% increase in their Instagram followers within 48 hours of the first collaboration post. They also noticed an immediate increase of customers at their retail location that found them through the collaboration post.
There are many opportunities for small businesses to achieve similar results as our client. The key is to make collaborations a part of your overall business strategy. There are other small businesses and entrepreneurs that are seeking opportunities to collaborate. Regardless of budget, you can leverage collaborations as part of your company’s growth plan. Partnering with organizations that you are affiliated with is an easy way to do cross-promotion and grow your followers by providing content to both groups of followers. There are also influencers out there that can significantly expand your company’s reach for a small fee.
You can start expanding your reach today by writing down all the organizations that you are affiliated with. These can be personal and professional affiliations. Next, actively seek out influencers that have a following relevant to your business. Finally, develop a joint marketing strategy with each of your collaboration partners. Consistency and mutual benefit are the keys to successful collaboration partnerships. If you are looking for ideas or help with building and managing collaboration partnerships, you can hire a social media marketing management firm to do the heavy lifting for you. The sooner you get started, the sooner you will see the results in your bottom line!
