#ListPower – How to Get in Front of a Huge Audience for Free by Collaborating
One of the best ways to push out your opt-in and build your list for free is with collaborations.
Think about it, you’re much more likely to trust someone after being recommended by a trusted source itself right? This isn’t something to sniff your nose up at, it works! Not only that, but it’s free! You can tap into an audience and talk to them all for free! And that’s the power of collaborating.
So how do you go about collaborating and what does collaborating entail?
There’s a few ways you can work together with someone else for example:
– Work on webinars together
– Guest blogs for each other (with your bio linking back to your opt-in)
– Full/Half day workshop together
– Agree to share content through social media
– Feature on a newsletter
– Become affiliate partners – so they actively promote you
… to name a few
It’s important to know what you want before you approach anyone (although in some cases it’s good to discuss with them), because then it is a clear what you’re asking for, so as to not confuse anyone. It also helps you ‘plot‘ your approach of how you introduce yourself and ask the collaborator for a collaboration.
Who to collaborate with?
The end goal is to work with influencers, those people with larger databases than you who are well respected. It may be wise not to go for these influencers straight away until you have nailed down your process, so it is as smooth as possible. It depends on how confident you are to reach out to these people, taking into account your current position. It may then be worth starting small and working up. So perhaps reach out to the biggest influencer who you know personally and try to work with them first, a friendly face always helps when you’re finding your feet.
However, it is very important to not to just approach any big name, as this can waste time and may not even be worth it. Remember, who we associate with affects our brand, so you need to keep this in mind when deciding on who to collaborate with, but we also need to look at our own brands and make sure they are strong enough for people to want to work with us!
For that reason it is wise to choose someone who shares the same passion and values that you do. This way an incentive to work with you may simply be they will WANT to help you because it’s just who they are and it’s their passion.
Don’t forget that it doesn’t just have to be individuals, you can also collaborate with organisations. We know of a guy who wrote a guest blog for a psychology organisation and from that grew his email subscribers list by over 20,000 people! So yeh, think about other organisations who share the same values as yourself.
Why should they collaborate with me?
Making sure everyone benefits is crucial, and when it comes to working with influencers this is even more important. You really need to think about every benefit possible and put that forward to them! So what do you bring to the table? Most of the time it is an ego boost, you are putting them on a pedestal as an expert in something which is good for their positioning and credibility. Maybe you are putting their name next to other big names too, which again helps their positioning (if they are all on par with each other). The main benefit is obviously the promise of exposure and the potential to drive traffic/interest back to their own site to grow their list/sell something.
If you don’t have a big audience yourself then influencers might not see the benefit, so tell them that you are willing to pay X amount for some Facebook ads to push it out there more. This is a small price to pay to collaborate with big names. Smaller names won’t need as much convincing!
A key point here is that you need to make it super easy for them, do everything you can to be as helpful as possible and take the lead with organisation. The moment that it becomes hassle is the moment you lose their interest.
How do I approach them?
Get to know them, and even try to engage a little on social media or their blog before you ask them directly. Read our article on how we managed to scoop up some of the worlds best social media gurus to see what we mean. The main point is to be personal and to show them that it will benefit them (and their audience if it does).
Final point
Perhaps most importantly, get them to push out your collaboration to their audiences as much as possible. Whether that’s via social media or email, get them to promote you!
ACTION: Carefully select influencers to collaborate with based on their values and expertise.
ACTION: Decide on what you want to do with them, and plot your process out meticulously.
ACTION: Put the potential collaborators into a Twitter list and keep and eye on what they are up to, comment on their posts and so on.
ACTION: Approach them one at a time (so you can see if your approach works) with a personal message explaining who you are and why you would make a good fit.
