In a matter of a few months, this website has grown by leaps and bounds. The audience for this blog, as well as the number of people taking my free course, continue to build each and every day.

There are many factors that have contributed to that, but one of the most significant boosts to the growth of this site has come from the partnerships I’ve forged. I’ve been lucky to connect with extremely smart and talented people who have offered me their feedback, support, and promotion of my work.

Partnerships have been invaluable in growing this website and community.

Getting started and getting seen can be tough. But the single best way I’ve found to get past some of the early road blocks and to start getting eyeballs on your content is to find and work with good partners.

This guide tells you exactly how I’ve found and connected with my partners.

Why Partners Are So Valuable

I could probably write an entire post on the value of quality partners, but here are the basics:

Partners bring new audiences. Partners expose you to an audience that you don’t have access to otherwise. Sometimes that’s hundreds of new people, sometimes it’s thousands. But the right partner with the right audience can grow your fan and customer count quickly.

Partners offer social proof. When a partner shares you with their audience, they are publicly endorsing you. Some partners will go above and beyond merely featuring you on their site and actually testify to your greatness. But even if they just share your content, you gain added credibility and authority from partners.

Partners provide insights and feedback. When you work with a partner, you receive feedback on whatever you are offering. Partners will tell you what’s worked with their audience in the past and will give you suggestions for changes that will help you make a bigger impact. Especially early on when it’s hard to get feedback on what you’re creating, this can be extremely important.

The Philosophy of a Strong Partnership

A few things to keep in mind when reaching out to potential partners:

Partnerships are not just about the benefit to you. Obviously, you are looking for partnerships because they provide a great benefit. You need to grow your audience and gain credibility. But that’s only a third of the equation. A good partnership will benefit you, your partner, and your partner’s audience. The stronger the benefit to all parties, the stronger the partnership and the greater the value you will get out of it. The more a partner benefits, the more willing they will be to make sure you benefit, too.

The partner is taking all the risk. More than likely, especially when you’re just starting out, you are seeking partnerships with people more established than you. People who have spent years building and cultivating their audience. By sharing you with their audience, by endorsing what you are offering, they are risking all the work they’ve put into growing their crowd.

If you bomb, it actually doesn’t affect you much at all because you don’t lose anything you already have. Your partner, however, loses credibility with the people they rely on for support. Remember this when you reach out to someone as a potential partner.

Partnerships take time. Consider both of the points above and recognize that it often takes time to build a partnership. If you are unestablished, you need to spend the time necessary for a partner to trust you. You need to spend time ensuring them of the value you provide to them and their audience. And, perhaps most importantly, you need to spend time getting to know them and giving them good reason to actually like you. People who like you make the absolute best partners.

What Makes An Ideal Partner

Consider the following criteria when searching for potential partners:

A large audience. Building a partnership takes time, so make sure you get a good return on that investment by focusing on partners that can deliver a reasonably sized audience. Consider the size of their social media audience, the number of comments they receive on their blog, and their email list size or RSS subscriber count, if those are provided.

That being said, don’t aim for the top of the food chain right off the bat. Pick someone a bit bigger than you, and as you grow, keep increasing the size of your target partners.

A relevant audience. A lot of people look for partners based on the content they create. This is the wrong angle. The problem with that is if you’re producing the same content as a potential partner, then A) you are less likely to offer new and unique value to them or their audience and B) they might see you as competition. While that shouldn’t necessarily eliminate a potential partner, it may be better to search for complimentary partners when you first start out.

A complimentary partner shares an audience demographic with you, but does not necessarily create the same content as you. For example, if you write about healthy food, finding a partner who writes about exercise could be a great match, especially if you can provide content about how healthy food affects strength, endurance, etc.

I create content about building better websites. I don’t look for partnerships with other people doing the same thing. Instead, I look for partnerships that expose me to audiences who want successful websites. Those can be people who talk about how to become better entrepreneurs, artists, writers, etc.

