5 Unique Tips on Collaborative Marketing with your “Competitors”

There are almost 40 million bloggers typing away in the U.S. every day and with a number this enormous it seems overwhelming to view so many bloggers as competition.

Instead of pushing other blogs in our niche out of the way to get a higher domain authority, what if we collaborated and grew together as communities of bloggers who write about similar topics? Idealistic? Perhaps. However, collaborative marketing gives us different sources for link backs, a new crowd of viewers and another blogger who we can bounce ideas off of.

Skeptic or inspired, try out one or some of these 5 unique collaborative marketing tips and see how a collaborative marketing campaign boosts your site’s traffic.

To make the most out of your collaborative marketing outreach campaign, consider an outreach tool like Group High which allows you to search for blogs in your genre and it puts those site’s metrics and contact info in to an easy to read spreadsheet.

1. Reach out and Make the Intro

Keep it short and sweet but send an email formally introducing yourself and say something you admire about the blog. It’s also not too pushy to flat out say “hey let’s think of how we can collaborate and grow traffic from each other!”

Everyone gets “bloggers block” once in a while, have coffee together even if it is over Skype and talk about what has worked what hasn't  Brainstorm topics together and encourage each other through blogger frustrations.

2. Put a Feather in Their Cap

Re-tweet one of their tweets or post a blog post of theirs on your twitter and/or Facebook. This will likely get reciprocated. You could also link back to their blog in a post on your own blog. This is minimally time consuming but a good way for you to expose each other to new followers.

3. Swap Guest Posts

Suggest writing something for each other’s blogs. It’s perfect— you are both experts on a topic but can offer a unique perspective to each other’s readers. You will be targeting readers who have already proven themselves interested in your genre. By blasting each other’s articles through each of your social media channels, you are referring your own traffic to each other. Who doesn't love a win/win situation?

4. Make it a Group thing

Get a group of bloggers in your niche or community together to meet monthly and bounce ideas off of each other. You could even write a blog post about your community and link back to each other!

5. One Post Two Authors

Write an article together. You both can post it and it should be full of solid content since you both are an authority on the same topic. Do it creatively— in the form of a conversation or two different views under sub headings. Your readers will absolutely love the different perspectives in the same niche, I promise.

Don’t be shy to reach out to fellow bloggers and see if your blog’s stats go up. Make sure you've put together a good spreadsheet so you can see what’s working and which bloggers send you the most traffic.

Author Bio: Kristen Matthews is freelance writer and content marketer based out of Boulder Colorado. She loves to write and enjoy life through travel, good food, creativity and interesting people. Contact her for any writing requests at KristenMarie22@msn.com.