The “social” in social media marketing is no more about your relationship with your customers. It’s about developing healthy relationships and working with others who have the same audience/goal/mission/values as you. It’s about developing strategic social media partnerships and collaborations so that you can harness the power of each other’s brands and audiences.

Social media partnerships and collaborations with the right people and businesses lead to:

• More value and information for your audience (and trust me, they notice and appreciate that!)
• New perspectives, views, and opinions (by partnering with someone else you also get to listen and understand what they think, how they work, how their audience thinks, and thus improve your content and your biz)
• Additional eyes and engagement on your content and profile (because you’ll not only be talking to “your” audience, you’ll also get to talk to your partner’s audience)
• Increased followers (leading to more leads and sales) 

Now that we’re clear about why strategic partnerships and collaborations are important; let’s talk a little bit about the “how.”

To do social media partnerships and collaborations you need to look for businesses, brands, and people who:

• Have the same audience as you (e.g. a mental health coach partnering with a mindfulness coach. Or a website designer partnering with a copywriter)
• Belong to a micro-niche within your niche (e.g. an Etsy coach partnering with a print on demand company)
• Embody the same value/mission/vision as you. (e.g. a health coach can partner with a food box company or a fitness coach)
• Are influencers in your niche (People are turning to their favorite social media personalities or advice and recommendations. Why not hop in on this train?)
• Already follow you (they already share your vision and like your content. Why not ask them to share it with others?)
• Are in related industries that offer products or services that complement yours and that your audience will be interested in.
• Are industry experts in your niche or sub-niches (e.g. a business coach partnering with a copywriter or a copy coach)

Once you’ve identified who to partner with, you can collaborate with them in the following ways:

Strategic partnership and collaboration on Instagram:

1. Co-create posts and reels with the Instagram collab feature

The collab tool allows you to invite someone to be a collaborator. Meanwhile, for countries where Instagram hasn’t rolled out the collab feature – do it the old way. Tag your collaborators in a post or a reel, give them a shoutout! Make sure you share each other’s collab content in your stories or Instagram feeds. Or do a sponsored post. You can do a:

• Product showcase
• Entertain
• Share tips useful to your audiences
• Mini Behind-the-Scene video
• And more

2. Do an Instagram live with other people

An Instagram live lives for 24 hours on your IG stories. And after that, it can be made into an IGTV video. Not only that but audiences of all the collaborators will be notified when you and your partner/s go live. For an Instagram live you can:

• Host live trainings
• Facilitate a panel discussion
• Do a Q & A
• Conduct an interview
• And more

3. Do/Offer an Instagram takeover

An IG takeover is when a different business or influencer “takes over” your Instagram feed or your Instagram stories for a day. In exchange, you can “take over” their IG feed and stories. Some take-over story ideas include:

• A day in the life of
• My favorite business tools
• Top 5 tips for…
• A little behind the scenes video or chat

4. Do a giveaway

You can team up with someone and offer their product/offer to one lucky participant for free. In order to enter a giveaway, a participant has to fulfill a set of criteria that’s listed on the giveaway. Like tag 3 of your friends in the comments, or share this post to your stories in exchange for the special prize. Giveaways are great for getting more engagement, shares, and followers.

Giveaways run for a limited time. Your collab can do the same for your offer. Some ideas for giveaways are:

• A holiday special giveaway
• New product launch giveaway
• A birthday special giveaway

5. Make a video together

It can be a reel or an IGTV video. It can be educational, promotional, informative, or plain entertaining. You can then share that video on both of your feeds and tag each other.

Strategic partnership and collaboration on LinkedIn:

6. Create a video with thought leaders in your area of expertise.

You and your collaborator/s can share that video on your LinkedIn profile and mention each other. 

7. Make a downloadable asset together

Like an ebook or a white paper or a mini training. You can again share this asset with your LinkedIn connections. You can talk about industry insights, statistics useful to your audiences, tips, and tricks useful to your audiences, etc. For example, a mindset coach and a therapist can work together to create a resource that helps alleviate anxiety and share it with each other’s audiences.

8. Create how-to posts for each other’s audiences

Audiences always value tips from an expert. Make sure you give them all that and more by inviting industry experts or brands to give them valuable advice. Since LinkedIn doesn’t have the tag feature, you can brand images to share on LinkedIn and mention your collaboration partner therein. You can also provide expert tips to the audience of your collaboration partner.

9. Do a round-up LinkedIn pulse post

Invite experts in your industry (or guest as an expert) in a round-up post where several people contribute their opinion/advice/views.  

Strategic partnership and collaboration on Facebook groups:

10. Go live in each other’s Facebook groups

During the live make sure you introduce your collaboration partner, tell members about their group and offers, and lead in with the value the partner will provide. Before the live, prime the group members by announcing the time and date of the live and hype it up.

11. Do a webinar in each other’s Facebook groups

Get invited as an expert guest in someone else’s group (or invite someone to yours). Give your audiences a TON of value and leave them wanting more. So that they join your group/follow you.

12. Host competitions and giveaways

These are very similar to your Instagram competitions and giveaways. Except they happen on Facebook!

Strategic partnerships and collaborations across platforms:

13. You can also do a product shoutout

This is one of the simplest ways to collaborate with someone. Your collaboration partner can shout out your products on social media for a free sample or pay. The best idea is to offer to shout out their products if they shout out yours.

14. You can even have a joint product release or bundle your products together and promote them on each other’s social media accounts

15. Referrals

Your partners promote your offer or service on social media and they get a referral fee for every sale they make.

When selecting who to partner with, what platform to collaborate on (it’s okay to collaborate on multiple platforms), and in what way to collaborate, it’s important to think about both your audience sizes, what your audiences like, and what they’ll respond to the best. It’s also a great idea to have a collaboration plan in place instead of just winging it.

And if you already have a marketing agency you work with, why not ask them to facilitate a partnership for you? All of us at AmazingOBM would be happy to help you out with any digital marketing or business management needs you have. You can start by scheduling a FREE 30-minute consultation.