Find partners where you can help fill in a piece of their audience’s puzzle.

How To Find Partners

Okay, so now that you understand what’s at stake, let’s actually find some partners. Here are my favorite ways to find new partners:

Twitter conversations. If you don’t have a Twitter account, get one. Then start following people you admire and who meet the criteria above.

You can follow me here:
Follow @sethleonard

Notice who your potential partners follow, but more so, notice who they interact with. Notice whose links they share. Start following those people, too.

Not only does this create a list of potential partners, but you start to see who is most willing to share other people’s work. If someone only promotes their own stuff, they’re probably not going to be that open to sharing yours.

Make a list of potential partners from the people you follow on Twitter. We’ll cover what to do with that list a bit later.

Twitter lists. This might be my favorite way to find new partners. As you start to build a list of potential partners, pick a couple that would be really perfect for you. People who promote content that is complimentary to what you do. Go their Twitter profile page.

Click on Lists:

Then click on “Member of”:

You’ll then see every list that this person is a member of. Twitter lists can be created by any Twitter user and they group like-minded people together. That means that people listed along with your ideal partners may also be ideal partners.

Find group names that sound like a good pool of potential partners for you. For me, I look for lists like “entrepreneur coaches” or “small business influencers” (again, because I’m looking for the right target audience of potential partners).

Click on the list and then click on List members:

Read the bios of people on the list. Look for those who are serving the same audience you want to reach (a good bio should tell you this). Add potential partners to the list you’re creating.

Websites with guest posts. One of the best ways to get started with partnerships is guest posts. They are lower risks for the partners (as opposed to endorsing a product to buy) and allow you to introduce yourself and your value to both the partner and their audience. Guest posts can then lead to more involved partnerships.

Websites that are already featuring guests posts are more likely to feature your guest post.

Aside from paying attention to the websites of your potential partners, you can also try to find opportunities directly. Do a google search for “guest post” or “guest blog” plus your area of expertise or the type of audience you would like to reach. So I might search “guest post entrepreneurs.” If you write about exercise, you might search for “guest post exercise.”

You’re likely to find either websites with rules for guest posting (which is great, because they’re actively looking for guest posts) or websites already featuring guest posts.

Remember that potential partners might not want to feature similar guest posts, so you can also try following the guidance above for finding complimentary partners. So instead of “guest blog exercise” maybe search for “guest blog healthy lifestyle.” Add relevant sites to your list of potential partners.

Preparing To Contact Potential Partners

You now should have a list of potential partners. Here’s what to do BEFORE you contact them:

Spend time on their website. Look around their website. Take your time and really try to figure out what they’re all about. Spend at least 5 minutes looking around, hopefully more like 15. Set a timer if you have to. The more you know, the better. The less you know will be obvious to who you’re writing.

Read their latest blog posts and their about page.

Think about what their goals are for their website and what they’re looking for to be more successful.

Evaluate the engagement level and size of their audience. Check out the level of engagement on their website. Are people commenting on what they’re creating? Do they have a Twitter or Facebook following? Do they share their email list size (rarely) or RSS subscriber count (sometimes)? Again, you want to make sure they have an active audience large enough to make a partnership worth it to you.

Also consider who is commenting on their content. Are these the type of people you want to reach?

Laying the Groundwork

If you can, interact with potential partners a little bit first. Comment on a blog post or two. Retweet something they posted, or mention how much you like them on Twitter.

Doing so accomplishes two things: First, it puts you on their radar. They see your name, which might help when you do contact them. Secondly, it verifies that you like what they do, so when you write them and tell them how much you admire their work (see below), there’s a proven foundation for that.

Contacting Potential Partners

Once you’ve properly researched and vetted a potential partner, and possibly laid a little groundwork, you’re ready to contact them. If they provide an email address, use that. This will allow you to keep a copy of your message to them. If they don’t have an email address, they should have a contact form.

