30 Ways to Leverage Other People’s Platforms (OPPs) To Increase Awareness, Credibility, and Revenues
Free advertising: How authors, entrepreneurs, and brands benefit from the reach of OPPs
Pumping out more (“owned”) content, blowing their own horn from their own platforms makes people wonder why they aren’t getting more attention. That’s the definition of insanity.
Trust is the oomph factor of “earned” media, thanks to the invitational nature of hosts sharing their platforms as known, respected entities. Too many entrepreneurs, authors, coaches, consultants and business people fail to take advantage of wonderful opportunities in readily available coverage.
What’s more, many, enamored by the new digital media of social media and podcasts, which should absolutely be part of a promotional campaign, make a monumental mistake by completely neglecting traditional outlets of radio, television, and print media.
Why don’t more people take advantage of opportunities for free publicity?
Maybe these activities are just out of their comfort zone. But that doesn’t seem like a very good excuse, does it?
So, what does it take to reap results? Anecdotally, one tweet generated a $50k gig for a writer. Granted, it was from an established network connection. The moral of this story?
1) Develop and nurture your network as a regular habit, and
2) Get out there, start promoting, and never stop.
Reasons to create a promotional campaign:
1) Free advertising
2) Trust factor
3) Broad exposure
4) Build new relationships
5) Coverage you couldn’t afford to buy
6) New prospects and customers
I’ve curated advice from a broad variety of experts for several years now, diving deep into how to take advantage of other people’s platforms. Peruse my collection of thirty platforms for your own inspiration. Then share your message out to significantly larger, new audiences and find new revenue streams, while you drop breadcrumbs back to your site, blog and social media accounts.
All for zero, zip, nada cost (except for a couple with small fees).
1) Interviews
Don’t hesitate to reach out to local and national print, radio or television media for interviews to broadcast your message. Media are always looking for news stories. Take Brian Dean’s free PR course to learn how to create a report that media will eat up.
Research podcasts in your niche and send pitches to speak to their audiences. Media publicist and author Joanne McCall gives her best advice to prepare for interviews in this video.
2) Guest Posting
Author and book coach Josh Steimle attributes $2 million in sales to his articles in Forbes. Choose synergistic bloggers to approach and offer guest posts. Pitch local newspapers, trade publications in your industry, and even national press when you feel you have something of value to their audiences. Want to know how he did it? Read Steimle’s advice about his journey and how you can do it too.
3) Joint Venture and Co-opetition
Collaborate with others, including those in your space, to isolate niches among would-be competition, create courses, materials, webinars, or articles. Melody Wigdahl of PLR of the Month Club taught a workshop to encourage entrepreneurs to work with partners to create and sell PLR (private label rights) digital products on the WarriorPlus sales platform for modification and resale by their customers. Copywriters, for instance, might partner with webmasters and graphic artists.
Align with others providing services and/or software packaged as solutions. A media buying service may work with the same team of fellow vendors across clients to provide pay-per-click advertising, fulfillment (product shipping), video production, and printing. When one of these vendors gets a prospect, they bring in their proven “team” of friends, expert vendors who continue to work well together.
4) Embedded Partnerships
Develop partners who resell your products and services within their offerings. Done successfully, you may not require more leads outside these programs. Joint venture expert Charles Byrd enjoys having his coaching services embedded in mastermind programs of other leaders, such as author and sales trainer Grant Cardone’s. Byrd has said that one Zoom call of 57 participants, members of someone else’s program, yielded 2 new joint ventures and 3 new coaching clients.
5) Course Platforms
The largest course platform, Udemy, is home to 57 million students. Offer a free course or one for as little as $14.99. Scott Paton has had 150 courses with 415,000 enrollees. It’s easy to do the math and see his rewards. Watch his 4-hour free course about course creation on Udemy.
Not everyone wants to host courses on someone else’s platform, but imagine the exposure just one course might offer, free or paid. Think of it as a breadcrumb to your other content as well as another source of income. Coursera and Discover for Teachable are just a few more platform choices that list courses publicly.
6) Medium Platform
Medium’s site, ranking #277 in the U.S. with 145 million monthly views, presents another top platform to attract followers, prospects, and customers. While you can post articles in your own profile, a proven strategy to speed up the increase in readers (and revenues) is to submit posts to various Publications hosted within Medium’s environment.
I counted 34 publications that Niharikaa Kaur Sodhi has written for over the last 2 years, accumulating 16.5K followers. Ayodeji Awosika grew his email list to 35k and makes a 6-figure income from Medium. Take his 5-day Medium course by email.
7) In-person Speaking Engagements
Professional speaking coach Pete Vargas of AdvanceYourReach.com says that stage is the fastest way to get your message out to the world. Make deeper connections face-to-face, important for coaches, consultants, leaders, nonprofits, and authors. Public speaking gives prospects, fans, and donors opportunities to get better understanding.
