How to Collaborate with Bloggers

By guest contributor Michelle Edgemont. Photography by Rupert Ganzer.

You’ve made connections with professional bloggers who want to collaborate with you and your business. Congratulations!

As a small business owner, it’s important that your message stays as clear on other blogs as it is on your own blog. Your goal is to target your dream clients and grow your business. At the same time, the professional blogger also needs to keep their posts relevant to their loyal readers, who expect a certain style and aesthetic. Here are four tips to keep your voice true on other blogs, while catering to their readers:

1) Collaborate in a field similar to yours
Make sure that the blogs you’ve decided to search out and collaborate with are a similar aesthetic to your business. If you run a company that designs vintage inspired packaging for beauty products, you wouldn’t want to collaborate with a blog that focuses on modern design. If you sell avant-garde cocktail dresses, you wouldn’t want to write a post for a blog that has a rustic look. If you offer high end goods or services, a blog that caterers to DIY-ers might not be a good fit.

2) Make mention of past work, and what you can be hired for
Even if you are collaborating on an image heavy post, there will always be a few sentences of copy that you can use to spark interest in your business. Use phrases like, “Just like in this DIY project I collaborated with Emily O’Bloggerstein on, the work I design for my clients is bright and colorful,” or “The same design principles I apply to my interior design jobs, like color balance and texture, I used to put together this trendy Fall outfit idea.

3) The post can be different than what your business does, but keep the tone the same
Reach out to professional bloggers who cater to a different product market than your business. For example, I design weddings and collaborate with Say Yes To Hoboken on fashion and home DIY projects. Being able to design for a different product category keeps me on my toes, and keeps my mind fresh. It also gets my business in front of a whole new segment of people, who wouldn’t have otherwise seen me if I only collaborated with wedding bloggers. While the final project might not be wedding based, the look and feel are always the same as the quirky, modern pieces I normally design. Get uncomfortable - it’s one of the most important ways to grow.

4) Keep your writing style 75% you
If you are writing for a blog other than your own, you are there to represent the editor of that blog and to cater to it’s readers. Therefore, try to write the copy for the post in a style that’s similar to that blog’s, while still keeping your own personality. For example: if your blog is full of witty jokes, but the blog your collaborating with is more straightforward, write the copy with a few less jokes and more straight-to-the-point sentences. You want to give the readers a sense of who you are, without turning them off from what they are used to reading on that blog.