Collaborating on your Blog

Have you ever thought of writing a blog post with someone, or doing a mutual “guest post” on each other’s site? If you’ve met someone recently and you really clicked (you got a similar clientele, and wouldn’t it be great to offer something together?), or perhaps you’ve just known them a long time, it may have crossed your mind. Complementary viewpoints on a topic that affects both of you would make a really interesting piece….

Collaborating like this on your blog every so often is brilliant. It’s such a simple idea and it can give you back a lot more than you might expect. Expand your reach, boost your SEO, bolster your credibility and more in one fell swoop…

 

A Wider Audience

The biggest benefit is that collaboration immediately puts you in front of a wider audience. When you write with another expert, and you both share the result, you’re accessing their network as well as your own. More chances for your content to be seen, linked to, and discovered by new people you could help.

 

SEO Gold

This is also great for boosting your SEO. Mutual links on each other’s websites mean brownie points with the search engines, because they pay attention to those sort of signals – it means you create good content that others value. If you’ve got links to your site from others, it shows that you’re relevant and you know what you’re talking about. Collaborative pieces also tend to cover topics more thoroughly, which should mean your readers are staying longer to read, which also demonstrates quality – both important search result ranking factors. It’s no doubt excellent for AI indexing as well, for the same reasons, but that’s an even darker art – see my recent post about that here for more info:

 

The Social Proof

Featuring another voice in your content shows that you don’t work alone – others are clearly keen to associate with your platform, and that builds trust with your readers. If you’re collaborating with someone who already has an established reputation, some of that credibility transfers to you by association, and vice versa.

 

Open to Connecting

So it’s a great way to get in front of potential new customers, and it’s also the way to show other experts that you’re open to working together. You could find that it opens doors to even more opportunities, either in the same collaboration or as part of new ones – podcasts, partnerships, speaking engagements, joint workshops, all sorts.

 

How to Do It

There are a several of different ways to approach a blog collaboration:

The first is to work together on a new piece about a current way of thinking that you share in your industry (I really don’t like the term “thought leadership”, but you know the sort of thing). Publish on your websites (avoid copy and pasting identical versions – make a few changes so it’s not duplicated content.

 

The second is to write a guest post for each other’s blog about your sphere of expertise. This is ideal because you’ll both have different material to share with your audiences, tailored to be relevant to them.

 

The third is to write a post about your experience with that business (either as a customer, or working alongside them to deliver to a shared customer), and have them do the same for you.

 

Some Posts I Prepared Earlier…

I’m no stranger to a blog collaboration – here are a few:

• I wrote a joint post with Charlotte Howell of Virtual Owl Marketing when we were preparing to deliver a workshop together: Power of 3 Organic Marketing
• Laura Hamblyn and I wrote a guest post for Busy Women Networking about how we met and worked together: How Networking Unlocked a Passion for Writing
• I have a raft of posts about brilliant businesses I’ve used: The Brand Blog

 

However you choose to do it, make sure you’re including good, working links to each other’s websites and using their logo and a brand shot or two – and agree how you’ll both be sharing it with a rough schedule. Your audience will love it (a new perspective, and new expertise), Google will love it, and your professional credibility will love it too!