Try to store every message you send. If you have to use a contact form, save a copy in a text file. It’s useful to be able to see what messages got you a positive response, and it’s also good to be able to copy and paste snippets into new messages.

Also: keep a log of when you wrote each partner. It’ll keep you from writing someone twice, and will allow for follow-ups in the future (more on that later).

Your message to a potential partner should include:

Flattery. Tell them how great they are. People rarely stop reading when you’re telling them how much you like them. Give them a good sentence or two about how much you admire what they’re doing. Hopefully you mean it. Be specific in referencing things they’ve done that you like and why (recent blog posts are good).

An understanding of what they’re about. This is why you spend time on their site, to figure out what makes them tick. If they’re passionate about something, find it and relate to them with that information. If you can find something you relate to from an obscure part of their site, even better. It shows you’re paying attention.

A very quick description of who you are. Tell them who you are and what you do, very quickly. A sentence or two, tops. If you can’t do this succinctly, you should work on being able to do so first.

The value you can offer. Again, this is based on what you’ve learned about them. Use statements like “I see that you’ve been writing about X” or “Your audience really seems to be responding to Y.” Then share how you can deliver more of that.

Remember, potential partners are looking to benefit from this partnership, too. They’re not there to help you. So you better be offering something that enhances their standing with their audience. What you offer needs to create value for their audience and make them look good for sharing it.

If you have a great selling product you can offer them an affiliate partnership, but if that’s not the case, you need to be offering content of great value.

Personality. You’re going to get a lot further if people like you. Don’t go over the top, but as you can, provide bits of humor or your unique writing style.

References to past work. Don’t give them a list of everything you’ve done, but give them the option to check up on you. Write something like “You can see my writing style here” and then provide a link to your site. If you’ve done other guest posts or partnerships, point them to that. Again, keep this part short (one or two links).

Keep it short. Everyone’s busy. Keep the whole email as short as you can. I know it’s a lot to cover above, but try to keep everything to a sentence or two. No one wants to read a page long email from a stranger. Get in, make your points, and get out. Thank them for their time.

Next Steps

If you’re lucky, you’ll hear back from a number of the people you write. You’ll then need to build and foster a relationship with them and iron out the details of a mutually beneficial partnership.

That’s the time to give your very best. Don’t save your most valuable content for your own site. Instead, share the best you’ve got with your partner and their audience. Doing so will bring more people back your way.

But don’t expect to hear from everyone. People are busy and are working hard at making things happen for themselves.

You’ll know you’re doing a good job of writing if even your rejections get a friendly response. If you’re not hearing anything back at all, it probably means you’re either picking bad targets, or your emails aren’t covering all the points above.

If you get a “no thank you,” write back and tell them that you understand, and to keep you in mind if they see an opportunity for a partnership.

Following Up On Rejection

One thing that I’ve done, both with people who’ve told me that now is not a good time, as well as people I didn’t hear back from, is follow up later with a lower stakes request.

For example, when I ran a contest on my site giving away a free coaching package, I emailed people who I really wanted to partner with but previously got no response or a “no thank you.”

I acknowledged our previous correspondence as well as the fact that I’m sure they’re extremely busy. I then told them about the contest, touched briefly on the value of the contest to their audience, and asked if they could send out a tweet.

Then I actually wrote 3-4 tweets for them, telling them I wanted to make it as easy as I could.

A number of people sent the tweets, and a few of them thanked me for making it so easy for them. Down the road, a handful of those people became partners.

No matter what, continue to promote their work (Twitter is great for this)! Stay on their radar.

Consider asking them to do a guest post for you, or finding other ways to promote them. Show them that you do appreciate their work and that you weren’t just trying to partner for your own benefit. You’ll eventually convince a few of them to come around.

Conclusion

That’s it. Follow the guide above and I guarantee you’ll find partners who will grow your fan and customer base. Use the comments below to tell me your successes, or other tips you’ve found for forging partnerships. And if you’re interested in partnering with me, contact me here.