Want to grow your social media audience without posting more content?
Collaborating with other creators might be the fastest way to do it.
Most people avoid it because they think it’s awkward, complicated, or only for bigger accounts.
But here’s the truth:
A lot of creators are actively looking for people to collaborate with right now, especially within their niche or adjacent ones.
In this post, you’ll learn how to master social media collaborations and turn them into real audience growth.
Let’s get into it.
What is a social media collaboration?
A social media collaboration, also known as a collab, refers to content a social media creator makes with another creator.
It’s an engagement strategy creators have been using long before the internet was even invented. Back in the old days, TV shows, musical artists and even film franchises would collaborate with one another by appearing in each other’s projects.
In modern times, collaborations are used to combine social media audiences on one or more videos.
It can be a huge growth strategy for both creators but particularly for the collaborator with fewer subscribers.
What are the benefits of collaborating with other creators?
Like I said, engagement is the biggest benefit of collaborating with other creators, especially if the creator you collaborate with has a larger audience.
Most social media collaborations have at least two videos: one that’s posted on your account and another that’s posted on your collaborator’s account.
By appearing in one of their videos, your brand awareness skyrockets.
If they put your username in the caption so that it’s clickable, or use the collaboration feature available on a platform like Instagram, their audience will be able to click through to your profile very easily to follow you.
If their audience likes your personality enough, they may even watch and like a few of your videos.
Working with another creator is also an effective way to revamp a dead timeline.
Maybe your videos were popular at one point, but now you struggle to receive a few thousand likes and views. Working with the right creator might just be the thing your account needs.
Combining your content creation budget with another creator’s budget can also help the both of you film a higher-quality, more ambitious video.
Maybe there’s somewhere in the world you want to explore. Maybe you have a project you want to build.
You can easily cover these expenses by combining your marketing budget with another’s.
Social media collaborations are also abundant sources of inspiration. Some of your best ideas will come from the collaborative content you make.
Switching up filming processes and editing styles can also do a lot to reset your brain and keep you from using the same process over and over again with little to no improvement.
A collaboration may even open doors for you.
Maybe the creator you collaborate with is friends with quite a few other creators. Maybe they have important friends in the industry.
Finally, social media collaborations also help you put the “social” back in social media. Many social media creators work alone, and it can get pretty isolating as they spend all of their time filming and editing videos while they grow their followings.
All of these are considerations to make when you’re deciding whether you want to collaborate with another creator.
Examples of social media collaborations
KallMeKris and CelinaSpookyBoo
KallMeKris and CelinaSpookyBoo are two very popular TikTok creators.
KallMeKris has 50.6 million followers and 2.4 billion likes on the platform while CelinaSpookyBoo has 28.6 million followers and 1.2 billion likes.
The two are friends and are, therefore, able to collaborate with one another quite casually.
One of their most popular collaborations included a Try Not to Cringe challenge that earned 54.2 million views, 8.3 million likes, 55,000 comments, 929,900 favorites and 409,200 shares.
It was a simple yet effective collaboration.
Peter Hollens and Whitney Avalon
Peter Hollens is a YouTuber who creates acapella covers for popular songs and musicals.
He often collaborates with other YouTubers. In fact, his most popular video is a collab.
It’s a medley he created of Disney villain songs with fellow YouTuber Whitney Avalon, who’s known for creating the Princess Rap Battle series on YouTube.
Peter has 3.29 million subscribers on YouTube while Whitney has 2.04 million.
Their collaboration, published in June of 2017, has received over 43.7 million views on YouTube.
Alex and Jon and Kat
Alex and Jon are a married couple who make content together, and they often make content with friend and fellow TikTok creator Kat.
Alex and Jon have 2.6 million followers and 210 million likes while Kat has 10.4 million followers and 678.8 million likes.
One of their most popular collabs is a video in which Alex blames Jon’s hispanic “cousin” Kat for getting her a bit tipsy off tequila at Christmas.
This particular collab earned 4.6 million views, 653,900 likes, 1,770 comments, 8,435 favorites and 17,700 shares.
How to find other creators to collaborate with
Create a list of creators you want to collaborate with
This will be your master list.
You can add dream collabs to this list, but know that you should probably stick with creators who are closer to you in follower count.
You should probably stick to creators in your niche and creators in adjacent niches as well to ensure your audiences don’t clash.
Pick creators from every social media platform you have a presence on.
Then, organize your master list in a few different ways. First, separate everyone by niche. Then, arrange those niche groups by follower count.
Focus on creators who have fewer followers, the same followers or a little more followers than you. However, creators with less than 100,000 followers may not receive as many direct messages as you think, so don’t be afraid to reach out to them as well.
You should also consider each creator’s personality and how well you think you’d get along with them.
Choose a minimum of three creators to contact initially. Just be mindful that each creator you reach out to could potentially say yes.
