If you’ve started your blog with the intention of growing and making money from it, it’s important that you’re constantly looking for new easy to improve and branch out to a bigger audience. For small bloggers, it can be quite difficult to find your place with your audience, but it’s out there, and all it takes is a bit of growth before you start to get the recognition you deserve.
Similar to many social media strategies, one of the best ways to grow and improve your blog is to connect with other bloggers. There are a number of great things to be gained from connections and collaborations, and you would be missing out on them if you neglected your opportunities.
Greater exposure
The first main benefit that you would be getting from collaborations and other networking is exposure. Your collaboration pieces aren’t just going to be shown to your usual audience, as they’ll be featured on the collaborator’s blog. This means that you’re not only showing your audience your content but the audience of a similar blogger. This is your chance to gain a large chunk of new readers, and it’s important that you do your best to ensure that your debut for this new audience is something you can be proud of.
Of course, pieces like this benefit the writer and the reader alike, as the reader gets to learn about another blog that they may be interested in – and the writer gains a larger audience as a result.
Increased credibility
The size of your blog will dictate your overall credibility, and to new readers – they might not have total trust in what you have to say. Everything you write will be seen with the same amount of credibility, and until your blog grows it’s going to be quite limited. Having less credibility can make it difficult to gain new readers overall, which is where a lot of small bloggers tend to struggle.
However, collaborating with better-known bloggers, or even other small blogs can help to increase your credibility. Readers who trust your collaboration partners might find your work to be more credible if you’ve been trusted to collaborate. Even short collaborations can help the credibility of your blog overall, so consider taking up collaborative offers as much as possible.
With that said, there are, of course, possible downsides to collaborating with other blogs, and it’s important that you’re fully aware of who you’re collaborating with. If you collaborate with controversial figures, your credibility might decrease overall. You might be seen as okay with the actions and words of the other blog owner, so getting more views and clicks isn’t always going to be a good thing – especially if you’re going to alienate your existing readers in the process.
A new audience
When you’ve already got an established audience, it can be difficult to branch out to new topics and interests that you want to talk about – and many blog owners might feel like they’re a little trapped in the niche that they’ve created. Collaborative blogs mean that you’re going to be writing for a new audience, with much fewer restrictions on their expectations over what you’re going to write. This is a great opportunity for you to explore a new writing style, a new topic that you’re interested in, and a new way to attract people to your blog.
There are difficulties that come with writing for a new audience, like finding something that you know they’ll be interested in. When you’ve got an audience already established, you know why they come to your blog, and you know what will interest them. With a new blog, you haven’t experienced what kinds of posts are successful and what aren’t, so it can be quite risky if you don’t do your research beforehand.
Sharing your expertise and techniques
It’s not just about the audiences and gains in popularity, however, as there’s plenty to be gained from working directly with other bloggers. People who have been blogging for longer than you, people who come from different backgrounds, and people with overall different experiences might be able to share some blogging wisdom with you. How they get working on a daily basis, where they find their inspiration, and how they network with other bloggers and partners. All of these things can be great information for getting your blog into new depths, and they’re things that you would otherwise have to learn over time.
You might be better at something that a competing blog struggles with, and vice-versa. It’s nice to compare notes and talk about your creative process, as there’s always something to be learned from others.
Fresh content
Hosting guest posts on your blog means that you’re going to get content that’s completely new to your audience. There’s no guarantee that it will do well with your existing audience, but it might help to draw in more viewers overall and have them stick around to read the rest of what you’re writing. It’s something different, and when it comes to creative endeavors, it really doesn’t hurt to deviate from the course a little. It helps to keep things feeling new and interesting, and when it’s just a one-off, it’s really no harm to you or your audience.
Getting inspired
Working with other people who share your space in the industry can be very insightful and inspiring. It’s not often that you get to see how other people do the same thing as you. You might see their work ethic and feel inspired by it. You might find that their processes resonate a lot with yours, and it could give you the confidence you need to start putting out more content that you were previously unsure about. It’s nice being able to look behind the curtain and see the creative process of other experienced individuals who run successful blogs.
