, When I first started getting into business, I found my first mentor to follow through Google, I started listening to his podcast and there I found my second mentor who was a guest on his show. He also had a podcast and guess what I found, my third mentor through his podcast.

Eventually, as many new entrepreneurs do I joined B-school, and guess how I found it....from hearing about it on a podcast from one of the affiliates. One thing that I always admired about these businesses I follow is how instead of competing with each other, they join forces and make long-term content together.

Just like in music when you discover a new artist from a song they did with someone you already follow, the first few mentors and programs I joined were all because I saw a person on someone I trusted blog, video, or podcast. They effectively created a little network or web of experts. So when I really started growing guess what I did.......got on some podcast (Google me you'll see all of the shows that come up).

Recently I noticed that people have started doing more lives, summits, and events together and stopped creating long-term content, but the problem is once the live ends or the summit wraps up no one sees that content until you do the next thing. You'll notice I've done fewer of these types of events this year, I realized they may be good for the moment but a week, a month, a year later they go away, unlike those podcasts that are still out there today attracting new audience and opening up new people to more new people.

So when did we stop being on each other podcasts, when did we start only doing short-term collabs, when did people stop taking a look at the true long-term ROI of these events? (I have my theories but I'll save that for another week)

This week let's talk about the real reason you SHOULD be doing more long-term collabs

• continuously gets you in front of new audiences
• help you create a long-term searchable online footprint where people can see all the great places you've been (did you google me yet 😉 ).
• Shorten the buying timeline because you are being found through another trusted source
• Reduce your business dependency on Social Media, because you are getting traffic from your collabs audience
• Saves you a ton of time building your audience

Now that we know why, let's talk about how to make these collabs happen.

• First start with who you know: who do you know with an overlapping audience, who do you know with a blog, podcast, or YouTube channel, who do you know that regularly engages their audience?
• Next (this is the scary part) PITCH THEM!!! To help you out here's a link to one of my favorite podcast episodes on the 10 biggest mistakes I've received in podcast pitches (https://youtu.be/VEgyRWpATUY?si=mbYaQURtfGSI6Sns) . Just DON'T do these things and you'll be fine.
• Third Follow-up, most people are busy and don't respond the 1st or 2nd time. Make sure you follow up a few times before giving up.

What to Write About this week:

This Say Something Saturday (I missed Friday this week) I want you to say something about being on someone else platform.

Of course in SEO Assist we have tools to help you with these pitches and follow-up https://seoassist.com/backlink-resources/, so this week say something to someone else send out 5-10 to be on someone's podcast or guest blog. Start creating those Collabs that last forever and help attract the audience that you need.

SAY Something Song of The Week

This week's song is of course a collab, this one rocked the 2023 Grammys last year when DJ Khaled just how powerful collabs can be with his performance of God Did with Jay-Z, John Legend, Lil Wayne, And Rick Ross.

https://open.spotify.com/track/2sOj9vyd6yiss9W1IK6chU?si=b3a475fc5f6c4533

It was an amazing sight and true motivation to go out there and build your table of greats with Powful Collabs

Upcoming events:

We have a few local events coming up that you'll definitely want to check out

• The 3rd Annual BPA Summer Social For Podcast & Content Creators, Sunday July 28th Brooklyn NY https://www.eventbrite.com/e/the-3rd-annual-bpa-summer-social-for-podcast-content-creators-tickets-893970418587?aff=oddtdtcreator

That’s it for this week. Have fun pitching this week and yes I welcome you to send a pitch my way if you're interested on being on the GGV Podcast (just make sure you've watched that Pitch episode I shared above LOL)

Enjoy your week and CREATE great CONTENT COLLABS.

Akilah