I recently wrote a post, entitled, What’s Wrong With Most Business Blogs, in which I outlined a failure I see in many business blogs – that is the blogs are too much about the business, when they should be more about the customer. In an earlier post, I suggested using a simple survey to find out more about your what your customer wants. Today, I am going to recommend another method which will give you a deeper look into what consumers really want and need.
If you haven’t heard the term before, crowdsourcing refers to using your audience to help with business tasks like product/service research, testing and development. The term was first coined in 2006 when Jeff Howe wrote an article called The Rise Of Crowdsourcing for Wired magazine. Wikipedia is one of the earliest examples of crowdsourcing – although it is not without its critics for the inaccurancy of some of its content, it still works remarkably well.
How to use crowdsourcing on your blog
As mentioned previously, you can use the principles of crowdsourcing to find out more about what your customer wants. You can also use crowd sourcing to create content for your blog. A good example is the crowd-sourced interview post. You ask a selection of niche influencers to answer a question, collate the answers and turn them into a great post on your blog. Here is an example of a crowd-sourced post in which I participated. And check out this great post as an example of how to really maximise crowdsourced interviews.
In the video at the top of this post, you can watch and listen as Jeff Howe, the King of Crowdsourcing, talks about how crowdsourcing is driving the future of business. I hope the video and this post will spark some crowdsourcing ideas for you.
Have you tried crowdsourcing ideas for your blog content? How did it work out? Is crowdsourcing something you would like to use on your business blog? Do you have any questions on crowdsourcing? We would be happy to answer them for you. Just leave a comment below.
Marie Ennis-O’Connor BA, MIAPR, holds an Honours degree in History from University College Dublin. She is a graduate of the Irish Academy of Public Relations and has worked in a variety of PR roles over the past 12 years. Marie is editor of several award-winning blogs ranging from life sciences to health to business. She is a panel member of the newly established Bloggers International and is a regular contributor to Health Works Collective, an online community for thought leaders in international healthcare. She is a featured blogger on Webicina, an online service that provides curated medical social media resources in over 80 medical topics and over 17 languages, and has been awarded a top blogger accolade by Empowered Doctor.com and most inspiring writer by WegoHealth. Marie is also in demand as a trainer in social media marketing and travels the country teaching small business owners how to get online and maximise their online presence.
