How to leverage joint opportunities in your business

There are several tactics you can use in the online space that will allow you to commingle audiences with other leaders in your industry or niche.

This is an incredibly powerful way to grow your audience, because with each of these tactics you’re exposing yourself to a whole new audience who has potentially never heard of you before.

Let’s take a look at the top 3 ways you could be commingling your audience with a joint partner, giving you the potential for huge results.

3 Ways to leverage joint opportunities

1. Guest posting

Guest posting is incredibly underutilized.

Are people too lazy? Do they not like to write? Do they “not have the time”?

I’m not sure what the reasoning behind it is, but between May 2013 and May 2014 we found the time to submit over 23 guest posts to blogs within our industry and niche – that’s nearly 2 per month!

This helped us increase our email list subscribers by over 300%: we went from about 5,000 to over 18,000 in that same time period.

How did we do it?

Well, I created a step-by-step guide on How to request to guest post, but to put it simply, we just sat down and did the work: We researched blogs we wanted to guest post on, and then we started pitching ourselves to them.

Guest posting played a major role in our growth, and without these opportunities, we wouldn’t be where we are today.

When you guest post on someone else’s blog, your content is put in front of a whole new audience who has potentially never heard of your before, plus you’ll get a “backlink” to your site – good for both traffic and your Google rankings.

2. Guest podcasting

Same idea here as with guest posting.

Are there podcasts in your industry or niche that are reaching an audience similar to yours? If so, start making a list of these podcasts, and then, reach out and see if you can be a guest.

The more people who hear about you, the more likely you are to increase traffic to your site and gain exposure for your brand. And the more traffic you have on your site and exposure you have for your brand, the more likely you are to continue to grow your audience.

In fact, when John was featured on Pat Flynn’s Smart Passive Income Podcast, we were able to track hundreds of email opt ins and tens of thousands of website visits directly to that joint opportunity.

Don’t underestimate the power of sharing your message through others’ platforms.

3. Online Summits

An increasingly popular way to share information online is to host (or be a part of) an online summit.

What is an online summit?

An online summit is where a host brings several experts together online – and it can be either recorded and released over a few weeks, or it might be live and span just a few days – and has them share their experience and expertise with those who have opted in to participate.

Online summits should be focused in their topic, so for example, you might see an online summit that is all about email marketing, or about leveraging relationships to grow your network.

Oftentimes online summits are offered for a very low price to the viewer (and sometimes they’re even offered for free), in hopes that those who attend the summit will take an upsell offer that is put into play either mid-way through, or sometimes at the end of the summit.

The reason why online summits are so powerful in terms of leveraging joint opportunities will vary depending on whether you’re a participant in the summit (one of the experts), or the actual host.

As a participant, you have the opportunity to share your knowledge with the summit attendees (so this could be great exposure for your business to a wide audience who doesn’t know you yet), and you also have the opportunity to get to know the host of the summit, along with the other presenters.

As a host, you have the opportunity to grow your email list by potentially huge numbers because oftentimes you’ll be asking your presenters to drive traffic to your summit opt in page (again, exposure to new audiences for you), plus your business name will stand behind the entire summit, which could mean a lot of attention for you.

In either case, you’ll be taking part in a huge opportunity to build strong relationships with the host, and the other participants (all while exposing yourself to a whole new audience with the attendees).

We’ve just wrapped another section of The Fire Path book, which covered several strategies you can use to help grow your audience.

Next up? You got it: we’re going to dive into ways you can start monetizing your business, and we’re going to start with monetizing through affiliate relationships.