Becoming The Muse

Collaboration: The New Innovation

Collaboration has always been a part of our tradition and culture, it is one of the guiding principles behind Ubuntu, where success is a group project, I am because we are. There is a Shona Proverb: Chara chimwe hachitswanye inda which translates to a single finger cannot crush lice.

The modern world (read that as capitalism) has a tendency towards pursuit of individual excellence. Entrepreneurs get a lot of recognition, and one commonly runs into startups with groundbreaking creativity and innovation, some make it in the rat race others fizzle out, while others are not as they seem, beneficiaries of undisclosed support, but thats another story altogether.

If you have been part of startup project or even as a blogger you will find situations that require you to occupy several roles and acquire several skillsets for everything to gel together.

Sometimes, instead of trying to do everything by yourself you can leverage your connections. For content creators collaboration can also result in a significant boost in impact, reach and relevance.

The wise rule of entrepreneurship should be: Collaboration is the new innovation

How can content creators collaborate?

•Guest posts
-content is submitted to be published on another platform or blog that is not yours directly.

•Co-Created Content
-content creators actively work together to create content which can be in the form of collaborative storytelling, Question and Answer type interviews and research, or creating followup or reaction content based to each other’s content.

•Social Media Sharing and Commenting
-an overlooked form of collaboration is in simply clicking that share button to distributing content to different interaction circles, who might otherwise not have encountered it and a well thought out comment could just be inspirational– some of my posts spin-off from the comment sections.

Challenges in content creation collaboration

Its not without its challenges which include;
•Creative differences and work ethics
•Compatibility and personality clashes
•Synchronising Schedules
•Communication Breakdown

Despite the challenges, there’s a lot of benefits that come with collaborations, from increased audience reach to creation of fresh and engaging content one would not have considered by themselves.

For those in the know, collaborations also offer a valuable resource in the form of backlinks – if you are not familiar with SEO it might not seem like much; having a link back to your content but in some circles backlinks are a coveted resource sought out, paid for and even hacked for; as the more backlinks a website accumulates the more likely it will rank on search engine results page as search bots treat it as well referenced.

Let me leave you with some collaborative poetry created with fellow content creators:

You can check out some of the guest posts on my blog on the button below;

Its time to collaborate.

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