matthewwoodward.co.uk http://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/tutorials/crowdsource-blog-content/

Crowd Source Your Blogs Content For More Traffic

You’ve seen the posts. The ones that get the top expert’s opinion on a variety of topics.

29 Experts Reveal the 3 Link Building & SEO Tools They Use Every Day

49 Expert Tricks to Generate Huge Traffic to Your Site

43 Experts Reveal Their #1 Social Media Marketing Hack

You’ve probably thought about writing posts like these for your own website. You probably thought it would beeasier than coming up with a long-form piece of content on your own.

But then, you discovered it’s not as simple to compile as you thought it would be.

What You Will Learn

In this post, you’re going to learn the ins and outs of crowdsourced blog posts. Specifically, you’ll learn:

Why you need to start doing crowdsourced blog posts.

What tools to use to simplify the process.

What tactics to use to get the best results.

So even if you’re not sure whether you want to do crowdsourced posts, take a moment to read on. You’ll be gladyou did.

ATTENTION: Unlock My Award Winning Blogging Resources Instantly

How Crowdsourced Blog Posts Work

Here’s how crowdsourced blog posts work in a nutshell.

You come up with a great question that relates to your niche that you want answered by the experts.

You find 50 top experts in your niche and ask them the question. 32 experts respond with an answer.

You compile the 32 answers into a blog post and publish it.

How does this differ from you providing your own answer to your question? Simple. Instead of just having you topromote your blog post, you now have 32 experts to promote it for you.

You get the chance to rank your content in search engines for the names of the niche experts that participated inthe post.

You get to create a great list post. Like them of not, numbered lists always perform well when it comes to socialvirality.

And last, but not least, it opens the door of communication between you and the top experts in your niche. Theseare relationships that can be beneficial for you in multitudes of ways in the future.

How to Simplify the Process

Crowdsourced blog posts can take more or less time to develop, depending on your process and your tools. Do itright, and you’ll feel like you’re cheating the system by creating an amazing piece of content with minimal effort.

What you’ll need to simplify your crowdsourced blog posts are the right tools and the right process. Here’s mine.

1. Find the niche experts most likely to answer your question

Do you want to send out 100 emails and get a 75 responses, or do you want to send out 100 emails and get 20responses? The former, I’m sure.

How do you guarantee more responses? Start by asking the right people.

To find the niche experts most likely to answer your question, start by asking the experts who already answersimilar questions. For example, if I want to ask a question related to SEO tools, I would search for all of thecrowdsourced posts about SEO tools and write down the people who responded.

Next, I would find lists of experts in the industry. I wouldn’t target everyone on the list, but just those that engagedwith the list. In particular, I would aim for the experts who said thank you for being included.

Those experts are the most likely to be flattered by being asked to participate.

Depending on your niche, you may have 100 people to ask just from these two research tactics. If not, you canuse tools like Followerwonk to find more popular people in your niche. Use the Followerwonk search to findpeople with your niche keyword plus blogger or writer.

Targeting bloggers and writers allows you to reach out to people who like to write, and therefore will be more likelyto respond to your question.

As you are compiling your list of experts, I suggest doing it in a spreadsheet. Include the name of the expert andtheir email address, or a link to their contact form.

This spreadsheet will come in handy the next time you do crowdsourced posts so you don’t have to start theresearch process from scratch.

You can also request access to this great new tool called ContentMarketer.io. You can enter the URL of anothercrowdsourced post / expert roundup and it will look for contact information for each participant for you.

If it doesn’t get you an email address, it will at least get you a Twitter handle, cutting your research time in half.

2. Create a Google Drive Form

Next, you will want to create a Google Drive Form for your question. Not only is Google Drive free to use, but italso allows you to compile all of the answers you receive in one spreadsheet.

This step is a vital part of simplifying the crowdsourced blog post process. Otherwise, when you go to compileyour answers, you will have to open email after email.

Plus, using the Google Drive Form will allow you to collect answers in a standardized format instead of a free forall of information and formatting that the email replies would produce.

So what should you ask in the Google Drive Form, besides your main question? I like to add fields for thefollowing.

Name – So I know who answered the question.

Email – In case I need to follow up with them about their answer and so I have their direct email for next timeinstead of just a contact form. Include a tip in the form that says that their email will not be published – it is forinternal use only.

Twitter – Good place to grab their most current photo in a standardized size, for the most part. Ask for the Twitterhandle only.

One-Sentence Bio – Let’s people know they can promote themselves with their answer, but prevents them fromwriting a paragraph. Also saves you from having to create something that they will inevitably want to change.

Website – The one website link they would like included with their bio.

Recommendation – An optional field that lets the expert suggest someone that they recommend you contact toanswer the question.

Once you’re finished, the form should look like this one we used for our upcoming crowdsource post.

When you save your Google Drive Form, you’ll get a link to share the form with others. A spreadsheet for theresponses will be automatically created. Once you start getting answers, it will look like this.

And now you’re ready for the next step.

3. Create outreach templates.

With crowdsourced blog posts, you will need to create at least three outreach templates.

The first template is the first email you will send to your expert. It will invite the expert to answer your question and,most importantly, include a deadline for the answer.

I like to send the email on Monday and have a deadline on Friday – it gives people plenty of time to answer, butnot too much time to forget.

