Winning the Online Popularity Contest

A very important piece of the online marketing puzzle is creating strategic alliances with like-minded partners. We’ve already covered the relationship initiation process of your organic top 10 content partners — so now, we’ll show you how to use keywords to identify additional high-opportunity accomplices. We’ll also let you in on our social media marketing secrets for building and strengthening these essential relationships — so bring it on, popularity contest!

Getting to Know Your Industry’s (Unknown) Online Influencers

Like a high school student who’s looking to find his or her place, you’re probably able to rattle off a dozen or so organizations (cool kids) that could very well be lucrative strategic partners for your business (or good friends). You might be surprised, however, at the amount of others that may be a mystery to you (untapped resources) — although not for long. There are some really awesome online platforms that can open new doors for your partnership strategy (the more, the merrier!) with the search of a few keywords. Here’s the scoop:

Google Alerts: Simply submit your top keywords (or keyword phrases) to Google’s “news” and “blog” alerts, and you’ll be tuned in to the buzz in your business with alerts directly to your email address, as often as you want them. So, say you’re a baby furniture boutique. You’d submit the following keywords to Google News and Blog Alerts: cribs, highchairs, strollers. Immediately, you’re aware of the top news stories and blog entries that contain these keywords. With a little bit of persistence and time, you’ll see trends — blogs and companies that often write about your keywords — and can begin reaching out accordingly.

Twilert: Type in your keywords, and receive alerts straight to your inbox whenever Twitter tweets use those terms. If you search for cribs, highchairs and strollers, you’ll know what folks are tweeting about — your company, a competitor, a strategic partner — the networking options are endless!

Facebook search: Simply log in to your business profile, pop your keywords into the “Search” box, and find pages, groups and events that may lend a strategic partner. It’s that simple.

LinkedIn search: LinkedIn is a great tool to use to find professionals that may be strategic partners. While some businesses do have LinkedIn profiles, we’ve found that this is really the place to find individuals — which can then lead to organization and company partnerships. Once you search cribs, highchairs and strollers, you’ll find the CEOs, public relations managers, and other high-level employees of companies who manufacture and promote baby furniture. Score!

Other platforms you may want to peruse: Boardreader (searches forums), Social Mention (searches all social networks), and Blog Pulse (a blog trend discovery tool).

In Steps Alexa

Although there isn’t a science or tool that assigns rank to the typical popularity contest, there is one for the online version. Alexa provides free traffic metrics, search analytics and demographics for Web sites with the simple download of a toolbar to your Internet browser. We use the traffic metrics to analyze whether the companies we’ve found from our above searches are really worth the time. The lower the Alexa rank, the better the partner. Google is ranked #1 on Alexa, Facebook #2 — so shoot for partners with ranks less than 200,000, if possible. If a company you’ve found in your searches yields a traffic ranking that’s higher than this, they’re probably not a valuable partner (Web traffic-wise) for you.

Beginning the Conversation

If you’ve found a new handful of partners and cross-referenced them to Alexa, and all has checked out, it’s time to open a dialogue with these industry influencers online. There are many different ways to do this, but the more you reach out, the higher the possibility is for return. Think back to that high school party — simply walking up and saying “Hi” to a potential friend usually didn’t seal the deal. It took time, persistence, and bonding.

Our first step is to reach out to influencers on the most popular social media platforms. We “Like” business pages on Facebook, “Follow” them on Twitter, and “Connect” with high-profile individuals on LinkedIn.

Next, we post relevant comments on blogs, and interact on Facebook and Twitter with those we’ve just connected to. Does a strategic partner of yours have a blog post about sleek highchair designs? Comment. Give them praise for their post, and link back to your latest and greatest highchair that may be of interest to their blog community. Did your strategic partner send out an interesting tweet about crib safety? Re-tweet it. “Like” a Facebook post that you, well, like. You’re planting the seed through interaction. Genius, right?

When Personal Contact Information is Available, Reach Out

Connecting through social media is pretty easy — it just takes a little work. Connecting personally is a bit more of a challenge, however, usually due to the lack of e-mail addresses and phone numbers available on company sites. If you find a way to open up a personal, one-on-one conversation, seize the opportunity! Pick up your phone, or open up your email, and think of it as that fast-food lunch invite in high school — this is your big chance!

Key questions to ask the prospect:

  • What are your online goals and/or priorities in the upcoming months?
  • Are you looking for online content (videos, articles, product reviews)?
  • Are you interested in cross-promotional opportunities, especially in the social media space?
  • What are your strongest partnerships, and why are they working for you?

Key talking points to reinforce your position:

  • Common ground: your shared mission, vision and values
  • Easy-to-implement content sharing and cross-promotion
  • Your existing partners and associated success stories
  • Your traffic statistics and online presence logistics

It Won’t Happen Overnight

Once you’ve identified your potential strategic partners, it’s important to build in time to initiate, nurture, and strengthen the relationship. It often begins slowly (with a simple “Hello”), but with care, you’ll begin to see success inside of the relationships you’ve given time and effort to (hello, party invites, Saturday mall runs and Friday night group movie outings!). There are a lot of steps to making it, which is why we suggest creating a log of your correspondence with each partner to track the progress. Note what date you reached out, how (phone, e-mail, social media), and what the outcome was. And, once your partner recognizes your genuine interactions, they’ll be more apt to pat your back, too — the ultimate payback in the world of strategic linking and online popularity contests. (Is there a sash for that?)

One Response to Winning the Online Popularity Contest
  1. [...] to know more about the value of strategic partnerships? We’ll show you how to creatively seek out and connect with business alliances online in [...]

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