I’ve been chatting a lot this week about blogging buddies. And it seems that most people think the benefits of having blogging buddies actually stop with simply all the awesome advice, support and social aspect of having friends who “get” blogging. And there’s nothing wrong with that, my blogging buddies are some of the best humans I know!
But did you also know that your digital support posse can also be one of the easiest ways for you (all) to grow your blogs?
Let me explain!
In the “business” world there are several well known, tried-and-true strategies that people use to grow their businesses. These include paying for advertising, PR, offer discounts/sales and freebies and joint ventures. For those not in the know, a joint venture (or JV) is when you team up with another complimentary business (or in this case blog) to create and/or share something that will either increase the value you both can give your readers, or increase the reach yo
u both have, or some combo of the two.
Now don’t fall asleep on me just yet. Because this totally works for bloggers too. And this is where you and your blogging buddies come into it.
Because quite often our blogging buddies will, in fact, be a “complimentary business”. Maybe they don’t blog about exactly the same kinds of things as you (or maybe they do), but I bet you there is some crossover. Somewhere in their range or expertise and yours, there will most likely be a few topics or even a group/type of readers that you have in common.
And this is where it can get really fun!
So, what are some easy ways you and your blog buddies can help to grow each other’s blogs (all at the same time?)… ?
1 – Co-create an opt-in bribe!
An opt-in bribe that contains some of your best stuff is really valuable. So imagine how valuable an opt-in bribe that contains the best tips/tricks and tools from multiple bloggers will be?
Whether this is a mini course, some sort of online training, a telesummit, a workbook or eBook, or even something gorgeous and creative. Co-creating an opt-in bribe not only helps to increase the value of the offer, but it also splits up the work AND helps to introduce everyone to each other’s audiences too. Nothing but wins here.
2 – Good old comment swap!
If you want to increase engagement on your posts, normally you need a few people to kick it all off (tumbleweeds and comments do not go together!). So if you have a group of blogging besties, why not all agree to jump in and comment (and also reply) on each others latest posts?
Not only will it help kick start the comments on your blogs, but it is also really fun too (way better than just watching cat videos on Facebook!).
3 – Start a group social media challenge!
Trying to kick off any sort of social media challenge is very daunting, and just like the comments it seems to be that most people like to wait for a bunch of others to join in before they will.
No one wants to be the first to arrive at the party, right?
So why team up together? Just like in the first idea you not only get to share the workload, but you also get to cross promote to each others audiences which is never a bad thing.
4 – Guest post loop series
Why not come up with an idea for a killer post-series that can really add value to all your readers.. and then split that series up between you. Maybe you do a month of posts between 5 people, so actually you’re all only creating one extra post a week. And on the days that it’s not your turn to publish a new post, you cross promote which ever is the latest one on your social media.
It’s also fun if you add links back to the last post, and the onto the next post as they go live as this will create a lovely loop around all your blogs for your readers.
5 – Be Pinterest cross-promoters!
Another idea is to start up a special hidden group board where you all pin your best pics from your posts that week, and then when each of you is doing your Pinning you all promise to re-pin a selection of each other’s pins as well.
TIP: With any of these JV idea is really helps to make sure you all have all the details nutted out at the start, and in writing, so everyone knows what to expect and what they are expected to do!
6 – Insta-time-savers!
Everyone knows coming up with lots of gorgeous (preferably original) images to share mutliple times on Instagram every day can be a BIG ask. So why not team up with some bloggers with a similar aesthetic and topic as you.
You can create a shared dropbox folder and everyone uploads their last few months of photos into it. Then you can all re-share these older pics in between your own ones (correctly tagging each other of course), and you not only help to promote each other’s work and blogs, but you also save yourself so much time too! This works even better if you use an Instagram scheduling tool like Schedugram because you can pretty easily schedule in 3 months (or more) of daily posts from this folder, and then just add in your own ones in between as you go along (so much less pressure!)
And that is just the tip of the iceberg! Teaming up with your blogging buddies really can be one of the easiest and most fun ways to grow all your blogs (together), why not give it a go!
