Partnering to Expand Your Social Media Presence

I was working on a client’s social media strategy and building their community engagement map, something I always do as part of my assessment. This particular client’s business involves partnering with other companies. In building their map and strategy, I realized what a potentially rich ecosystem partner relationships can provide any business.

Many businesses require or benefit from deep relationships with other businesses. If working with other companies is a core part of your business model, products, or services, you may have the opportunity to exponentially increase your social presence.

For the purposes of discussion, let’s say you operate an online travel agency, ABC Business, and you specialize in the Napa Valley’s wine country. You book trips to the area and you are paid a commission by the various hotels, B&B’s, wineries, tour operations, and restaurants in Napa.  Let’s say that you’ve put some basic social media elements in place: a website, a Twitter account, a Facebook page, and even a blog. Here’s what your community engagement map would look like:

In terms of cross-promotion, ABC has their ducks in a row. All of their assets promote their other assets. Presumably their blog and website have Follow Me and Connect badges to guide readers to their Twitter and Facebook accounts. As well as connecting with customers/potential customers on Facebook and Twitter, ABC also posts and tweets about their latest blog posts and their website. It’s not shown here, but they may also mention their Facebook account in tweets and vice versa.

It’s a good start. Between their SEO work, any advertising, and the sharing that can happen on Facebook and Twitter, new people will find them. Presumably they are providing good information and interacting with people, and their followers/fans/readers will spread the word to other new people. Over time, their audience will increase and some portion of those individuals will book through the agency.

Social Partners Provide More Social Presence

What happens, though, if ABC tries to partner with some of the B&B’s, wineries, restaurants, etc. that it works with. Most of them probably have a website. Some of them are on Facebook and Twitter. Some might even have a blog. What if ABC talks with its partners who are active on social media and they agree to promote each other? ABC puts links on its website to the various partner sites. It mentions them in its blog from time to time and includes partner’s blogs in its blogroll. ABC and its partners on Twitter reciprocally follow each other and mention each other. Likewise, they regularly promote each other through Facebook. Let’s look at what partnering with just one partner looks like:

Suddenly, ABC company’s social assets are getting a lot more mentions and links. Presumably, they are getting a lot more traffic as well. The business partner tweets and posts about ABC’s blog posts or its latest Facebook post. Likewise, ABC posts about its partners content, events, and so on. ABC comments on the partner’s Facebook page and responds to its tweets, and vice versa. Now, ABC has access to a whole group of potential customers that it might never have reached otherwise. Adding additional partners just expands ABC’s social media presence:

The opportunities for increasing awareness and for interacting with customers and potential customers rises dramatically with every partner added. Of course, that means you also have to manage all those interactions and relationships, creating its own set of problems–but those are good problems to have.

What if your partners aren’t active in social media, though? Maybe they have a website, but nothing else. Don’t worry. As I discuss in my post, Leveraging Your Business Partners for a Better Blog, that provides a different kind of opportunity.

Neicole Crepeau is a tech industry veteran of 27 years, and has worked in marketing, design, and technical writing. She tweets and blogs about social media, web technology, and user experience under @neicolec and Coherent Social Media.  She does social media consulting and user experience design at Coherent Interactive.