Lisa Barone wrote an intriguing article for Small Business Trends called Build Your Business By Promoting Competitors.

Thanks to social media, you can’t really ignore your competitors like you used to. I mean, you can, but it’s a lot more obvious that that’s what you’re doing. You’re both on Twitter. You’re both on Facebook. You’re both using the same tools and communicating in the same space to a very similar group of people.

Here are some examples she gives where businesses can join forces:

• “You can work together to organize a block party where all the local businesses on the street stay open late to encourage sales.”
• “If you’re a local hardware store, you can partner with the other hardware stores in the area to raise money for Habitat for Humanity while building your own brand awareness.”
• “You can join together to hold one mega benefit instead of a handful of smaller, easier-to-ignore ones.”
• “You can fight together on important industry issues.”
• Create a Targeted Referral System: “By creating a good relationship with your competitors, you devise the perfect referral system for the both of you.”
• Learn Their Strengths and Weaknesses: “By monitoring and scrutinizing their movement, it helps you make smarter choices for your own business.”

Read the whole article.

So what do you think…does this apply to your business, organization, or blog? If one applies this to the blogging world, for example, I have found that bloggers that pair up to do say, a blog carnival or a meet up, do better than if they act alone. Certainly an organization in one town that is doing similar to work another nearby can find ways to work together. On Twitter designers get together for chats via #DCTH – that’s another way of sharing with your competition, sharing via Twitter chat.

Can you think of example where working together might not work? What has been your experience with your competition?