Take a gander at Dave Barry’s hilarious Holiday Gift Guide, featuring such wonderful holiday fare as the motorized ice cream cones and nosehair clippers disguised as a finger.
But pay attention to each item’s credit lines. Aside from Barry’s enormous talent as a humorist, an important part of his success stems from the hordes of readers who contribute items to his columns. The gift guide is a great example of this. By giving credit to his readers and involving them in the process, (also known in buzzspeak as crowdsourcing), he has built a solid reputation as being the master of locating all things funny.
It doesn’t always take a fancy Web 2.0, database-backed, AJAX-powered, time-sucking online contraption to build a loyal readership that takes ownership of content. The most important ingredient is the initiative.
And if that doesn’t help, you might try luring them in with a free copy of the Great Big World of Nematodes coloring book.
