After attending the Richmond Fellowship Working Together
Committee meeting on January 24th, it got me thinking a lot about
all of the collaborations I’ve had with organizations. And now that I’m NOT Disordered
has almost half a million readers, I feel like maybe now is the right time to share
some advice for new Bloggers and current Bloggers who aren’t as established as
they’d like to be. I won’t pretend to be an expert though; there are so many
Bloggers out there who are doing some incredible work with huge organizations,
but I think that in the Blogging industry, there’s a lot around competition and
tearing one another down in order to climb the ladder and I don’t want to be
one of those Bloggers. Instead, I want to promote the positive impact Blogging
can have on your mental health and encourage others to ‘give it a go.’ I’d love
to see more mental health Blogs out there so that we can spread the word about
the topic in an aim to diminish the stigma around it. Collaborating with
Organizations also provides this opportunity and it has played a huge part in
the success/popularity of I’m NOT Disordered.
So, here’s my tips on how to succeed at achieving a partnership
with a desired organization:
1. Do your research
Before approaching an organization, it’s so important that
you do some research into their history, the work they do, their ethics, and
their target audience. Understanding an organizations history sounds a little
boring and tedious but it can help shape your collaboration request for
example; I recently began training with Barnardos to be a Voluntary Youth
Support Worker and in week one we learnt the history of the charity. In finding
out how the organizations started and the evolvement of their work, I could
better understand how far they’ve come, what their priorities are, and the
services they offer. Learning about the services Barnardos offer gave me some
practical knowledge in case a young person using the service I work in (The Base, Whitley Bay) was to ask me about other support available to them. It also
allowed me the opportunity to ensure that I was working in the right area of
the organization and that there wasn’t another service I’d be more suited to. It
is equally important to check that the organization have similar ethics to your
own. Do you both want to help young people? Are you both focused on the same
subject? Finally, it’s crucial that you recognize an organization’s target
audience and confirm that they match your own otherwise who would be your mutual
audience?
2. Be creative and original
I’ve recently recognized that some organizations (especially
the larger ones in the industry you’re Blogging about) receive numerous amounts
of collaboration requests so it’s important that yours stands out from the
rest. This means being unique, creative, and original in your proposal. Centering
I’m NOT Disordered around mental health but having an interest in fashion and
beauty, I’ve been quite lucky in finding a huge range of organizations to cover
all three topics. I was recently on a phone-call with the Head of Public
Relations for Northumbria NHS Foundation Trust and was asked what sort of projects
I’d like to be involved in. I told him that I’m fairly decent at making a number
of different topics applicable to mental health! I guess that when you think of
a mental health collaboration your mind would immediately go to Mind, Time To Change and Beat but I’ve managed to land collaborations with Oliver Bonas, Northumbria Police, English Heritage, and Cats Protection! I try to pick organizations that are less expected
so that my proposal will be even more original; I mean, Oliver Bonas probably
hear from fashion Bloggers all the time but how often do they hear from mental
health Bloggers?
3. Have a goal
It’s important to decide on a goal; something you’d like to
get from the collaboration e.g. an increase in Blog readers, more Twitter
followers, extra Instagram likes and comments etc. Or more psychological goals
like learning something from it, or improving your trust in services e.g. like
Northumbria Police for myself, etc. But it’s also important to have a goal from
the view of the organization because ultimately, they aren’t going to
collaborate on something that they don’t gain anything from. In my
collaboration with Cats Protection over Christmas 2018, my goal for them was to
increase their adoptions and during the series of partnership posts upon being asked
how new adopters had heard about the charity, there was an increase in the
answer of ‘social media.’ For organizations that are more ‘business’ orientated
it can be more about the opportunity of an increase in publicity. Where this is
the case, it’s important to mention any media connections you have and actual
media appearances you and your Blog have done.
4. Don’t discriminate
Never consider one organization to be more superior than another
or hold more importance for it because there’s a risk that you’ll do a ‘half-ass’
job on any collaboration proposal. If you’d rather have one partnership more
than another then you can’t put your full 110% into it. How can you work your
hardest if you aren’t committed? And organizations can sense this through your
proposal; they’ll know that you aren’t dedicated to the work and will be
reluctant to work with someone who isn’t passionate about the cause. An organization
has to gain something from the partnership, and they won’t in working with
someone who’s more invested in working with someone else.
During this year, there’ll be lots more collaborations on I’m
NOT Disordered – especially in celebration of Richmond Fellowship’s 60th
Birthday!