Friend sourcing. I just made it up, so you’re not missing out on something new. Yet. It’s like crowdsourcing, but among people you already know, even if you’ve only met them online. After all, don’t we all have more and more friends online? Especially during this past year, when the pandemic influenced how many people we could socialize with.
Here’s How it Works
Ask your friends what they think of a topic, then take what they say and create content with that. It’s like when you attend #DigiBlogChat and then create a blog post about it, like Jim Katzaman (@JKatzaman) often does. You’ll get more eyes on your piece because people love to hear about themselves. It’s easy, fun, and clever!
Don’t Believe Me?
If you need to see how friend sourcing works, take a look around the interwebs. Check out who’s retweeting whom, who’s sharing whose pictures, and which posts get shared the most. Friend sourcing posts may not always be the most popular (animal posts are very popular, too), but they do get shared. A lot.
Friend Sourcing Is Social
Remember when social media was actually social? No, neither do I. But these days, you really need to be social more than ever. Engagement counts for a lot, and I predict it’ll count for even more in the future. Need to know more about engagement? Check out For Better Social Media Results, Focus on Engagement.
Get Started
Attend a chat (#DigiBlogChat is a pretty good one!) or start a conversation on social media. Ask a question or create a poll. Collect ideas from your friends. Ask if they’d like to be included in your piece if you want. Or tell them later. Or apologize later. Your choice! There are no wrong answers here.
Collaborations Are Gold
Collaborate with someone to create something, write something, or do something together. You could be in a challenge together, too, like the 46-mile Mt. Fujii Virtual Conqueror Challenge that @MistressPrime and I were in together. We both walked the miles, checked in, and got our (real metal!) medals. But the walk was all done virtually, so anyone can participate.
Write or Vlog About it!
Now create your piece! You could write a blog post, talk about it on your YouTube channel, make an art piece to share later, etc. You might want to take pictures of whatever it is you did, said, or created together. Make sure you tag your friends when you do share the piece. People usually love being mentioned!
Share and Share Again
If your piece is evergreen (for more information about evergreen posts, see: How Long Is Evergreen Content Actually Good for?) then share it more than once! After all, you’ve put in the work, right?
Thanks for the mention, Carol. Besides tagging people, your last point is a big one. Create content that’s evergreen from the start, deleting time references, especially years. Then you can go back and key on quotes to highlight anytime for reuse. It’s tricky to write around holiday content, but I dread having any piece that refers to the pandemic. In a year or two, the only good that might come from that is for nostalgia. Then again, in another hundred years it might all look fresh. Yikes!
Hi Jim, Yes, you’re so right about referring to the pandemic. Geez! I’ve probably already referred to the pandemic a few times, so I’ll have to go back and remove some of those references. Hopefully, it’ll be a hundred years before there’s another pandemic, right?
Thanks for stopping by!
Carol