Collaboration: The secret to growing your blog & social media presence

[Or maybe better titled] Your Vibe Attracts Your Tribe

I stumbled onto the power of collaboration by accident but, boy, am I glad I did.

In 2009 I began a “mommy” blog. I was a new mom, alone, scared, clueless, and in need of an outlet. I knew nothing about blogging but I knew I wanted a place to give voice to my life. And then, I got hooked on blogging and I wanted other people to hear my voice and read my words. The more people read my writing the more I wanted them to read. So what was the problem? I had no idea how to spread my ideas. 

Enter collaboration.

I’m not quite sure how I got this idea in my head, but I decided to start emailing blogs that I liked and asking them if I could write a post for them. It was a total bust- no one even responded – but it got me thinking. Why couldn’t I collaborate with others to help us all grow? I had an audience (small, of course, but dedicated and growing!).Why wasn't anyone else interested in working together so that we could both grow and grow and grow!?

My first true realization of the power of collaboration, however, came quite by accident. I stumbled onto a collaborative blog called UrbanMoms. Although I had been turned down so many times before, I decided to send them a piece for their consideration. Guess what? They liked it. They liked it enough that they asked me to write for them.

For the next two years we collaborated - UrbanMoms published my blog (called "Mom Without A Map") and amplified my reach and in exchange, I promoted and represented UrbanMoms and their other bloggers online. This collaboration brought me more traffic, more recognition, and more opportunities than any other single thing I did on my own before or after that. 

Where did the power come from? It came from collaboration! 

I had a group of like-minded individuals in UrbanMoms that supported me. Everyone was talented, hungry and dedicated. All the writers/bloggers (keep in mind we didn’t know eachother personally) commented, retweeted, engaged and uplifted each other. We celebrated and commiserated. We worked together and it was incredibly successful. It probably wasn't until I had stopped writing for UrbanMoms for a few years that I realized that the consistent support of other like-minded bloggers was the cornerstone of my writing, blogging and social media 'success'. 

The internet is noisy place. 

There are hundreds of thousands of voices (some of them very much like yours, if we are being honest) that are trying to be noticed. There are "experts" who tell you that blogging is about a beautiful website and Insta feed. There are a million "how to make money on social media" posts and videos, there are a hundred thousand people all trying to do what you're doing: capture an audience and hold on to them.

So if the internet is a crazy noisy place, then being a lone island, working on every idea alone and putting more effort into a perfect site and Insta feed creating your own good content and supporting the good content of others is exactly the wrong thing to do.

At this very moment, if you want to begin to develop a voice that is heard and cultivate an audience that grows, then you need collaboration.

It's worth saying again: If you want to get noticed online find your tribe (your people; like-minded supporters and go-getters who you can build a mutually beneficial relationship with) and support the heck out of each other. 

This is not the time to horde ideas or go it alone. 

Here’s an old story that many of us have been told again and again – we’re all at war and only the strongest survive. That’s not true when it comes to growing your online presence- cooperation, collective action, and interdependency are the key to success. 

Those who find the greatest success do so by pooling resources, working together, and relying on others to grow, learn, create and ultimately succeed. We are wired to share and nothing proves this more than the power of collaboration.

Ok, so have I sold you on the idea of collaboration yet? I sure hope so because it's the biggest game-changer out there. 

But the trick is, how do you FIND your tribe? How do you determine what you want to ACHIEVE from a collaboration? What are your GOALS? 

Let's talk about that and more in my next post, but first I want your ideas! Have a good collaboration story? Has collaboration changed the way you live on line? Tell me about it in the comments or on any of my social pages! 

[after all, commenting and engaging is a form of collaboration, isn't it?...]

Want to learn more? Visit my Blogging Tips & Tricks tab above (or click here). 

The Mom Who Sits on the Bench

See that bench? It's where I sit. 

Every Sunday my kids and husband go skating and I sit on this bench and watch them. I sit here when my kids take skating lessons as well. And when they're playing baseball and soccer and karate. I sit on the bench when they're at the park and bouncing on the trampoline. 

I'm a ever-present bench sitter.

I've spent my life wishing I could participate in athletics. Believe me when I say I have tried and I have tried hard. I tried soccer and gymnastics and basketball and volleyball. I tried tennis and golf and skating and cross-country. I joined a curling team and failed miserably. I joined cheerleading and didn't make it out of two practices. 

It's not that I have a physical need that does not allow me to participate. It is that I physically cannot keep up. And because of that playing any sport feels like torture to me - it is never, ever fun and it is never, ever easy for me to do anything that requires even the most basic athletic skill. 

If I told you that I've been a runner since I was 19, and then you saw me run, you would laugh. You would think I was joking because I channel a 2 year old who has just learned to walk/run while I'm moving. I always look like I'm about to topple over (and I have, more times than I care to admit). I'm a mess, and yet I have been trying to be a "runner" for years. I've never gotten better, no matter how much I run. In fact, I had a running coach for an entire year and my time and form did not ever improve (that running coach, who I paid for by the way, said he had never had a client who tried less than I did. I can't tell you how demoralizing that was for me). 

If I told you that games like foosball are hard for me because they require hand-eye coordination you would probably not believe me but it's true. I was once on a date at a bar when my date insisted we play foosball. I felt physically sick because I had tried before and knew I was going to be a mess, but I liked him and didn't want to make a fuss. He destroyed me in the game (I don't think I scored once) and then proceeded to go on and on about how he can't stand girls who are too prissy to try. Needless to say we never went out again.

What bothers me is that people, much like my running coach, automatically assume that I'm not trying when I am a disaster at anything that requires athletic skill or coordination. People say "get up and try", "of course you can't play you never try hard", and (my personal favourite) "why don't you put your best effort in?".  But what they don't know is that I do. I try so, so, so hard when it comes to sports and athletics and have tried for so many years. 

Those are just two examples - I could write a novel on the number of times I tried my best at something even remotely athletic and was told it wasn't good enough. 

So why do I tell you all this? Maybe deep down I want some sympathy or something, but I also want to give a bit of a reality check. 

There's a huge shift in expectations put on parents to participate in athletics with their kids. We tell parents they need to be present and active with their children. And, be honest, we judge those parents who are not.