How to Collaborate for Blogging Success

Is Networking and Collaborating Good for You?

When running a business, networking is a very important part of your business growth and it’s no different for your online business. You will discover and learn how to collaborate and network and gain a wealth of knowledge, find new and wonderful friends and even get a cheerleader or two to hold you accountable for the work that you do. You can also find some great mentors who can help you build your business to further success.

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You may not realize it but one of the key components to your online and blogging business is networking and collaborating with your online family. I’m a part of quite a few Facebook groups and I’ve learned so much and met people from all over the world that I’m now collaborating with and it’s working out well.

Collaboration is defined as working with someone to produce something. So, in fact, you develop a partnership and an alliance with someone. Just like my blog name suggests teamwork makes the dream work.

Putting yourself out there to connect with others may seem daunting at first or you might even see it as a waste of your precious time but I’m here to tell you that you need to get to work on your networking skills.

Why Is Collaboration Important?

Collaborating with other online business owners is important for the following reasons:

1. Getting and providing support
2. Inspiring and motivating each other
3. Learning new ideas and techniques
4. Gaining a new audience
5. Developing new business and social relationships

Get and Provide Support

When running an online business it can get very lonely sometimes. Your family and friends might not always understand what it is you’re trying to do and achieve.

Getting support from others who also work online is wonderful. They understand the ups and downs of the business, can give a listening ear and can support you through any difficulty you may be experiencing.

I have someone like this and she runs Budget with Belle. She’s definitely one of my cheerleaders. She’s also good at kicking me into gear when I just don’t feel up to blogging.

Inspire and Motivate

One of the things that you will always hear about blogging is that content is king blah, blah, blah…

You know it, I know it but you’re not always inspired. Am I right?

Also, you’re not yet at the place where you can hire a freelance writer or a VA to do some of the work for you because money isn’t coming in like that. I mean, you haven’t even qualified for Mediavine yet!

Why not set up a content challenge with you and your online blogging buddy.

For instance, write 7 posts in 7 days or create 30 pins in a day. It’s actually quite nice having a friendly competition to spur each other on. Plus seeing the results of how much work you get done once you complete the challenges shows just how much you can really do when you’re motivated and don’t get sidetracked.

Share and Learn

When networking and collaborating with others you always learn something new, find out new ideas. When you’re in certain Facebook groups you can find out and get assistance on how to get out of Pinterest jail, for instance.

When I started blogging I knew nothing about SEO but by being part of a really active group I was able to learn the 10 basic steps of SEO from fellow blogger Debbie Gartner of the Flooring Girl, from a post she wrote. I then had a consultation with her and even purchased her SEO books which are super easy to understand and making a real difference to my blogging business.

You too can learn that when writing content it is best to start incorporating SEO techniques as early as possible as it takes time to really kick in when climbing that Google ladder.

If she hadn’t shared this information within the group I might still be struggling to understand the basics of SEO even now.

Gain Exposure to New Audiences

The whole point of blogging and having a website is that you want as many eyes on your online business as possible and several ways of doing this are by guest posting, roundups, doing interviews, making comments and answering queries.

Just imagine teaming up by using any of the below methods with an influential blogger. The added exposure to your business could be HUGE!

Guest Posting

Guest Posting is writing posts on a specified topic on somebody else’s blog. Your guest post should include you being able to have a link back to your blog, website or a landing page and possibly an author byline.

This will introduce a new audience to your writing style, your blog and even your niche if you are in another field. It also helps with SEO.

Feel free to offer to guest post on the Teamworkdream blog.

Interviews

Doing interviews also has a similar function to guest posting the only difference being the topic is specifically about you or your guest and what they do. Here’s one I made earlier and even did a YouTube video to add to the blog post. I was absolutely terrified.

Roundups

Roundups are a collaborative collection of bloggers who have blogs or a particular blog topic in common with each other. Here’s a simple example. Let’s say you wanted to write about some of the best and quickest breakfast recipes for a family.

You ask within Facebook groups if they have any special breakfast recipes that they wish to share and if they would like to add a sentence or two, a picture and you add a link within the post to their blog. After which, you would do an intro with your own recipe add the info that they supplied and voila you’ve got a roundup post.

Everyone likes getting mentioned and seeing their work elsewhere and this creates great backlinks for SEO, generates new connections with fellow bloggers and helps gain new audiences to all the different sites included in the roundup.