People like to do business with people they feel they know. Speakers also relish reactions of live audiences and meaningful, personal, conversational interactions that follow. Find 1,000s of free stages in Pete’s Ultimate Stage Guide for free and how much you should charge.
8) TEDx Talk
Speaking coach Kit Pang tells how his TEDx talk (currently with 12k views on YouTube) changed his career and his life in a free training and continues to reap awareness and reactions to this day. Apply to speak at a TEDx event. As a new revenue stream, both he and Frank King, another coach and TEDx speaker, talk about how TED talks propel $5k speaker fees. Nice payday for a 45-minute speech.
9) LinkedIn Posts in Groups
After you have joined groups in LinkedIn, you’ll notice when you submit a post that LinkedIn will suggest groups you have joined for those posts. Groups tend to be special interest, so recently it recommended I submit a post to a targeted group with 14,000 members. One suggestion, one click, and I noticed a significant increase in reactions and new eyes on my content.
10) Facebook Posts in Groups
Media entrepreneur and publisher Chad Eljisr suggests joining Facebook groups that let you share posts, links, and offers, such as Successful Female Entrepreneurs with 226k members. Easily, there are over 100 of these groups. He and speaker/trainer Ellen Finkelstein have both found success by promoting in these groups. Look for days and rules about promotion. Networking in groups like this can generate new leads and business as well as friendships.
11) Share an Offer in Someone Else’s Webinar, Group, or Livestream
Pete Vargas says that a stage of 75 yields 8 new customers. He found excellent success with giveaways in breakout rooms. Scan YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok for events.
12) Get Featured in Someone Else’s Newsletter
I’ve been lucky to be featured in email marketing and content creation expert Kim Doyal’s newsletter as well as media publicity expert Joanne McCall’s, sharing my links and messages with thousands of potential new partners and friends. Who do you know that might feature you?
13) Trade Email Blasts
Find partners willing to send your email content to their list while you send their message to equal numbers of your list. You’ll probably want to change their copy to use your own tone and voice. It’s a wonderful way to share like-minded audiences.
14) Organize a “Street” Team
Used to market new book launches, “street” teams, or groups of friends, colleagues, reviewers, and businesses, help promote books, events and reviews to their audiences. Create a campaign with swipe materials, an affiliate program, and a schedule for posts. Share preview copies, perhaps in PDF form, with your team with lead time for reviews. Rohit Bhargava, author of the Non-Obvious series of books, shares his strategy.
15) Affiliate Marketing
Create your own affiliate program for your products and services. As you talk to colleagues, tell them you are willing to share revenues when they promote them. Use a software program to generate affiliate links, report credits earned, and pay partners, or do it manually with links you create in your Google Analytics account.
Join other affiliate programs, not only to make money, but also to build relationships and create partnerships. Add a Resource Page like affiliate expert Matt McWilliams’ to your site to promote favorite products you use and recommend as another revenue stream.
16) Virtual Book Tour
During the pandemic, no one could promote their new book by going to bookstores and signing books. Virtual book tours were the answer and continue to expedite launches. Ask bloggers, podcasters, and YouTube, Instagram and TikTok influencers in your niche to review your book. Check out Reedsy’s free list of 250 book review blogs.
17) Networking Groups
Find networking groups in your industry, synergistic ones, or ones you serve, such as JV Insiders Circle or Speakers Playhouse from Entrepreneurs Rocket Fuel.
18) Local, Regional Networking Groups
Join or host a MeetUp. Go to local or regional Chamber of Commerce meetings. Search for an entrepreneur group in your area. Just Google “best networking groups” in [geographical area]. Take lots of business cards. On Zoom calls, send private messages to interesting participants you’d like to connect with at a later time.
19) Book Signing
Go to book signings for books that intrigue you as ones you’d like to promote and to develop relationships with other authors for cross-promotion.
Self-publication makes it easy to knock out your own book. Work with bookstores to schedule book signings for your own writing. Ask family, friends, and colleagues to attend. Promote to your list, blog, and social media.
20) Summits
Virtual and in-person summits are a collection of speakers with one or more organizing hosts. You may already be familiar with some in your industry. If not, do a Google search on virtual or in-person summits in [blank] industry. In-person events offer that face-to-face and audience interaction that is wonderful feedback. Virtual summits don’t require the time and expense to travel, but can definitely be worthwhile for exposure to a new audience and new connections.
Your interview with hosts may be live or recorded. Evaluate costs and requirements to participate. Some ask for speakers to pay a fee to help with emailing and event hosting costs. You’ll want to promote to your own list and followers. The audience may get the live events for free and pay for recorded sessions. Here’s one source for speaking engagements. Sign up to be a speaker here.
