What’s up everybody? Brian Dean here. And welcome to lesson 7 of module 2. In the last lesson you learned how to create an Industry Study Power Page. That’s where you generate data that Linkreators can cite in their content. And in this lesson, lesson 7, you’re going to learn all about The Crowdsourced Manual.
So without further ado, let’s dive right in. You already know that one of the main reasons that Power Pages work is that they’re on a topic that your Linkreators WANT to share with their audience. And the Crowdsourced Manual takes this approach to another level. With the Crowdsourced Manual you’re not just creating content FOR the Linkreators but WITH the Linkreators.
I’ll explain. A Crowdsourced Manual collects bite-sized tips and insights from dozens of experts in one place. And because you’re curating knowledge from multiple experts, your content has VERY high Utility. You’re also tapping into each expert’s existing audience. In other words, when done right, these experts will send their audience to your site.
That’s why The Crowdsourced Manual is a great Content Framework to use when you’re just getting started or when you’re trying to expand your network and build relationships. And because you’re not asking each expert to commit to a time-consuming guest post or podcast interview, they’re MUCH more likely to say “yes”.
For example, here’s a CrowdSourced Manual that one of our SEO That Works graduates put together. When this student published his first Crowdsourced Manual, he had zero readers and zero followers. Despite having no following whatsoever, this Power Page was a smash hit. It brought a spike of targeted traffic. And a handful of powerful links, like this one. Today, this Crowdsourced Manual ranks on the first page of Google for dozens of relevant terms.
Now it’s time to walk you through the exact steps for creating a Crowdsourced Manual on your site. Step one is to find your crowdsourced manual topic. Like all Power Pages, you want your topic to be something that your Linkreators WANT to link to. But there’s one little wrinkle to keep in mind when choosing a topic for your Crowdsourced Manual.
You want to pick a topic that your experts can easily give their take on. Let’s look again at the Crowdsourced Manual that I mentioned earlier. See how he chose a topic that was EASY for his Linkreators to contribute to? He asked them about something they’re experts on. And they only needed to send over a short quote.
In fact, that’s how I personally decide whether or not to participate in someone else’s Crowdsourced Manual. If it’s easy, I say yes. If it’s hard, I pass. For example, here’s a Crowdsourced Manual that I recently participated in. And the main reason I got involved was because all I had to do was send over a 1-2 line reply. Once you have your topic, it’s time to curate your list of experts.
The Linkreator list you put together in Module 1 will be HUGE here. You already created a list of experts in your industry. So you’ve pretty much already done this step. That said, if you want MORE experts to contribute, I’ve got a cool little pro tip for you. You can search specifically for Linkreators that are VERY likely to contribute to your Power Page.
How? Just use these search strings in Google, “keyword” + “interview with” and “keyword” + “guest post by”. These search strings bring up Linkreators that tend to go on to podcasts and write guest posts for other sites. Which means they’ll be very likely to help with your Crowdsourced Manual. Step three is to craft your question based on the topic you found in step one.
Remember, the easier your question is, the more likely you are to get responses. Fortunately, you already found a Linkreator-friendly topic for your Crowdsourced Manual in step one. Step three is about turning that topic into an easy-to-answer question. First, an example of what not to do. This is a real email I received a while back to participate in a Crowdsourced Manual.
On the surface, this isn’t a bad script. So why did I decline his invite? I decided to pass because his question was vague and difficult to answer. First off, he asked two questions “how I made my first dollar” and “how I felt when it happened”. Second, he asked me to “explain”. Like most people, I don’t want to spend time and mental energy explaining things. I rather blurt out a response and move on. Instead, you want to phrase your ask so that it takes 60 seconds for your Linkreator to contribute. Here’s an example of how this simple request might look. Now that you’ve developed your question, it’s time to start sending that question out to the experts on your list.
I have a word-for-word email script that you can use in the worksheet for this lesson. But before you start with your outreach, I want to share a quick pro tip with you. Like anything in SEO, you want to be VERY strategic in how you reach out to your experts. You don’t want to start at the top of a random list and work your way down. Instead, make sure you reach out to the bigger names on your list FIRST.
That way, when they get back to you, you can leverage their authority to get more responses from less popular bloggers. For example, here’s a script that you can send to your experts. So yeah, that script works great. But it works even better when you flaunt the fact that a few big name experts have already contributed to your Crowdsourced Manual. When people see that big name experts have already contributed they’re MUCH more likely to throw their hat into the ring.
