Capitalize on Cross-Promotion

Do what you do right thoroughly, pray over it heartily, and leave the results to God.

- C.H. Spurgeon

Cross-promotion is simply about utilizing an existing platform to promote a service or product while using that same service or product to promote your service. It allows you to establish yourself with a new or even a broader audience. What occurs in such a situation allows the distributor to extend the message through additional platforms and maintain other platforms for traditional methods.

Let me use the Ministry Mechanic as an example. I use cross-promotion with the Ministry Mechanic blog posts because I post content relevant to the services offered via Life Path Consulting Services and its divisions of Nonprofit Coaching, Ministry Mechanics and Principles in Practice. Although the consulting services may not experience a surge of requests and contractual agreements, posting such content on the blog has allowed me to share with numerous people.

I post Ministry Mechanic on Blogger so it is directly connected to Life Path's Twitter and Rev Bruce's Facebook accounts. My posts get sent out to my Facebook friends when I elect to "share" and I have an RSS feed going into My Notes on Facebook. I also set up an feedburner to have every post on the Ministry Mechanic imported to Rev Bruce's Blog. This alllows me to get Life Path Consulting's expertise regarding faith-based nonprofit and Christian ministry in the grasp of more and more pastors, executive leaders and Christian school principals. In fact, via Google Analytics, I can even determine how many new visitors hit my site and how long they stay as well as what content they view.

I expand the blog's posts and content to include promotion of my latest book of poetry linked to my street ministry work in San Diego. I link to the blog via my e-newsletter via Constant Contact. Also, I use my Gmail to email a preview or small piece of the blog post with a link to the Ministry Mechanic.

As I review the Ministry Mechanic's short-lived success, I can honestly say that it has experienced four times as many visitors than when I started Rev Bruce's Blog for the same initial period. It took Rev Bruce's Blog at least 3 months to reach the point where the Ministry Mechanic is after its intial 30-day period. There are benefits, but don't lose sight of what you are doing here. You want to use your blog, articles, newsletter or tweets to cross-promote what you do well and what you do right, so that you can attract others and make all aware of your special services.