21) Giveaways
Coaches Kathryn Calhoun and Jennifer Dunham secured gifts from 40 entrepreneurs in their Best Year Yet Giveaway. Even though the event is over, you can see the contributors and their free offers, such as books, courses, videos, free coaching, and more. Each participant collects email addresses of interested members and uses landing pages to share their paid products and services along with free downloads of the giveaway. Many events are annual, so ask presenters about future opportunities. You might want to create and host your own giveaway for all participants to share.
22) Community Cohorts
Join a community cohort to expand networking opportunities. Members may be able to share content for cross-promotion. Many communities are built around courses and other programs. Some are free; some paid. LinkedIn has “engagement pods,” such as the Game of Content group, where members like and comment on each other’s posts. But be sure to research cohorts to make good choices for the kind of reactions that get generated.
23) Communities
Twitter has groups called Communities which might be good for networking. Writing Community is one. Marketing Brew, by the folks from Morning Brew, is another. Notice invitations from experts to Clubhouse, Mighty Networks, Discord, and Slack, which may provide better networking opportunities in your favorite niches.
24) Social Content Sharing Sites
MissingLettr is a platform with 30,000 content creators who schedule and share posts for other members to repost. Members have reported a noticeable lift in shared messages. Add to your own content mix with curated pieces you find that fit your style. While MissingLettr offers a free as well as a paid service, don’t hesitate to look for other curation services.
25) Interview Others
As you interview others for written, audio, or video content, ask interviewees to share what you create. Write and prepare suggested email copy and social media posts for them to tweak and post to promote your interview to their audiences. Ask for the dates they plan for their posts.
26) Quora
Establish your brand, as author and digital marketing expert Neil Patel says, “as an authority in your niche or industry” by answering questions on Quora, a platform with 300 million visitors. Search for questions in your niche — or another one. Niharikaa Kaur Sodhi developed a nearly 60k following with 322 answers and moved on to other platforms a year ago. But her answers are still live and it offers a sign-up to her Substack newsletter. More breadcrumbs.
27) Comment
When you see posts that you appreciate, add thoughtful comments to begin to build relationships with the originator and fellow commenters. This is a proven way to get the attention of prospective connections you want to make and their audience you want to appeal to.
28) Selling Platforms
Etsy and WarriorPlus are two types of selling marketplaces to consider. Etsy is perfect to sell templates for marketing and planners with 375 million viewers each month. WarriorPlus’ 100 million monthly viewers choose affiliate programs from digital businesses and online marketers to promote. Etsy charges small posting fees for each product while WarriorPlus charges credit card processing fees.
29) Collaborative Work or Survey Post with Shoutout to Collaborators
Marketer Josue Valles created a PDF from a survey of 70 colleagues answering one question, “What’s the Book That Most Impacted Your Career?” His LinkedIn post where he shared the results yielded over 1,352,000 views and demonstrates the power of his collaborators who shared their combined efforts with their connections. Hopefully, this will give you some inspiration. BTW, his inspiration was finding that question on Quora.
30) Ask Your Network
Medium expert Ayodeji Awosika uses manual outreach to ask others to repost his content. A mite labor intensive, but it bears results. Set a goal of direct messaging or email 100 people a day. Build relationships by commenting or sharing their posts.
My best advice and strong recommendation: Take some time to develop a full-blown campaign that leverages other people’s platforms.
What could it mean for you to be on another podcast once a month or every other week? Consistently.
But wait, there’s more…
With the rage of ChatGPT’s AI writing tool, I thought I’d give it a whirl to see what it could find on this topic. I’m delighted to share 12 more ways to leverage other people’s platforms:
1) Guest host a Twitter chat
2) Guest teach a class or workshop
3) Participate in a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything)
4) Take part in a Q&A in social media, such as Facebook or Instagram
5) Join a virtual panel
6) Takeover an Instagram account or Facebook page for a day
7) Contribute to a community forum
8) Publish a book or ebook with an aggregator
9) Write one chapter as a guest in your industry
10) Collaborate on TikTok
11) Contribute a case study
12) Participate in a virtual reality experience hosted by a creator or platform
Curious to learn more about ChatGPT? Watch as founders of AI Summit Club, marketing coach Denise Wakeman and copywriting expert Andy O’Bryan teach the power of the prompt.
Want more tips? Grab my Dream Networking program where I share methods used by successful entrepreneurs, some surprisingly simple, to build their businesses as they develop the right connections.
Are you considering advertising to grow your audience? If so, take a very targeted approach. Digital marketing strategist Kim Doyal spent $100 to sponsor a newsletter issue by Josh Spector, a popular newsletter coach. At the time Josh had 14,000 subscribers. Kim was delighted with the results: 46 new subscribers, plus an important new connection, saying she’d pay $.46 all day long to acquire pre-qualified subscribers. Always seriously consider the source. How tightly aligned are the audience to your perfect prospect profile?
Do you have a favorite way to use other people’s platforms? Is there something here that resonated with you that you might try? I’d love to hear it. Please share in the comments.
Get more of my tips and stories in my Medium lists.