They think to themselves: “Wow, if X, Y and Z already responded, this must be cool.” Step five is to record your responses. If you use the script I’ve given you in the worksheet, you’re going to get A LOT of responses in a short period of time. And it’s easy to get disorganized and overwhelmed. To save you some time, I set up a Google Doc that’s designed specifically for collecting and organizing Crowdsourced Manual responses.
Trust me: this will save you A TON of time. I’ll have a link to that spreadsheet in the worksheet. At this point you’ve already done most of the hard work. You chose a targeted, Linkreator-friendly topic. You turned that topic into an easy-to-answer question. And you collected responses from a list of well-known experts in your industry Now it’s time to take what you’ve collected and turn it into your Crowdsourced Manual Power Page.
Like we always do, let’s break it down, starting with the title. Here are the 3 elements you want in your Crowdsourced Manual title. The number of experts that are participating in your post, a description of who the experts are and the topic that the experts are covering. Let’s break these 3 elements down. First, the number of experts. This is straightforward. Next, you have who the experts are.
You can just use the word “expert” or “pros”. That gets the message across. For example: “100 Fitness Pros” or “55 Email Marketing Experts”. Finally, you want to include the topic that they’re covering. You can write out the topic directly, like this. Or write the topic in the form of a question. Either approach works. Let’s look at an example.
This is from an SEO That Works Graduate that used the Crowdsourced Manual to build links to his ecommerce site. This title has all 3 elements we talked about. The number of experts, who the participants are and the topic. Once your title is in the books, it’s time for your intro. Here’s the intro format I recommend. Present the problem, state the question and note the quality and number of responses you received.
Let’s break this down. First, you want to present the problem that your Crowdsourced Manual is designed to help with. For example, if you’re creating a Crowdsourced Manual about finishing a novel, the problem is people have trouble finishing their novel. So the first 2-3 sentences of your intro would be something like this Next, you want to present the question as a way to crack this case.
Here’s an example. Finally, you want to quantify the responses you received in terms of amount and quality. This shows people that a lot of work went into your content. Here’s an example. Let’s look at a real-life example of a classic Crowdsourced Manual intro from back in the day.
In my opinion, this is a fantastic Crowdsourced Manual introduction. Once you write your intro, it’s time to list out all of the responses that you received from your experts. Here’s exactly what to include. Subheading with a quote or summary of their response, a brief bio with links to their site and social media profiles and their response. Here’s how this section looks from the Crowdsourced Manual that I just mentioned. Subheading that summarizes the response? Check. Bio? Check. Response? Check.
Once you have all of your responses set up, it’s time to add your conclusion. This is super simple. You simply want your conclusion to emphasize how amazing your resource is. You can also include a call to action for readers to participate. Now: normally saying, “This post is amazing!” would come off as bragging. But in the case of a Crowdsourced Manual, because the expert created the content, it’s perfectly fine to use a little bit of hype.
You can also ask your readers to contribute. As you know, people love giving their 2 cents. And your comments section gives them the perfect opportunity to do just that. For example, your conclusion can look something like this. Step sven is to let your experts know that we are live. This step is all about letting your experts know that we are live. Notice how I said we.
Language like “our post” and “we” emphasizes the fact that the post was a group effort. This makes your Linkreators more invested in your content, and therefore, more likely to share it with their audience. Here’s the word-for-word email script to use. Step eight is to send the post to people that didn’t participate the first time around. After the post has had a few days to build up social shares and comments, reach out to the experts that didn’t contribute.
For example, let’s say you emailed 50 people and 35 got back to you. Well those 15 people that didn’t contribute are still fair game. Some of the people you reach out to will be reluctant to reply because they’re not sure what the final content will look like. Or maybe they just had a busy week. And once they see that the post is awesome and a success (which, as long as you followed the steps, it should be), they’ll be much more likely to contribute and share.
Here’s an email script you can use. Why Is This Such a Valuable Content Marketing and SEO Strategy? Well, curating expert insights in one place has a VERY high perceived (and real) value. But more importantly, when you promote your Crowdsourced Manual, you’ll find that people generously hand out links. Why? For the simple reason that people recognize the big names that contributed to your content.
And they feel like they’re linking to THEM. In other words, the experts’ authority rubs off on you. Which makes other Linkreators more likely to link to your content. I probably don’t need to say it at this point. But in the worksheet below this video I’m going to recap the key steps from this video. And help you put everything into practice. Then, in the next lesson, I’ll show you how to create our final Content Framework: the Detailed Checklist. So that’s all there is to the Crowdsourced Manual. I’ll see you in the next lesson.
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