Four Ways to Tap into the Social Media Partnerships Treasure

What does the word “partnership” mean to you?

In plain English, a partnership means a collectively beneficial agreement to all parties involved. Because of its win/win nature, partnerships are generally easy to form if the best interest of everyone involved was taken into account.

Today, I will focus on the different levels of social media partnerships. I brainstormed the possible types of partnership that can result from social media and will be presenting them in an orderly fashion from shallowest to deepest levels.

1. Implicit Visibility Partnerships

I assume that anyone who takes the time to share your content via social media is your implicit visibility partner. This person is your implicit partner because there is no partnership agreement between the two of you.

The first question that comes to mind here is:  If partnership is about mutually beneficial relationships and another person voluntarily shares your content, what’s in it for them?

Well, if your content was relevant to their target audience, then your implicit visibility partners will enjoy visibility and credibility rewards.

In other words, you can think of social sharing as a win/win unsigned deal for both parties involved.

2. Explicit Visibility Partnerships

In this case there’s an explicit agreement between two parties to boost each other’s visibility. Examples include:

• Guest Blogging:
  Guest blogging is a visibility agreement between the hosting blog and the guest blogger. On the one hand, the host blog will introduce fresh content to existing readers and will be exposed to the guest blogger’s network which translates into more traffic and visibility.The guest blogger, on the other hand, will reach new audience and will gladly share the guest post with their network as a practical testimonial of their skills and expertise. So, again both win!
• Cross Linking/Cross Referral
  The most common types of cross linking and cross referral include:
  • Blog posts linking to each other. (As an example, You may check Garious cross linking with sotwareadvise.com)
  • Including permanently visible links to each other on their blogs. Partners mostly include image links of their partners’ logos
  • Partners can share news/stories/testimonials about each other in blog posts and newsletters
  • Partners can cross-share their content on different social channels

  3. Marketing Campaigns Partnerships

  Now, things are starting to get more interesting! Of course, visibility, in essence, is some form of marketing and visibility partnerships are somewhat easy to form. When it comes to promotions or marketing campaigns, you will need to create a higher level of trust with your partner. Forms of SMM campaigns partnerships include:

  • Creating a social media contest where prizes are given by both brands. Sometimes one brand can host the event on their social media channel (Facebook page for example) and the other contributes the prizes. There are so many variations to this intelligent from of partnership
  • Co-hosting free webinars or online training sessions

  4. Product Co-Creation Partnership

  There are two forms of product co-creation partnerships:

  • All parties collectively participate in creating, launching and marketing a new product. Co-authoring is the most apparent example of this form of partnership
  • Offering bundled products/services representing all parties. In this case, each partner will have his own product with his brand label on it but they will offer a special discount to people purchasing the products in bulk. In this case, they didn’t create a product from scratch but their bundled offer forms a new collective product

  As you see, there are so many levels of partnerships. The good news is that you don’t necessarily have to go through all of them to reach the co-creation level. Sometimes people click instantly and Garious Twitter partnership story is a witness to that.

  Can We Partner?

  I have brainstormed social media partnerships levels to the best of my ability. Can you help me out by suggesting additional forms of partnerships? Did you start a successful partnership through social media? I can’t wait to find out! Let’s partner in inspiring and educating each other