Collaborative Content Marketing for Bigger Impact
What’s the most valuable thing in our culture today? Time? Money? Author and marketing guru Gary Vaynerchuk asserted in a recent podcast, that the answer is attention. Finding ways to get positive attention is even more difficult in our saturated markets. This is especially true in higher education, where the supply currently outweighs the demand, and where institutions are often not well differentiated.
Content marketing is a valuable strategy in our communications and marketing toolkits, and institutions use it in varying degrees from social media posts to blogs to gated white papers. But how can we help our content receive attention in the sea of messages our constituents are exposed to? One powerful, but often underutilized method is collaboration.
Instead of tightly controlling the message, invite other people to be part of crafting it. Reach out and engage others in the project and offer them a benefit for participating. Involving others creates an immediate first audience, as collaborators are also invested in the project and want to share it with their networks. Their enthusiastic endorsement is often more powerful than the attention we could have purchased. Let’s look at two ways to recruit a bigger team that can lead to more attention.
Source Internal (Hidden) Talent
If your marketing or communications team is like most, they have skills and talents that they would love to use, but that they do not have much opportunity to share. You may have team members who are privately photographers, illustrators, podcasters, musicians, or authors, among other things. These are things they are passionate about but they do not get paid to use. Having team members utilize these hidden “superpowers” provides an opportunity for a win-win situation that unleashes their creativity and gets you attention.
For example, the University of Lynchburg needed better ways to market to the international student audience. It is a very fractured market and can be hard to reach, but it is also a market that does not have good sources of information. So, the marketing and communications team decided to try to get international student attention by providing a resource that would establish the university as an expert in global education. The vice president of the unit, Aaron Basko, has authored several books, so he led creation of a guidebook, “How to Impress U.S. Universities,” which provides an inside look at the admissions process for international students.
One team member was an international student herself, so she contributed a chapter with advice from her experience and also reviewed the rest of the book from an international student perspective. Another staff member illustrates as a hobby. He was invited to create a series of illustrations for the book so that it would feel more accessible to students whose first language might not be English. The office manager also contributed through proofing and basic layout.
Involving team members—or other faculty and staff at the institution—in projects like this that give them credit for their interests, passions, and hobbies is a huge win. The Lynchburg team members received publication credits and accolades for their portfolios that go beyond their official job titles. They are excited about the project and happy to share it with everyone in their networks.
Co-Opt Your Audience
Another great technique for getting attention and support for your message is to invite your target audience into the project. Think about how much more likely your audience is to accept your message if they have a hand in creating it. Instead of starting with an audience that you have to convince, you can start with an audience that already wants your project to be a success. This is especially powerful if you can connect with influencers within your target audience and recruit them to help you get more attention.
For the University of Lynchburg book project, one of their most important audiences was international education advisors. Many of these work with government agencies that provide information to students who want to study in the U.S. Another audience was counselors from international schools.
“We decided that the best way to interest these influencers in the project was to invite them to participate as experts,” Basko said. “No one knows the field better or has more passionate about it than this group of people.”
When the book was published, they shared electronic copies with the dozen or so collaborating experts who provided quotes for the book and encouraged them to share copies free to their colleagues and students. Of course, they enjoyed seeing their names in writing and were happy to be part of a project they cared about. They have enthusiastically shared the message with others, and the book is spreading as a resource.
Give Away Value
The collaboration strategy works best when you are giving away something that has real value, whether that is a resource, a scholarship, expertise, or time. When people perceive that you are offering something that you could charge for, but you are not, they are even more likely to seek it out and share it with others. That would be much harder to do if the project was the work of just one person, or had to be paid for by just one budget. But when you collaborate, you reduce the time, effort, and costs for everyone. If collaborators are willing to donate a bit of their skill in return for recognition of their expertise and talents, you can create something of very high value, but at a low cost.
Of course, any time you ask favors that benefit from professional skills or expertise that your collaborators typically are paid for, you should be especially careful to respect the value of their time and intellectual and creative capital. While enthusiastic thank you’s and in-kind generosity can go a long way, always be cognizant of the weight your ask may bring.
In today’s higher education market, where institutions are feeling the pinch and jostling for the attention of students, a collaborative strategy that appropriately recruits both the talent of your team members and the good will of your target audience is a big win. Try this low-investment approach to build a receptive audience for your message and create a “feel-good moment” for your whole team.
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