Crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing collects services, ideas or content from a massive group of people. This “crowd” is a third party outside your business walls. Crowdsource insights from customers and online communities instead of employees or shareholders.

Il termine “crowdsourcing” è stato usato per la prima volta in un articolo di Wired di Jeff Howe, nel 2006. Il termine ha evidenziato un nuovo modo di entrare in contatto con persone disposte a lavorare in maniera collaborativa a un progetto.

Tipi di crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing takes many forms, but your strategy should always depend on your desired outcome:

Crowdfunding: il crowdfunding consiste in gruppi di persone che si riuniscono per finanziare un progetto. Kickstarter, per esempio, è una delle piattaforme di crowdfunding più popolari.
Crowdwisdom: With crowdwisdom, brands gather the input and opinions of large groups of people. Sites like InnoCentive let people share solutions to complex problems.
Microtasking: Microtasking breaks a big project into many small tasks for a crowd to complete. Clickworker is a microtasking marketplace where brands pay people to complete small jobs like data labeling and surveys.

I vantaggi del crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing offers big benefits to brands that want to finish complex tasks on a budget. Asking the crowd for input also increases customer engagement and improves brand reputation. Crowdsourcing:

Aumenta il coinvolgimento della clientela: è un modo per dimostrare ai clienti che tieni alla loro opinione, consentendo di instaurare legami più forti con il brand. Inoltre, è probabile che i clienti si sentano più coinvolti negli argomenti delle campagne o nelle idee per nuovi prodotti o servizi che hanno contribuito a creare.
Promuove l'innovazione e la diversità: poter attingere al pensiero di un ampio gruppo di persone molto diverse tra loro consente di sviluppare un maggior pensiero laterale. Le idee sviluppate tramite crowdsourcing sfruttano le conoscenze di tutto il gruppo per guidare l'innovazione.
Saves time and money: Hiring dozens of professionals drains budgets quickly. Bringing people together online cuts costs while radically widening your pool of input.
Attracts ambassadors: If crowdsourcing collects enough positive enthusiasm from your audience, participants evolve into brand ambassadors. These brand ambassadors become a strong source of word-of-mouth marketing.

Consigli per un crowdsourcing migliore

Crowdsourcing is an excellent way to overcome challenges and create buzz for your brand. But like any campaign, crowdsourcing takes careful planning and strategy. Make sure you:

Stay specific: Outline exactly what you want people to do and provide clear submission guidelines. Keep requests simple to lower the barrier to entry.
Know how to measure results: Have a way of tracking your incoming submissions. For example, LEGO Ideas considers any fan design that reaches 10,000 supporters for production.
Give value to participants: Remember it’s not all about you. Give your customers a reason to get involved. For example, Lay’s brought back its “Do Us a Flavor” contest in 2024 with a $1 million prize. Fans sent in more than 700,000 flavor ideas, and judges picked three finalists for fans to vote on. Lay’s gets new ideas and fans get new flavors to try.