Partnering with the right brand can bring you many benefits, as long as you plan the collaboration carefully and follow the right strategies. First, your brand can gain exposure and reach a new, relevant audience . Second, you can gain new perspectives from someone outside the company on what you’re doing well and what you need to improve. Plus, working with someone new can be a great way to get the creative wheels turning and come up with new, inspiring content for your own campaigns.
As long as the right strategies are followed, of course.
Let’s look at 5 tips that will help you establish a strategic social media marketing partnership .
Make sure the partnership fits
When it comes to social media marketing partnerships, you can’t just partner with anyone. The relationship needs to be mutually beneficial for it to work .
While identifying a good social media marketing partner depends on many factors, generally speaking, it means finding a company, brand, or person who:
- Have the same type of audience as you , including demographics, linkedin database interests, and online habits and behaviors. (For example, a copywriter who partners with a graphic designer.)
- Share a vision , marketing goals, and values similar to your brand.
- Work in a related industry and sell products or services that complement yours.
Ideally, you are seen as an industry expert with the ability to influence your audience
Think about the type of association you want to form
It’s also important to consider the type of social media marketing partnership you want to develop. In other words, what types of projects do you want to collaborate with someone on?
Here are some examples of different types of SSM partnerships:
- Strategic partnerships on Instagram that use the Instagram collab feature (in which a single jointly created post or reel is published on two profiles at the same time).
- Co-branding agreements with shared rewards , such as revenue or leads.
- A basic influencer marketing strategy , where you tag each other in your darren Chait from Hugo campaign posts and share each other’s content through your own stories and feeds.
- Sponsored posts where each one shows the other’s products.
- Live broadcast of round tables or interviews.
- Take over the other company’s social media accounts for a limited period of time.
- Contests and raffles .
- Guest posts on other people’s blogs .
- Advertisements for brands or products .
- References and reviews .
Establish a two-way trust relationship
Trust is vital when developing a social media marketing partnership. You need to believe that you will both promote each other in a positive way and that there is no ulterior motive behind the collaboration. Integrity and confidentiality are just as important as experience , so make sure the partner you choose is open and transparent about who they are and what they want to achieve, especially if you are temporarily handing over control of your social media accounts.
Once you’re confident that you can trust someone, do your best to show them that you can trust them too. The more you trust each other, the more creative and effective your collaboration will be .
Define clear communication channels
Building on trust, make sure you sign a written agreement before you begin your contact lists social media marketing collaboration and identify clear communication channels for your collaboration. For example, will you meet regularly via Slack or Zoom? Will you exchange email updates every day?
Social Media Marketing It’s important that you communicate regularly to build a strong and transparent relationship . However, it’s equally important to set clear boundaries so that there’s no risk of misunderstandings or miscommunication. The clearer you are about this from the start, the easier it will be to develop a mutually beneficial partnership.
Define strategic objectives and align metrics
Finally, before you publicly announce your social media marketing collaboration, make sure to provide your new partner with as much information as possible about who you are, what your brand offers, and what you want to achieve with the collaboration . The best way to do this is by defining the strategic goals of the collaboration in advance and aligning performance tracking metrics.
Ultimately, the best social media marketing partnerships are built on clarity, communication, transparency, and clear, structured guidance . If you both share the same goals and understand what you want from each other, it will be much easier to develop a profitable, long-term collaboration.