The best thing about social media which turned it into an instant success is the fact that it has been powered by the people. It has something to offer to almost everyone.
Its smooth accessibility has not only made the social connectivity easy but also provided people across the world with flexible working opportunities.
The term “crowd sourcing” has been coined to attribute positive and fresh feel to the much criticized outsourcing arena. Social media now has become indispensable part of consumer and brand bonding.
Image Source: TheSmallBiznet
Let’s move on to its applicability and effectiveness in the social media so far:
- Created a new Market: Crowdsourcing has been successful in finding out a void in the market and creating a brand new market out of it. It has expanded the business boundaries to amateurs, homemaker and much more diverse strata of society which have been neglected hitherto. This enormous market with unimaginable opportunities has worked wonders for both employers and employees. Now professionals are not the only service providers but amateurs are available too with more space for experiments, flexibility, novelty and compatible rates. This new market suits the platform of social media very well. Being a popular medium it already has vast demographics of followers. Therefore social media proves to be the friendlier option for crowd sourcing.
- Enjoy the Opportunity: Social media rage has been profited by the businesses and brands in a very clever manner. Now they don’t have to hire sources to gauge the success of their brand, but they can save both time and effort by engaging social media and its users. Social media has made people more vocal and opinionated which makes it easier for the brands to hear them. The new marketing strategies involve crowd sourcing as you can engage consumers at different social media platform and calculate their inclinations and your ROI.
- Collective Wisdom: When a task or challenge is open to undefined numbers of people or “crowd” then the collective wisdom certainly helps in finding out the answers. It can work the other way round as well. As an expert can find a solution and share it with the public. Social media platforms serve as a perfect place for public connectivity leading to crowdsourcing. Most of the companies like the Fortune 500 list are reaping the benefits of enormous social engagements and accumulated wisdom. From the day of inception, the idea of crowdsourcing has gone real far with the help of social media.
- For the Love of Gifts: From ancient gladiators to current publicity campaigns, competition and prizes have always attracted the attention of public. Prize becomes a symbol of superior abilities which makes everyone feel happy and better. The best part of crowd sourcing at social media is that it helps in advertising campaigns and brand development. Crowd sourcing can be done through different competitions and quiz, which works as a magnet for public attention. Users like to share these competitions and offers with their friends and acquaintances. So you can stream the energies of crowd your way. For example freelancing site Freelancer.com (earlier known as GetaFreelancer.com) applied this idea very beautifully to design their new site.
- Bend it like YouTube: YouTube can rightfully be quoted as the greatest example of crowdsourcing as they are making use of public time and effort without any expense. People like to share their experiences and choices these days and it’s working in the war zone as well. Even current Middle East crisis has been reported mostly by the “crowd” through social media.
If you are looking for deeper and meaningful relationship with your customers then social media is right place to be and the very same factor makes it ideal for crowdsourcing. And that’s how the idea of crowdsourcing has glittered and came across such a long way.
Enjoy crowdsourcing with social media.
