Today I want to share with you a real life story that demonstrates the power of collaboration in business.
Some think of business as being a very competitive, cut-throat world; I prefer to see it from an abundance mentality – that there is plenty of business for all of us, and that cooperation and collaboration is a far better way to go.
In business, just as in every area of life, it all comes down to building relationships; you never know what might eventuate!
A couple of months ago my business was named a finalist in the Australian Women’s Small Business Champion Awards.
Being a savvy marketer and SEO professional, I really wanted to leverage that as much as I could, so I used it to build a PR campaign.
I’ve never had much luck with obtaining PR for my business, so this time I decided that there was a much better chance of achieving media coverage if I worked together with the other finalists in my local area. Strength in numbers and all that!
There were 6 finalists in the Redlands, so I reached out to all of them about doing a bit of joint publicity.
Of the other five:
- two said they’d be there with bells on;
- one was unavailable on the day we nominated;
- one said she didn’t want any publicity (which left me wondering why she entered the award??!);
- and another never got back to me.
In the end there were three of us who got together for a little photo opp. Interestingly, the other two were business owners I’d previously met. The power of networking and building relationships!
But that’s not the end of my story.
Turns out that Samantha, one of the other business owners, has a good relationship with the Mayor and a couple of local Councillors. Sam went to a networking event that week and mentioned our PR campaign to them, and they were also keen to support it.
As a result, one of the Councillors came along to the photo shoot to add a bit of extra gravitas and kudos … and said she knew a journo at a local publication that was ALWAYS looking for good news stories, and he would love this. Then she INTRODUCED me to the journo, who sure enough, was keen to run our story.
In the end I pitched half a dozen publications and we were featured in FOUR of them – links on the Media page on my business website.
That’s a 2/3 success rate, far better than I’ve ever managed before – so often with PR, your pitches are met with *crickets*.
And how did it all come about?
Through the power of networking, collaboration and building relationships in business!
Would love to hear if you have a story of the benefits of collaboration in business or any other sphere …
