Improving Your Content Marketing with Crowdsourcing

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By Jacob Maslow

Content is arguably the most complicated and intricate of business endeavors. You have to determine what you want written, how you want it written, and when you want it written, and you have a reason why and a way to determine the success of that content. In other words, you need to have a strategy in place and be able to stay creative.

The two most popular content strategies are content creation and a content curation strategy (and usually, businesses will have a mixture of the two). However, it’s important not to stop there. 

There is another content strategy called “crowdsourcing” that can bring your business a lot of extra benefits. Businesses often forget or use this content approach unknowingly, so the sooner you can identify this method, the better.

question and answer about social media marketing: upload better content to have more views

How Crowdsourced Content Works and the Benefits

Crowdsourcing content essentially means using the online community to create a piece of content or help add to your content strategy in general. Technically, the term comes from “crowd” and “outsourcing.” 

This practice differs from outsourcing because it comes from several different places and people, or an “undefined public” as opposed to one specific organization. The process of guest posting is a perfect example of crowdsourcing content; however, you can also take a few different routes:

  1. Purchase custom-created content. This is a process where you specifically say what you need regarding content, and then someone (usually a freelance writer) will create that content for you. List.ly is a good place to make this happen.
  2. Purchase pre-written content. This isn’t as popular, but there are systems where someone writes a piece of content, and you can buy it. Most of the time, the writer requires you to give credit to him/her. List.ly is also a good place to use this option.

Indeed, crowdsourcing content isn’t for everyone, so take a look at some of the benefits to see if it would work for your business:

  • It speeds up the process of content creation. You know that the more content you create and the more variety of topics you cover, the better, but let’s face it, writing content is time-consuming. Having more people work to write your content can ensure you stick to a schedule, and things that keep you too busy to write something don’t pop up. You still have to edit everything that comes through, which is always less time-consuming than writing.
  • You get new voices on your blog, which can bring a new audience to your site and create more loyal customers. People always want to get their thoughts and opinions out there, so if you can find quality writers and some of your customers to help contribute, it could be a win-win for everyone. If your writers have their own audience or social followers, you might also be getting those people to view your blog.
  • You get more diverse content. The more people you have writing content, the more diverse that content will be. This refers to different types of content—video, infographics, interviews, etc.—and the style in which it is written.
  • You can use metrics to see what content your audience likes. Going off of the point above, if you have a good variety of content, you can begin to see what gets the most clicks after a few months. This will help you determine where your content strategy needs to move in the future.

So when is crowdsourcing a bad idea? You have to be incredibly careful that your crowdsourced content is of high quality and that you don’t have a scammer on your hands. Sometimes, people won’t put in as much effort with this type of content (especially if their name isn’t on it), so you must be diligent. 

That might be the best case if your company is small and you have the resources to write independently. If you can make guest blogging work instead of some other paid options, that might also be your best route. It’s all about your company and the initial work you will put into this method.

The Takeaway and Getting Started

Content tactics can be crowdsourced, including business name ideas, infographics, expert-driven articles, etc.

Getting started is all about finding the right topic and the right writers (or system to find writers) and then creating a strategy where you can count on these different outlets. It might be rough initially, but using some of the abovementioned platforms will help get you on a good path to making this system work. It’s all about trial and error.

On that same note, it’s essential to realize that sometimes crowdsourcing might not seem like the most natural thing in the world when you first begin. 

In a country where everything must be bigger and better, it’s tough to imagine that projects must be broken down into steps that could take no more than seconds to accomplish. However, to effectively use crowdsourcing, every project must be atomized as small as possible.

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