When I played competitive soccer growing up, our club coaches would sometimes share their best players up an age group if they were 
short on numbers for a game. The same rules can apply to digital storytelling.
I often link to competitive blogs, videos and presentations when doing content marketing for my business. You may think that it’s wrong to send your social media followers and blog readers to competitive stories or websites but I see it differently. Here are my main arguments for why you should promote the competition via digital storytelling:
- Focus on growing your market. As a small business owner, it’s in my own best interest to grow my market. If my competition is contributing to the conversation about digital storytelling and B2B marketing, then I feel that it is necessary to share links to their stories with my potential customers and followers. The more that your customers and industry are informed and interested in your services, the better it is for everyone. This leads nicely into my second point about collaboration.
- “Collaboration is the new competition.” This statement has been discussed a lot lately in blogs, keynote presentations at events and social media. What this statement means is that we can no longer work in silos. We all need to collaborate on occasion in order to complete a project or achieve a goal. In fact, I’ve personally started reaching out to other professionals who do the same kind of work as I do in order to find partners for future projects. So, by promoting your competitors, I believe that you are leaving the door open to attract future collaborative efforts.
- Your customers will thank you for it. I often share competitors’ blogs, research and whitepapers with my current and potential customers. If there is data out there that will help your customer to succeed, then it doesn’t matter who the information came from. Yes, there’s a risk that your customer might leave you for the competition – that is always a risk. But if you put the customer’s needs first, you are setting yourself up for success.
Have you ever collaborated with a competitor or like-minded business? If so, please share your story in the comments section below.
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