Collaborative content marketing, which involves building content with multiple people inside and outside your organisation, is on the rise. Not only does collaborative content marketing help speed up and simplify content creation — it’s also one of the most effective ways to drive traffic to your site, reach new audiences, and build your brand.
In this blog, we explore the concept of content marketing collaboration in more detail, as well as share actionable tips on how you can get started with it. Below, we’ll cover:
- A high-level definition of collaborative content marketing
- Detailed benefits of making it a mainstay of your content marketing strategy
- The three main collaborative content marketing and what they can do for your brand
Let’s take a look!
What is collaborative content marketing?
As we cover in our intro — collaborative content marketing involves creating content with several people who work inside and outside of your organisation. In particular, collaborative content marketing typically involves collaborating with industry experts to build out your content — in the form of in-depth interviews, for example, or a round-up of expert insights.
Why is it awesome to create collaborative content?
There are several big benefits to adding collaborative content marketing to your content marketing mix. Let’s take a look at three of them.
Create richer content
When you collaborate with others, you typically create more in-depth, interesting content. Content marketing collaboration moves you away from ‘single narrative content’. Your content is richer because your readers get more value out of diverse perspectives and insights from other industry experts.
Reach new audiences
When you collaborate on content creation, everyone involved in the piece has a stake in promoting it once it is published. Being quoted in an article helps boost your collaborators’ reputations — making them highly likely to share your post on social media. This gives you access to hundreds (or even thousands) of new readers who are interested in the topics your company writes about.
Scale your content, faster
Every marketing team knows that the faster you scale your content, the more you’ll grow your brand. Content creation typically demands a ton of time for brainstorming content ideas, outlining your structure, and researching your content to create an in-depth piece.
When you decide to add collaborative content marketing into the mix, you spend way less time on researching and writing, as expert insights serve as the ‘meat’ and value of the post.
The three kinds of collaborative content marketing to add to your content calendar
Now let’s dive into the main kinds of collaborative content marketing you should add to your content marketing game plan.
The contributor quote from an expert
When you request a contributor quote, you reach out to an industry influencer or expert and ask for their insights on a particular topic.
Say you’re writing about marketing trends for 2022. You might reach out to an expert via LinkedIn or Twitter and ask them to answer the question, ‘What’s one of the biggest marketing trends for 2022?’.
You can then weave their attributed answer into this question into your post. Once the post is up — don’t forget to share, so they can post via their social media accounts!
The in-depth subject-matter expert interview
In-depth interviews are a great way to do a deep dive on a topic and bring in a fresh perspective from someone outside your organisation. When you just create content with your own team, your articles, E-Books, and white papers can begin to seem like echo chambers — repeatedly expressing the same views and failing to bring anything new to your audience.
Subject-matter experts (SMEs) provide in-depth expertise and lend more credibility to your content. The Content Marketing Institute offers some great advice on how to identify SMEs to work with:
- Access source services like Respona, Featured or ProfNet
- Read academic research papers and follow up with authors via their universities
- Look for SMEs quoted on online forms such as Reddit
Keep your outreach short and sweet, let the SME know why you’re contacting them, what insights you are looking for, and when you’d like to arrange an interview.
The panel round-up
A panel round-up involves the selection of several quotes from industry specialists. For example, you may create a panel round up of 30 responses to the question, ‘What’s the most important thing you need to know when building out your tech stack?’.
The panel round-up helps ensure you create a diverse piece of content that offers your reader several perspectives on a topic of interest. Not to mention, it’s one of the best forms of collaborative content to create when you want to drive more traffic to your site — as several experts are likely to share your content with their audiences.
Similarly to when you’re requesting a contributor quote, you should contact your chosen experts via Twitter or LinkedIn (wherever they are most active), and ask them if they’d like to contribute to your post.
Keep your message short — present them with a single question they need to answer and let them know when you’ll need their response. Once your post is live, share it with them via their accounts to let them know.
Want to see this in action? Check out our content industry report here.
Build your authority and boost your reach with content marketing collaboration
Collaborative content marketing is one of the most effective ways to build your credibility and grow your audience fast. Collaborative content moves your company away from stale content that can echo the same viewpoints and helps diversify and strengthen your content.
Curious to find out more about? Book a demo today.