It looks like I hit a nerve with my post Why Would I Possibly Want to Link to My Competition? So over the weekend, I poked around the blogosphere and found a nice post from Steve Rubel, about co-opetition. According to it’s wiki
co-opetition focuses on cooperation between companies in imperfectly competitive markets
Much of Steve’s post focuses on the competition between bloggers for higher rankings – especially those who don’t link back, trying to protect their traffic from similar businesses. Yet, Steve writes:
I have come to the realization that we shouldn’t be competing with each other, but trying to help one another – particularly newcomers from outside our blogger ghetto…
Yes, I so much agree. Sharing and helping one another is what blogging is all about. It’s how blogs have gotten popular and how blog posts go viral.
When similarly competiting blogs share comments, trackbacks, permalinks and list each other in their blogrolls, they both benefit. More importantly, however, the reader benefits.
And, ultimately, that’s why we’re blogging – for our readership. It’s true whether your blog is about gardening, the club scene, politics or your business. And it’s absolutely true if you’re using your blog to promote your business.
As a business owner, you want potential clients to find you. And when then do, you want them to be so interested in what you have to say that they get your feed or join your newsletter list, comment on your posts or contact you directly, etc. All are desired results for small business owners.
And what’s one of the best ways for potential clients to find you? Other blogs, of course. Some readers will resonate with you and buy your services. Some will resonate with blogs you link to and buy their services.
Both are great results. Why?
Because the next best thing to having a gaining a new client is being the one who referred the client to their service provider. Linking is like referring. And when you have links to competition co-opetition that offer a high-quality of service, you get remembered as being the resource for that link. Both by the client AND by the blog owner.
Just remember, the street works both ways. Which is why you want to link to your competition co-opetition. And why you want them to link back to you.
So true, so true.
It’s amazing how a ‘scarcity mindset’ can have us believing that we should hoard, rather than share. I like the term “co-opetition”; it works.
I was on that panel call with Seth Godin, Tim Ferriss, Chris Anderson, and John Jantsch today, and it was clear that those four guys were completely co-operational… it was pretty close to ego-less. More than I was expecting, that’s for sure!
Adam,
With my business, I’ve seen the benefits of being co-opetitive. It just works when everyone can win. And it’s even better when you can win while helping another.
I was on that panel call with Seth Godin, Tim Ferriss, Chris Anderson, and John Jantsch today, and it was clear that those four guys were completely co-operational… it was pretty close to ego-less. More than I was expecting, that’s for sure!
Well I think is totally legal trying to complement your business or your website (a website is a business too actually) with any way of advertise possible, specially SEO publicity I think this one of the most effective and cheap strategies to reach targets.