Key to Growth: Social Networking and Collaboration

According to the global survey, more than 92% of companies presently use & work on social media for business purposes. It seems not that much hard to try to predict the future if you consider the rapid growth of technological change so as I'm going to try to think before the years ahead.
How to utilize social networking to create meaningful content and increase growth —
Social networking plays a key role in building growth for businesses and blogs. Yet today, this network most likely will not be solely comprised of simple face to face interactions. Using tools such as cloud storage can help you collaborate with others and harness this growth potential in meaningful ways. Optimize and straighten all your marketing with social media collaboration tools. Join teams and streamline social media workflows across all your locations.

Are you looking for a profitable way to reach the targetted audience? Have you thought about a social media collaboration? In this post, you’ll not only learn how to use social media but also find how to collaborate with different brands to promote & market your products & services to your relevant customers. The majority of companies agrees with the influence of social media and confirms that social networking is the most essential factor for external activities like digital marketing, social interactions, online service which overall gives the business extra opportunities to advertise their offers, products, content and to establish as a brand in the market.

In the article “Drive Facebook Traffic to Your Blog/Website” it is suggested that more than 68% of the audience globally, log on to Facebook every day and this shows that the use of social media will continue to grow and that is why building the social networking & collaboration to develop your business becomes essentially important. Check out how to know your audience, create more useful content to engage and build your customer base, and measure the impact of social media on your business goals.

{tocify} $title={Table of Contents}

Connect with an Expert

No matter how smart, well-read or knowledgeable you are, there’s always something else to learn or someone with a lesson to teach you. Learning is a key element in growing your business or blog, and connecting with experts with a willingness to learn and try new approaches is the best way to do that.

Creating an “expert pool” for yourself means that you always have a mentor who is willing to guide you. Creating a “learning model” for yourself means that you always have a plan in place for education. The more you connect with experts, the more information and help you have to create.

1. Find an Expert

Make two lists: one full of people with whom you want to strengthen your relationship with, and one with people you want to meet. The first list should include anyone who is well-connected, shares interests with you, or who has a talent useful to your business plan. The second list should focus on influencers, industry leaders, or community members who are in the realm of your business or blog focus.

Make a point of meeting with them, and continue to build the relationship. Send emails, set up coffee breaks, and attend seminars together. Maybe even suggest a workout or a lunchtime walk-- the uptick in heartbeat from movement sends neurons firing in your brain. More brain activity means more creativity and positivity-- an environment perfect for collaboration and networking!

At events, stand near the bar to catch people leaving with a drink and ready to mingle. If there is no bar, stand near the food. If the event has neither of these, spend a few moments walking around and see who is there.

Most events have nametags-- check everyone’s out to see if they included their company, too. Connect with those whose company matches someone on your lists.

Use standing in line to your advantage, even if it’s for food or nametags. It’s the perfect time to grab a few moments-- generally in a quieter location-- for conversation.

And hand out those business cards!

2. Keep an Expert

Stay in touch! The best way to ensure that you keep experts interested in you and your blog or business is to regularly reach out to them. If they have to reach out to you, they may feel that the relationship is one-sided and that you’re using them. That’s not the point of social networking!

The point of social networking is collaboration. Everything about social networking is collaborative-- the conversations, agreements, disagreements, interests-- everything. It “takes two to tango,” so make sure you’re putting in the effort to keep up relationships. Even small ones can make a huge impact when it comes time to collaborate on content.

Collaborating with experts on content also creates meaningful relationships that continue to build. Eventually, they’ll connect you with somebody who needs your expertise! Then it’s your turn to be the expert.

That’s another key factor in social networking: be ready to give back. You’ve got the expertise to share, too-- why not see if anyone needs you? And if others see that you’re willing to lend your expertise to somebody who needs it, they’ll be more willing to give theirs. They might even want to tap yours-- you never know who might just be the key connection that blows your business or blog growth right out of the water!

Inviting your expert to collaborate with you on a project ensures that your relationship remains evergreen because it connects you to a conversation. Using cloud storage for this collaboration ensures that no content gets lost-- because it’s all in one place-- and gives you the tools to keep everything organized in a professional manner. Accessibility is a breeze, and everybody remains on the same page while working independently on their portion of the project.

Create Meaningful Content

So now that you’re building and maintaining a social network of experts, invite them to collaborate. Content collaboration translates to meaningful content. Having all of your content in one place-- soundbytes, videos, documents, etc.-- means collaboration is easier and more organic.

By inviting people to collaborate, you’re inviting them to understand your brand and products-- whether you have a business or a blog-- in a backstage pass kind of way. They may also notice something about your branding that seems off and help you to correct it.

This is why branding and knowing your target audience is so essential. Once you understand who is buying your product or message, you can create branding that draws them in. Using social networking and publishing tools, you have a focused ecosystem for sharing, collaborating and creating meaningful content that fits your branding.

For bloggers, content collaboration through social networking can be a uniquely helpful thing to do because blogs are entirely digital. Completely digital content can stagnate more quickly than anything else because of the incredibly fast pace of the digital world. Digital content must be updated daily-- sometimes more than once a day-- in order to remain meaningful.

Harnessing the power of hashtags also helps, because most social media platforms now make the hashtags follow-able as well as people’s profiles. Check out influencer’s posts to see what hashtags they use, and try to use them yourself.

Finding and using your social network ensures that your content not only stays evergreen, it remains valid and validated. Invite guest bloggers and reach out to ask to contribute to blogs you enjoy. Everyone benefits from shared audiences whose traffic they otherwise wouldn’t visit! Grow a network by tagging people with shared interests and drawing attention to your blog. Leave links in comments and continue to engage, engage, engage with your readers.

Some of your readers may even have suggestions for collaborations for you-- it’s very rare for them to follow just one person who shares their interests. Follow up with them-- check out their suggestions and thank them for the idea.

Perhaps one of your readers could turn out to be your next collaborator! See who engages consistently with your bog, and check out their profile and posts. If you like their style and content, you could both benefit from collaborating.

Market & Distribute

Once you and your network have created meaningful content, the natural next step is to create and distribute marketing tailored to the content.

Again, tap into everyone’s expertise! Now that the content is solid, you need to distribute it across several avenues. Each collaborator can focus their efforts on the social media or marketing outlet that aligns with both your branding and their expertise.

Having everything from your content collaboration in one place-- like cloud storage-- is essential to streamlining this process. It also ensures that the marketing matches your branding and that your social media presence is increased.

Increased social media presence means more traffic for your blog and business. By tailoring your marketing to not only each specific social media platform-- but also to the ideal consumer who uses it-- you create interest and awareness of your blog or business. Additionally, consider this: your social media presence requires maintenance, just like your social networking.

Using content collaboration for marketing as well ensures that you not only have a social media presence but that your relationships with your collaborators continue to build in ways that are meaningful and beneficial to you both. The two directly correlate-- evergreen content, branding, and marketing need evergreen relationships to thrive.

Bottom Line

The power of social networking is not to be underestimated. In fact, it’s essential to collaboration. Using cloud storage allows you to harness the power of social networking into creating meaningful content and relationships that translate to business growth and blog traffic.

How else do you keep your social networks alive and well? What are your tips for collaboration? Drop us some comments and get the conversation started.

Who knows? Maybe you’ll find your next expert here!


This is a sponsored post for Dropbox. All opinions are my own. Dropbox is not affiliated with nor endorses any other products or services mentioned.