Partnership and collaboration

You must provide value to your readers on regular basis – Lack of quality content will not attract readers, and a blog without readers is just a mere personal diary.

Sometimes, you have to play to your strength, as blogging is not for everyone – Everyone could blog, but not everyone has the charisma and “touch” to be the authoritative voice in his/her niche. This is probably as controversial as the issue of entrepreneurship, but I agree to a certain point that some bloggers do born with such personal traits.

I’m not. I need to seek ways to make my business blog works because I believe blogging success is attainable, with or without those personal traits.

In blogging for small business niche, I’m not in the same league that Anita Campbell of Small Business Trends or Vera Raposo of Small Business Branding are in.

Learning what those well-respected bloggers are doing, I conclude that:

You can build a successful business blog, with or without excellent blogging and writing ability, if you collaborate and create strategic partnership with other players in your niche.

How to collaborate and create strategic partnership the right way

You need to cover you weaknesses with other strengths – All you need right now is to identify what and how to pursue. For example, if your weakness is your writing ability, you might want to consider hiring ghostwriter, partner with other bloggers for guest posts, or any other ways.

According to what I learn from the business bloggers, such as Anita Campbell and Vera Raposo, I found that collaboration and strategic partnership come in many forms:

• Multi-author blogging
  Having several contributors for your business blog can offer fresh insight and cater different sub-niches, that all in all will expose your blog to more readers.
• Partner with your industry leader
  Whenever possible, you should partner with your industry leader in branding and/or content creation.
• Offer unique, complementary, features
  Small Business Trends have Press Release service, Small Business Branding offers Content Writing services, Noobpreneur.com has Business Online TV.

Based on the above, here are how to collaborate and create strategic partnership:

• Just contact your prospects
  Many business blogger are worry too much whether they should contact their niche leaders for partnership or not. Here’s the truth: People dwelling in the blogosphere know that “be social” is the highest priority. They understand that collaboration is the key in blogging. I partner with yBC, the online TV channel, for their expertise in broadcasting business video content – I just contact them, and if we have the same vision, partnership is only the logical next step.
• Offer some form of on-site branding for your partner
  As the niche leaders, your prospects might want to have a considerable exposure of their brand name in your business blog. This is a win-win request – They get their exposure, you get your endorsement. Since Noobpreneur.com – yBC partnership press releases and yBC branding on Noobpreneur.com, Noobpreneur.com traffic is going up steadily.
• Other business bloggers might want to guest post on your blog, even blog regularly for your blog – Never refuse them
  Never refuse someone who is willing to create useful, related and non advertising, content for you in exchange to some exposure to his/her website or blog. Quality guest posts raise your blog’s profile and offer varieties to your readers. Noobpreneur.com benefits much from its business bloggers – Different writing styles and sub-niche topics attract more readership.

I understand that those tips are far from perfect, as Noobpreneur.com itself is on its infancy in collaboration and strategic partnership. Please share your tips by commenting on this blog post :)

Ivan Widjaya
Blogging for business
Image by wonderferret.