Indspire Me

Greetings, dear readers of Indspire Me. I am Akanksha, the founder of this website. You can read more about me and why I started Indspire Me here .
I decided to start a new series on the website, where I’ll be sharing my insights on diverse topics. If you want to read some of my previous work, you can check out my LinkedIn profile and view them under ‘Published Posts’.
Now what I am going to share today could be extremely valuable information for people who want to launch the next big thing on social media. One of the major challenges that one woman/man or small teams face in making their initiative succeed is getting fresh, new and unique content. Another challenge to complete the pair is targetting the right audience, one that will make you grow your long tail.
There is one simple and effective solution to these problems: crowdsourcing content (it could be textual or visual content). Let me give you an example. There is this Instagram Account called India Cultural Hub. It has some 31,000 followers. The account shares curated content on Festivals, Art, Music, Food, Fashion and Shopping from all over India. People submit content to the account, which enhances the richness and quantity of content available on the account; as well as gives the account’s target audience the kind of content they want. You will see plenty of examples of the different types of famous accounts on Instagram that have hundreds of thousands of followers and use the crowdsourcing content model: fashion, food, travel, beauty, fitness etc. The world is your oyster. Play around with your account, experiment with it, take it forward in a creative direction.

A few things to be kept in mind if you decide to follow the outsourcing model for your social media accounts: do credit your contributors for their content and images. This will incentivize people to keep contributing to your account. Let them have IP rights to their images and content. Take their permission before you choose to republish it anywhere else. Tell people why they should submit content to you, and how it can benefit their own careers/personal brand.
Lastly, be a bit selective in what you choose to curate and present on your account; especially once things have taken off. It’ll help put a story to the name, and tell people that your brand/initiative stands for something. Try to differentiate yourself from the crowd by not compromising on your quality standards.
All right, that’s all for today folks. Talk more later. Have a great day ahead! Also write to me at akanksha.sharma158@gmail.com if you used this model and it worked for you. Let me know your story.