Dave Barry, the original crowdsourcer

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.

Author: Danny Sanchez

Danny Sanchez is the Audience Development Manager at Tribune's Sun-Sentinel.com and OrlandoSentinel.com. Danny has been with Tribune since 2005 in a variety of editorial, digital and product development roles in Hartford, Orlando and Fort Lauderdale. He has also previously worked in the newsrooms of the Tampa Bay Times and The Miami Herald.