Here’s a roundup-style post that I did for Mother’s Day so that you get an idea of what I mean. You can do this for any niche and topic that you like.

Course Team up

If you’ve become an expert in your niche and becoming quite popular why not team up with another blogger and create a course that will compliment each other. Check out this perfect example of course collaboration.

Gina Horkey a Virtual Assistant expert and Kirstin Larsen a Pinterest expert teamed up to create the Pinterest VA course.

They are both influencers in their own niches but by coming together they now provide an excellent product that is perfect for both of their audiences allowing their trust and popularity to grow even more.

>>>If you want to find out all about this course you can sign up to this in-demand Pinterest VA course TODAY!

Adding Comments

Ever read a post and at the end, you see a list of comments from other people showing appreciation for the content or asking a question or even providing additional information.

This is the comments section and it’s a great way to express your knowledge and share your own website and blog if you have a Gravatar set up.

A gravatar which is otherwise known as a Globally Recognized Avatar is an image such as your profile picture that appears wherever you enter your name, email and web address.

If like me, you’re curious as to who made the comment you can just click on the name and it will take you to their blog or website. It’s a really useful tool that I’ve been told can also help your SEO.

These are just a few examples that you can try out to promote your blogging business and offer your online services to existing and new audiences.

Develop Business and Social Relationships

Collaborating with others can help boost your confidence, improve your business skills and grow your online business in so many ways.

Just by the encouragement, examples and teachings of others, you can incorporate all the things that you learn such as productivity shortcut tips and successful blogging ideas.

Also, the questions asked by yourself and others within the various groups will help you avoid certain mistakes in your own business and help you to do things in a shorter space of time.

Building these social relationships will benefit you as you become more experienced. You can even be the go-to person and unintentionally/intentionally become someone’s mentor.

By sharing your knowledge and being helpful great business partnerships and opportunities can be formed.

Remember, in the blogsphere, you can’t afford to be selfish and think that you can do this by yourself. You will have to develop relationships with others for your business to grow.

Not sharing or providing any sort of value to others is not the way to go and you can end up at a standstill that you cannot move from as you may think that you do not need any help or that you have nothing to offer. Or just plain scared that you won’t get anything back.

Now I’m not saying to give away all of your trade secrets because you might just be able to create a wonderful product from your skills and experiences. But if you can help someone with a query please do.

Your outlook might be different and yet easier than someone else’s advice. Your teaching or way of explaining things might be easier to understand.

I definitely have experience of this, here’s what happened.

I bought 3 different Pinterest ebooks from suggestions made by different groups to help me and in the end, although they all had useful tidbits all 3 were saying the very same things in different ways. Only one of them really resonated with me and made me truly understand the process and it was the Pinterest Launch Plan.

This book broke things down so simply and in a very organized manner, step-by-step-by-step and the results quickly proved themselves.

Joining online groups can be fun and a way to lighten the overwhelm when you’re going through struggles, the burnout, the traffic slumps, the ever-changing social media algorithms but you must remember not to allow these groups to eat away at your productivity.

>>>You might also be interested in How to Get Your Productivity Mojo Back

Schedule set times to respond in groups then make sure to get some work done on your online business. You do not need to interact every day within these groups but do interact. It’s a great way to get your name and brand out there.

If you need to take a break from them to concentrate on specific tasks do so. You can even let those in the group know that you’re going to take a break from checking in. Believe me, they will understand!

Attending Seminars, Conferences and Networking Events

Another great way to develop relationships is by joining local WordPress groups.

Go into the backend of your WordPress blog and you will see that under the dashboard tab that there might be a local WordPress event being held.

By the way, your network does not have to be restricted to your niche.

You can also find out from other bloggers if there are any seminars, conferences or events that they can recommend. This is a great networking opportunity and a brilliant way to find and develop true blogging friendships, just ask some of the top bloggers out there!

A nice quick way if you love to interact face-to-face is to ask within the various Facebook groups if anyone lives nearby. You can then meet up for the occasional coffee to discuss blogging strategies.

After a while, you will find your way to filter out the noise of those groups that are not so helpful and stick with the groups that are active and useful to you and your business,

So the next time you see a Facebook thread asking for guest posts, interviews or roundups don’t look at it and groan thinking that it’s extra work, look at it as learning how to collaborate, something that will be mutually beneficial. It’s a win-win situation!

Why not team up and sign up to my weekly newsletter, join me on my Facebook page or make a comment below!