Hi EXPERT,

This is Matthew from MatthewWoodward.co.uk. Because you are a highly-respected member ofthe SEO industry, I wanted your opinion about SEO tools. Not just your favorite tool, or the one youuse the most, but the one that helps you get your best results in search.

If you’d like to be featured in my post, please answer this question by Friday the 13th using thefollowing form.

[LINK TO FORM]

When the post goes live, I’ll let you know and send you the link.

Thanks so much,Matthew

The second template is the second email you will send to your expert if they haven’t answered by the deadline.It’s a reminder email that the deadline has arrived, but there is still time to answer.

Hi EXPERT,

This is Matthew from MatthewWoodward.co.uk again. Because you are a highly-respectedmember of the SEO industry, I wanted your opinion about SEO tools. Not just your favorite tool, orthe one you use the most, but the one that helps you get your best results in search.

A few people are on vacation this week, so I’ve extended the deadline to answer this question toMonday the 16th. If you’d like to be featured in my post, please answer this question using thefollowing form.

[LINK TO FORM]

When the post goes live, I’ll let you know and send you the link.

Thanks so much,Matthew

Alternatively, or in addition to the second email, you may want to tweet the expert just to ensure they’re gettingyour emails.

Gmail users who use Sidekick by HubSpot will be able to check who has opened their emails and who hasn’t andcustomize their second email or tweet accordingly.

The third template is the thank you email that you will send to experts who reply to your email to let you knowthey’ve submitted an answer.

Hi EXPERT,

Thanks so much for submitting your answer! When the post goes live, I’ll let you know and sendyou the link. It’s going to be EPIC!

Thanks so much,Matthew

The fourth template is for expert recommendations that you begin to receive from the first people you contact.

Hi EXPERT,

This is Matthew from MatthewWoodward.co.uk. EXPERT recommended that I contact you aboutyour opinion on SEO tools. Not just your favorite tool, or the one you use the most, but the one thathelps you get your best results in search.

If you’d like to be featured in my post, please answer this question by Friday the 13th using thefollowing form.

[LINK TO FORM]

When the post goes live, I’ll let you know and send you the link.

Thanks so much,Matthew

Once you’ve got your templates in order, start sending them to the email addresses and contact forms you’vecollected for your experts.

On the deadline, be ready to send the second reminder email to those that haven’t responded.

4. Create the crowdsourced blog post.

Once you’ve hit the final deadline, you’re ready to start compiling the answers into your crowdsourced blog post.

First, you’ll need the images for each expert that answered your question. To get it, you can simply go to each

expert’s Twitter profile, click on their profile picture, right click and save as, and you’ll have it.

When you save the photo, save it with the expert’s first name and last name as the filename. Keep these picturesin a specific folder on your computer as they might come in handy for future roundups, unless you want to repeatthis process to keep pictures up to date.

Next, you’ll need to copy and paste the information from the spreadsheet into your post and upload the photo foreach expert alongside their answer. When you add the ALT text for the photos, you can enter John Smith’sFavorite SEO Tool, or similar.

Once you’ve written a good introduction, compiled all of the answers, and written a conclusion that invites readersto share their own answer, you’re ready to publish.

5. Send the “It’s live!” email to all of the experts.

Once the post is live, you will want to let the experts know that it’s ready for full-on promotion. But you don’t wantto just send them a link to the post and let them figure out what to do from there.

Start by creating a ClicktoTweet link that will allow the expert to share the post immediately with a custommessage.

In the above, you’ll want to copy the http://ctt.ec/7ArcY URL to share in your email.

If you can get your crowdsourced post submitted to sites like Inbound.org (or a similar popular voting network foryour niche), grab a direct link to the Inbound.org submission so experts can vote on it.

In the end, your email will look like this.

Hi EXPERT,

Thanks for one of the 29 awesome experts who shared their favorite SEO tool. The post is live atthe following URL.

http://www.matthewwoodward.co.uk/tips/best-link-building-tools-tips/

If you want to share it quickly with your Twitter audience, just click on the following link. It willcreate a tweet you can share with your audience as is, or you can edit it and then share it with youraudience.

http://ctt.ec/7ArcY

Also, let’s make this post hot on Inbound.org. If you’re a member, be sure to give it a vote at thefollowing URL.

http://inbound.org/articles/view/discover-the-link-building-seo-tools-these-29-experts-rely-on

Thanks again for participating! I’ll reach out again when I have another SEO-related question foryou!

Thanks so much,Matthew

This email lets the experts know where the post has been published, gives them the ability to tweet it with minimaleffort, and directly links them to a place where they can vote on it.

It’s a win-win for you to boost promotion of the post, and for them by making it super simple.

6. Share it on your social networks.

Don’t forget to do some promotion on your own and be sure to tag everyone that participated.

For Twitter, you could do a round of tweets over the next several days that includes a few experts at a time, so

that after a week, you have included everyone in a tweet.

For Facebook, Google+, and LinkedIn, you can tag all of the experts in one post for each network. Or as manyexperts as you can tag at least, based on your connections and their settings..

If any of these experts miss your email about the post going live, chances are they won’t miss the Twittermentions or tags. And it may give them more ways to share, such as sharing your Facebook or Google+ post.

ATTENTION: Unlock My Award Winning Blogging Resources Instantly

The Results

Once you’ve completed your first crowdsourced blog post, you will have an amazing piece of content that you, theexperts, and your audience will love – and will love to share.

You will also have made new, influential connections in your niche.