“No one can whistle a symphony. It takes a whole orchestra to play it.” —H.E. Luccock
Tough this content generation game isn’t it? With increasing numbers cottoning on to content marketing there’s a need for ever more, ever better content to rise above the roar. Don’t lose heart. You do not have to have a corporate-sized marketing budget to win at this game. Look wider and collaborate on what you create and you can produce some awesome content that customers will love you for.
Sands Beach understands the value of working together
A couple of weeks ago Sharon and I were invited to Lanzarote to work with the fantastic Sands Beach Resort and its partners from across the island (see – it wasn’t all just paddleboarding!). Collaboration was the aim – motivating the resort’s staff and their business partners to work together to create really valuable content and continually share this across social media. We talked co-creation, cross-promotion and constant communication – for far wider reach and even better content.
This is a wise and generous approach. Hats off to Sands Beach’s online community manager John Beckley and the team and their wonderful business partners on Lanzarote – we were delighted to be able to contribute, and learned so much too.
Collaboration has built our business
Our Lanzarote trip really inspired us. It has also made us think about the content we have produced over the years here at Valuable Content and the power that a collaborative approach brings. A lot of our most successful content has been the result of wider collaboration. We have reached out for ideas and input from others who inspire us and created even greater content than we could have by ourselves. Examples include:
- Some fantastic guest posts on this blog – like this one on trust-based marketing from Andrea Howe
- Collaborative articles involving a wider group – e.g. Valuable marketing predictions for 2013
- The Valuable Content Marketing book was a real team effort, with tips & stories from many other experts
- The e-book we created last month crowd-sourced ideas on how to get the whole team blogging
- Valued contributions from our VC award winners on their approach – read them here
Collaboration relies on trusted relationships
“In 2013 the most valuable coin of the business realm will be the ability to collaborate, trust, and play together nicely in the sandbox with other human beings.” – Charles H Green, Trusted Advisor
Collaborating means building relationships with others in your field, sometimes even with competitors. This relies on trusting, helping, reaching out to other like-minded people – a far more generous philosophy than the old divide and conquer approach to commerce. But if you widen it out, and work together wonderful things happen.
Sharing the load
“Alone we can do so little; together we can do so much.” —Helen Keller
So when it comes to creating content, remember you are not alone. Share the load, get a bunch of great people to work on something together – other experts, suppliers, even your customers. Your readers will appreciate a wider view, a new voice, different perspectives. Do this and you’ll make your content more valuable, with even better results.
The content creation challenge is hard but you don’t have to do it by yourself. Collaborate and everybody wins.
Who is in your content collective?
We are indebted to these collaborators for all the help they’ve given over the years:
- Our Bristol network; friends such as Bryony Thomas, Iain Claridge, Jim O’Connor, Ryan James, Eli and Toby, Mick Dickinson, David Sloly, Lizzie Everard, David Gilroy.
- From around the world – Andrea P Howe, Ian Brodie, Jane Northcote, Heather Townsend, Terri Lucas, Chris and Mark at Newfangled, Hinge Marketing, RainToday, Ian Sanders, Nenad Senic at Zemanta, Tim LeRoy, Jason Mlicki at Rattleback, Henneke Duistermaat, Richard Dennys, Richard and Sandi at CMS Web Solutions, our fantastic Valuable Content Award winners and of course John Beckley at Sands Beach.
- Even some marketing superstars, befriended on Twitter and no doubt inundated with demands on their time – thank you to Charles H Green, David Meerman Scott, Chris Brogan, and Joe Pulizzi of the Content Marketing Institute for generously contributing your ideas for our content.
That’s our content collective, our ecosystem if you like and we’re so grateful for their involvement.
They help us, we help them – everybody gives a bit and all of us grow.
How about you? Who is in your content collective? Can you collaborate to produce content that helps you all?
Great post Sonja …thank you for all your support. At times it’s difficult to get people to ‘change their chip’ but with article’s like this arriving in their inbox it is only helping to reinforce the principle of working together.
We’ll keep you posted on our progress 🙂
Morning John, and thanks for the comment. Hope it helps too.
I really believe that the business world is changing but I know it’s tough if people have grown up with the notion that to do business you have to keep your ideas close to your chest. Collaboration does not come easily to everyone but it’s a great way to play.
What you are doing at Sands Beach is fantastic – and comes at the right time. You live the predictions that Charles Green and Tim LeRoy shared for 2013 in this post: https://www.valuablecontent.co.uk/12-valuable-marketing-predictions-for-2013/.
New values for a more open world.
Sonja, thank you for your time and support, it helps us to continue in this direction!
You are welcome Juan Carlos. Great to work with you all.
This is a brilliant post. Thank you. You have an amazing gift of putting the right words together to remind us of so much important content we have forgotten and take for granted. Well done girls!
I love content marketers like you. You help and inspire others. And thank you to Sharon for contributing to the first ever Enchanting podcast!
Thanks Rosemary – we’re looking at the sunny weather in Lanzarote with envy this week!
And thanks Henneke – I enjoyed podcasting with you. Hope to meet you in the real world one day soon.