A little coopetition can go a long way. Small businesses have limited resources, and, if you’re a solopreneur, there are even less. You can maximize your media efforts, while minimizing time collaborating with others. Why?
- Save time spent managing media resources;
- Increase efficiency in your efforts to garner media attention; and
- Decrease the number of emails, browser window and over tools used to produce content.
How do you do this? By building a team of social collaborators (3-5 people)!
You have two choices for who you ask to be part of your team. Either gather three to five peers in the same industry who don’t overlap geographically or three to five non-competitors with the same size business.
These should be people who would like to generate more awareness for their brand and have limited resources.
Now, invite them.
Who to pick? Simple. Only include those people who are do-ers. The people who get stuff done (#gsd). You don’t want to create a never-ending funnel of media tasks, but rather focus on those things which are achievable and executable by those involved. The do-ers in your network will be more likely to ensure the success of this team.
Invite them in whatever way is appropriate to you. You can either go the email route, or invite them directly from your fave collaboration platform (might I recommend Tracky).
Not sure how to ask someone to collaborate with you? It’s as simple as copy, paste and personalize:
Dear <insert name>,
You’ve got a lot on your plate. I’ve got a lot on mine. Not sure about you, but that means my PR efforts are often put on the back burner. I’m creating a small group of superstar <non competitors> who are in the same situation. I want to help us work better, together (and, hopefully, garner some media attention of each of us).
The Social Collaboration Team <insert link to group> is a place we can combine efforts to rev up our individual PR by helping one another by sharing:
- Industry research
- Media contacts
- Story ideas and pitches
- Social media releases
- Social editorial calendars
Why recreate the wheel, right?
So, what does this look like? It means we share resources we’ve created and leverage the power of those in our group. The thought is if we all share a few resources we’ll buy back some time. I’ve already created my first Pitchengine pitch <insert link> so you can see what it looks like.
Our first project is to research a media list and populate a one-month editorial calendar. <insert your own task>
Are you in?
What should you work on?
Here are a few tool templates to get you started:
- Editorial calendar template (This is used for planning story topics)
- Social Collaboration Team template (via Tracky)
- Pitch example (via Pitchengine, see below)
- HOW to write effective tracks within Tracky
More to come…
***DISCLOSURE: I am currently serving as the Chief Evangelist for Tracky. Any reference to them in any post is part of my mission to spread the word about social collaboration.***