Come up with unique ideas for each creator
Like I said, there’s a potential for each creator you contact to say yes to your collab request.
To avoid creating the same type of content with every creator you collab with (even though this is a valid social media strategy many creators use), come up with unique ideas to pitch to each creator.
The ideas should incorporate their content style. You should also come up with at least one idea for your account and one for theirs so you can each have the collab on your respective accounts.
Reach out to each creator
This is by far the scariest part of this whole process. So, let’s break down a simple outreach template:
“Hi [creator’s name],
I’m [insert the name you want the creator to address you as, usually your first name]. I run [account name], a [channel/page] that covers [your niche as well as topics that you cover].
I’m reaching out in hopes that you’d like to collab with me on a couple of videos. I noticed your [channel/page] covers [niche/topic], which is closely related to my own channels’ niche, so I think our audiences would get along pretty well.
I have a few content ideas we can get started with if you’re interested:
- Idea 1
- Idea 2
- Idea 3
Let me know what you think!
Thanks,
[your name]”
It’s a simple template, but it does a few things:
- It humanizes you by introducing yourself as the name your personal friends address you as.
- It lets the creator know that you’ve done your research on their content.
- It lets the creator know that you have an idea of what kind of content you two should get started with.
The ideas you propose to the creator should take the creator’s content into consideration. In other words, make sure your ideas align with the creator’s content.
As far as where you should reach out to them at, try DMing them on whatever social media platforms you both have a presence on.
You can also resort to email if they have a dedicated email address for business inquiries.
Planning content with your collaborators
Share ideas
Once you find a creator to collab with, brainstorm ideas with one another, or refine the ones you already came up with.
You can go to lunch if you live in the same area. Otherwise, you’ll need to FaceTime, Zoom, text or stick to DMs to brainstorm content ideas.
Keep it casual
Working with other people isn’t always easy.
Sometimes you have two very different working styles as well as completely different approaches to the way you create social media content.
If this is the case, try to keep the planning stage as casual as possible by keeping it in DMs and planning content that’s as simple as possible to create.
Get technical with a project management app
If you and your collaborator want to create more sophisticated videos, or more than two videos, consider moving things to a project management app.
Unfortunately, there are a lot to pick from including Trello, Google Docs, Notion, Monday, Asana, ClickUp and more.
They all work differently, but they all allow you to break your project down into individual tasks then assign those tasks to you or your collaborator.
Use a file sharing app
Consider sharing each other’s footage with one another by uploading it to a file sharing app, like Dropbox or Google Drive.
This will allow each collaborator to access all of the footage you two shot for your project so you can each work on editing videos separately but collaboratively.
Decide where content will get published
As you get to work on planning, recording and editing your content, determine where each post will get published.
Will you each post a tiktok? Will you share images to Instagram? Will you appear on each other’s podcasts posted to YouTube?
Work all of this out before you start publishing so you can each be prepared for each piece of content’s premiere.
Credit your collaborators
When you publish the video, do not forget to credit your collaborators.
Include your collaborator’s username in the caption at the very least.
Instagram has a dedicated feature for collaborations now which you should definitely take advantage of.
Shoot behind the scenes content
Keep the camera rolling even if you aren’t currently filming a shot for your planned content.
You should also take images regularly throughout the filming process of the collaboration.
This will give you plenty of behind the scenes footage to tease your audience with.
Stay in touch
Once every piece of content you planned gets published and the collab wraps up, ask the creator you worked with if they’d like to stay in touch.
As you see from some of the examples of above, some of the collaborations you do have the potential to spark lifelong friendships.
Plus, if you befriend your collaborators, you’ll always have another creator to collaborate with.
Alternatives to partnering with other creators
Join a digital community
If you’re having trouble partnering with a creator by reaching out to them yourself, consider finding a digital community to join.
Look for forums, Discord servers and Facebook groups in your niche that might have fellow creators you can converse with.
Stitch and duet other creators’ videos
You can also stitch another creator’s videos if you’d like to respond to something they said in their video.
This is a technique many TikTok creators use, including Hank Green who often uses the feature to answer science-related questions.
You can also use the duet feature to react to other creators’ videos.
Instagram has these features as well. They’re called remix and sequence.
Request a podcast interview
Podcasts are an integral part of social media. In fact, most podcasts post clips to YouTube, TikTok and Instagram.
If there are a few podcasts in your niche or related to your niche, consider asking them if they’d be willing to allow you to join an episode for an email.
Final thoughts
Teaming up with other content creators is one of the best ways to grow your audience (and theirs).
If you have existing relationships with other creators, those will usually be a good point to start.
Just remember that collaborations need to be a mutual win-win for both of you.
So stick to collabs with creators that have a similar sized audience at first and then work your way up as your audience grows.
