Strong partner engagement is an important ingredient to a successful EcoMap. This article offers suggestions on ways to engage your partners.
Having strong partner engagement will take your EcoMap to the next level. Partners should be driving traffic to your site through cross-promotion while also contributing to your Platform being a source of truth with current, fresh content.
The first step to engaging your Ecosystem Partners is making sure you know who they are! What organizations and individuals have shared interest in the goals of your EcoMap? What other organizations have audiences that can benefits from your EcoMap? Start by making a list. Track your outreach and engagement requests so you know who you've asked what and when to follow up.
Strong partner engagement looks like...
- Partners linking your EcoMap from their websites, newsletters, and social media accounts.
- Partners claiming their Organizations and Resources. (Share this article with them explaining the process).
- Partners incorporating the platform into their workflow and leveraging the features... more on what this looks like below.
What you can do to promote strong partnership:
- Make your platform a place with a clear goal and good content that you grow and maintain so that using and promoting it is a no-brainer for your partners.
- Be a good partner to your partners! Cross-promotion requires reciprocity. Be sure you're highlighting and promoting your partners as well!
- Solicit and incorporate user and partner feedback to continually improve the experience.
- What questions does their audience ask them all the time? Leverage EcoMap features to help with answering these questions.
- What questions does their audience ask them all the time? Leverage EcoMap features to help with answering these questions.
- Be an active Admin by regularly reviewing verifications and user-generated assets.
- Make it easy for your Partners to promote your EcoMap by providing them with Partners about blurb(s) and visuals
- For inspiration, check out how Panorama Global has curated a stellar Partner Toolkit for their EcoMap.
- Encourage your Partners to be active participants in growing and maintaining your EcoMap.
- Leverage the Guide Manager permission for Partner contacts to create their own Guides.
- Encourage them to create public Lists of curated resources for their audience-- no special permissions required.
- Host webinars that highlight how your EcoMap can help Partners and how they can get involved.
- Promote your EcoMap at in-person events registering users and engaging Partners 1 on 1.
Ecosystem building is a team sport! Engage your partners and you're guaranteed to succeed. 🏆