Crowdfunding is probably a term you’re familiar with isn’t it? It’s particularly popular with entrepreneurs who are trying to source funds to kick start a new business idea: they set up a crowdfunding page, explain how much they need to raise and appeal to the masses requesting donations.
Switch the goal of ‘raising funds’ to ‘producing content’ and you have ‘Crowdsourcing’. Essentially it does what it says on the tin ‘sourcing from the crowds’. The beauty of crowdsourcing lies in the fact that it’s an incredibly intelligent way of sourcing information, ideas and inspiration from the ‘crowds’ so you don’t have to produce and in some cases publish the content single-handedly.
In the SEO world crowdsourcing can be used for a number of purposes. The most common for digital marketers is content creation.
How to create a crowdsourced article:
1) Create a themed post that’s relevant to your business, service or product
2) Build a list of relevant influencers, thought-leaders and publishers that you would like to request content from to create your blog
3) Contact your influencers explaining how you would love their expert insight into the piece you are doing. You may want to ask them one or a few questions, but it’s best to keep it short and sweet to encourage collaboration and a quick response time.
4) Use the answers you received to create your piece of content, referencing your sources and sharing on both your and their social channels
Let’s put it to the test. I crowdsourced on a micro level from the team at Cariad Marketing on the following topic:
1 reason from 3 experts on why crowdsourcing is great for SEO
I created a list of people within the team I wanted an answer from and sent an email highlighting my work and the question I’d like them to answer.
The response I received from the Cariad team was fast, insightful and varied, giving me a rich stream of content I could include in this blog to further emphasise the benefits of crowdsourcing for SEO.
“Producing a high quality article with industry insight lends itself to gaining natural backlinks from readers and also those who were involved in the crowdsourcing. Even if they don’t provide a backlink, they may tweet it to their followers getting your brand out there even more.” Ryan, Digital Marketing Manager.
“Creating a piece of content produced by the mouths of many as opposed to one is going to give much more weighting to an unconverted audience who will be looking to more than one source for reassurance. By crowdsourcing an article you’re giving your audience less of a reason to shop around and more of a reason to visit your website.” Emma, Client Services Manager.
“I loved the Ladbrokes Ladies Day Outfit Challenge a crowd sourced SEO piece to generate brand awareness through social media. The brand were able to place themselves at the heart of Ladies Day conversations by creating a social voting platform to collate the best Ladies Day outfits as created by bloggers and voted for by their readers. The brand contacted a range of fashion bloggers inviting them to take part by uploading their outfit suggestion to be in with a chance of winning tickets to the event. The campaign caught the attention of 27 bloggers and over 4,000 votes.” Justine, Managing Director.
By tapping into the intelligence of a larger group of content creators, you can produce a much richer piece of content with authorities within the topic you are writing about. What’s more you’re more likely to generate wider exposure of your piece as contributors are also likely to share on their social media channels and provide a backlink on their website to your article.
For more information on crowdsourcing and for top tips on how it could help your business get in touch with us by calling 01992 582824 or fill in out contact form.
