K atie c ouric

CHAPTER 6
STRATEGIC ALLIANCES
reating strategic partnerships can help you scale very quickly. They’re
especially helpful if you have less money to spend to grow your platform or
want to grow using pure organic strategies. They allow you to go where the
audience already exists so you don’t have to start from scratch. You just
need to figure out what it takes to identify and form the right partnerships
that will scale your brand quickly. Generating a big following with the tools
I’ve given you so far can definitely help you stand out and be desirable for
potential partners, but there are many other ways. This chapter will help
you think outside the box.
Alliances have been the key to success for some of the biggest social
media influencers that exist. Julius Dein, magician and social media
entrepreneur, attributes his success to partnerships. He started off with a
“share-for-share” strategy, where he’d share other people’s content on
Facebook and they’d share his content in return. He reached out to as many
big pages as he could and did favors for them. When he was first starting
out, he even paid some to let him feature his posts on their pages. These
strategies helped jump-start the growth of his Facebook page, which now
has 13.8 million followers, as well as his Instagram, which now has more
than 3.2 million followers.
How to Find and Connect with Partners

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Understanding your targeting goals helps you choose the right partners. If
you know which audience you need to reach, the next step is figuring out
the accounts, brands, and people that share the same customers or audience.
For example, if you’re a women’s clothing brand, targeting women between
eighteen and thirty-five years old, figure out who else has that audience—
find existing influencers and platforms that are targeting that same
demographic.
Once you’ve selected the people you want to create alliances with,
you’ve got to be persistent. Even if you get rejected the first time you reach
out, don’t give up. Put yourself in the other person’s shoes and think about
what you would like to receive. Even if someone seems way above your
level of influence, you probably still have something useful to offer. 
Think
about what makes you unique.
Another important tactic is to focus on forging relationships with
superconnectors—people who are attainable and that are connected to a lot
of other people. You go to them because they know the people you want to
be connected with. Find those in your industry that can connect you to the