Collaboration – The Good, The Bad & The Ugly Part 1

With the challenges that every business faces in these economic times, it’s led to more exciting ways for businesses to grow, survive, continue trading.  All of this requires effective ways to attract more sales and collaboration is just one of those strategies.

Collaboration in business is proving a successful strategy for many, but it can come with its own pitfalls if both/all parties aren’t clear and in agreement on the desired outcomes and milestones along the way.

Collaborate – Share Skills, Resources, Database, Ideas

On the plus side the benefits mean that you can share skills, resources, database and ideas to grow your business.

The first thing you’ll want to decide is what do you want your collaboration to achieve?

• Is it to make more money and generate bottom line results?
• Is it to build your database and gain exposure?  Improve your standing in your market as the expert?
• Are you looking to collaborate with another business to position your business for growth in the future?
• Is it a combination of all of the above?

Define the outcomes that you want to achieve, be specific and put in steps to make sure you measure them against your goals.  This is advantageous to your business for 2 reasons.

First off “People with goals succeed because they know where they are going.  It’s as simple as that.”  - Earl Nightingale.

Secondly, if you’re looking to partner with a “bigger fish”, showing them physical evidence of past successful collaborations will put you in a much stronger position to get a yes.  You can start off small, perfect your model and then look to scale it up with effective collaboration.

Social Media aids Collaboration

One of the great things about Social Media is that it really helps facilitate successful collaborations – or Joint Ventures (you choose the term you prefer).

Let’s take this collaboration with Social Media Week Norwich as a working example.

My business partner Julie Bishop was the light bulb behind bringing Social Media Week to Norwich.  It’s a global event – and I’m so proud to be part of the Norwich team.

After an initial face to face meeting, 4 Companies (GoTo Girls, Bright Yellow Marketing, SocialB and BizRev) agreed to collaborate and to deliver Social Media Week Norwich.  Each of us bringing our own skills and resources to the table.

We’ve all agreed that the desired outcomes of Social Media Week Norwich are:

• To raise awareness of effective Social Media in Business
• Provide real results to the Norwich Business Community in their Social Media Marketing through great content and workshops
• By providing these results and demonstrating good practice we will collectively raise the profile of each of our companies and demonstrate our expertise.

Group Video Conferencing – without the price Tag

Our next meeting was held as a “Hang Out” on Google plus.  We were all able to have a group video chat.  By using Google docs we were able to share documents in the Hang Out and type up minutes.  You can even record your meetings.

It wasn’t long ago that to be able to video conference like that would have taken a lot of time and money to have arranged.  Now it’s just a click of a button on our computers.

Once we established our agreed outcomes we then went about setting our milestones and combining our resources and natural talents.  I’ll take you inside the workings of Social Media Week Norwich next week as we continue to show you exactly how we use Social Media to provide real results in our business.

What experiences do you have of collaborations, is this an area you’d previously thought about but haven’t yet jumped into?  What’s stopping you?  Any questions and comments  – just jot them down in the comment box below