Web 2.0 + Developers + Power users = Crowdsourcing as the next level challenge
Crowsourcing has risen thanks to Open Source programming and volunteers who work in their spare time. This process has taken some time to reach the business level but now some big names have chosen to use that path to implement features and grow their business, this would become a big trend for the year to come. Mass market companies are trying hard to use social media as a marketing tool, but crowdsourcing as part of social media would be their path to success if they can well understand how the successful companies have turned it as their competitive advantage.
Making people work for the company is the basic of social media marketing (influence, recommendation, reputation, or brand image are all based on that) and also the basic of crowdsourcing. The difference stands as the crowdsourcing process leaves to people the ability to create and to get rewarded for it by the other users while putting aside the brand to keep the focus on the user experience and what’s being developed, when social media marketing focuses on the brand or the product while not talking to people nor trying to reach an objective, but to spread a message.
And that’s from that point the social media marketing is going wrong and the crowdsourcing driving more social media reputation and visibility, then generating more engagement and product purchase. Because crowdsourcing is based on engagement and reward, because it’s aiming for a clear objective that is creating a product that can answer a need and not trying to keep the status-quo. And that’s why people engage themselves with the brand, because it’s giving the opportunity to create something new.
As we all go on Facebook to look for something new and engaging, third-part application companies have understood that they would be able to generate benefits from that social network because people are there to engage with each others and are looking for things that can entertain themselves and their friends if shared. And that’s the same for other crowdsourcing-like business, like the Apple iPhone AppStore: Apple has opened the application creation to anybody and then is letting people who are working on it doing their marketing, making the AppStore more and more interesting with interesting and crappy applications, but above all marketing the AppStore and then the iPhone by sharing the applications and revealing all the potential of the iPhone without having to be involved in any non core application development. The same can be said for Nike and it’s running movement that has been generated by the Nike+ kit.
Without having to push too far the communication on the Nike+ running community, they support it once in a while so that the whole community is rewarded because the worldwide company is talking about them to the rest of the world, and engaging them more with the brand (eventually leading to more sales). Nike keeps focusing on running communication, and providing tools to runners to get together under their brand banner, not asking for any reward but to show the community members are having more fun running together.
Focusing on user experience enhancement, ability to deliver the right service to the people using your product, that’s what would really leverage the social media marketing. Innovation and innovation spreading are the next level of marketing, consumer centric marketing is the key, crowdsourcing a key I believe in, and community management the lever to get your company to the next level.
Photo Credit : okszigen
david fishman | December 8th, 2008 at 11:04 pm #
Right on…..finally somebody who gets it!