For more than two years, thousands of professional archeologists, armchair detectives, and amateur historians have joined forces to try and unearth the location of Ghengis Khan's tomb in Mongolia. These Internet-connected associates use modern collaboration, social media, and satellite technology; experts follow up on the most promising leads on horseback, checking out regions that may have been unvisited by humans for centuries.
If the action on the football field doesn't hold your attention on Feb. 3, you can always count the crowdsourced commercials. There'll be at least a handful, including ads from Doritos, Ford, Chevrolet, and Pepsi. In fact, Pepsi plans to crowdsource the Superbowl Halftime intro to Beyonce's performance, using fan-submitted photos of Pepsi-arranged poses in a video.
These are international brands, of course, with tens or hundreds of thousands -- even millions -- of followers and fans. That doesn't mean, however, that midsized companies should dismiss crowdsourcing, though, as a gimmick for fad startups or giant corporations.
Although your marketing department or ad agency may not generate the same results as Doritos for its ad contest, crowdsourcing within your organization, from partners, suppliers, and customers, is an invaluable way to advance beyond traditional surveys and build upon the relationships you've already forged. Instead of asking what they like or dislike about your company or brand, pose a specific question or challenge to those already invested in your firm.
Giving Power to the People
Crowdsourcing exponentially increases your midsized company's mind power.
More companies are turning to internal crowdsourcing, said Dmitry Valyanov, CEO of Bitrix24, developer of a high-end intranet, in a statement.
Whereas a few years ago companies would simply outsource their work through eLance.com or other crowdsourcing sites, now they are using more and more 'internal crowdsourcing', that is relying on collaboration among their own employees to produce results. Having seen the potential of crowdsourcing through external experience, they are trying to replicate this effective method inside the company when possible.
Although the reasons and results vary widely, there are about eight steps to crowdsourcing, according to BusinessLeads.
Company has a problem
Organization shares this problem online, via social media
The online "crowd" or community asked to resolve issue
Members submit suggestions
Crowd then reviews these suggestions
Company rewards those who provided the best solutions
Organization owns those winning solutions
Business implements the resolutions -- and profits.
These rough guidelines work across multiple departments. Think about one of the challenges you face today, whether it's what to include on your redesigned website, how best to train employees on the new enterprise content management system, or best-practices for BYOD. How about outside tech? Then consider business issues such as retaining top employees during a salary freeze, improving call center response time, or reducing goods damaged in transit. Inviting opinions from those involved throughout any process will generate original thought and encourage discussion, spurring even better concepts.
It's also another way to underscore your organization's commitment to this community. After all, if you didn't care what employees, partners, customers, and suppliers thought; if you didn't want their opinions on how to become an even better employer, contractor, or vendor -- you wouldn't ask.
I think I got burned out on personal tech blogging in 2010. The Apple vs. Google flamewars seemed to me to be a colossal waste of time. If I don't work for Apple or Google, and don't have money invested in either, why bother.
And I drink Diet Dr. Pepper myself. Time to get another can.
Having written primarily about the channel and businesses, not technology vendors, for most of my career, I have not received many gimmes and have, therefore, not have to deal with the problem of perks. But I totally understand why people are motivated to work for no pay for companies or brands. I'm going to take tech companies out of the equation here, and use non-tech brands as examples.
I drink Coke and much prefer it to Pepsi, to the point that if a restaurant doesn't serve Coke I either won't go there if it's solely up to me; I'll bring a Coke in a bottle, or I'll drink something entirely different. I will never order Pepsi. If Coke was doing something that interested me, I might want to participate. And I generally join in joking arguments with my Pepsi-drinking friend, who completely disagrees with my soda preference! Doubt I've ever changed anyone's mind, but don't know that the folk who go crazy over Apple or Google have ever convinced anyone either.
is when people start working to game the crowdsourcing system (and I'm sure I can think of ways in which it's been done already -- like the company that offered free pizza for life if somebody asked such and such a question at the Presidential debates). We've already got indications that people are paid to comment, to rate, to review; it stands to reason they'll get paid in some way to crowdsource as well.
The big boys can certainly afford to use crowd sourcing for their marketing but smaller companies may want to test the waters before they divert large sums to social media.
Much the same as the days of direct marketing testing, A/B test can be set up to test which if any media marketing ploys may just work for them. Without some testing of variations and results, it may just be money down the drain for many smaller outfits.
In tech discussions in particular I'm baffled by people who fight hard for Apple or Google, and don't appear to be on those companies' payrolls. What's their motivation?
As both an Apple fan and a Google fan, my motivation is to encourage other companies to emulate the best practices of my favorite brands. Just as some people want to tear down companies like GoDaddy for its (former) CEOs behaviors, people like me would like to point out that there are companies that produce quality products and have some reasonable political positions. IBM is admirable for its dedication to innovation and research, but it really hasn't done much to garner general consumer support because its products (or goals) aren't so tangible to a wide audience. Google purports to "do no evil" and users should try to push it to follow thru -- both by admonishment when it does "evil" and by praise for when it protects its users from unsavory practices.
What consumers can really fight for Microsoft's philosphy? I have not seen much admirable software/hardware coming from MSFT... so I praise its competitors when they produce something that MSFT seems to be unable to do.
As you know, I've done some food blogging, and nobody wants me to ship back the pasta after I've tasted it. I do try to erase it from my system though.
When it comees to blogging and tech journalism, I have tried to use the ethical tech reviewer's approach to freebies: I'll accept review copies, but I ship them back (or in the case of software, erase them from my system) when the review is done. If I want to continue using the product, I buy it.
I haven't always lived up to that standard, but I try.
But I've also worked as a marketer, and that was the context I was thinking about when I said, "Pay me."
In tech discussions in particular I'm baffled by people who fight hard for Apple or Google, and don't appear to be on those companies' payrolls. What's their motivation?
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In its mission to make car-buying simple, fair, and fun, TrueCar relies extensively on the Internet, social media, data, and -- increasingly -- mobile to reach its expanding audience of car dealers and consumers. The analysis firm is also relying on Mike Dunn, who joined TrueCar as chief technology officer on May 1, to help steer its technology investments and business priorities.
Marketing departments almost immediately latched onto Twitter as a great tool for spreading word about their brands, but Celina Insurance is using the microblog to help keep the entire company running in the case of emergency or disaster.
Everybody's talking about the rapidly growing importance of mobile channels, not only in social life, but for business too -- whether you're running a city, a hospital, or a school, selling B2B, or engaged in regular retail.
Rob Shoenfelt, CIO at Celina Insurance, is the first to admit that insurance firms aren't known as leading edge adopters of technology. But Celina Insurance isn't like most insurance firms.
When combined with training and management, today's affordable unified communications and collaboration solutions empower midsized organizations to be more efficient and productive. But only if you know how they work, and what they'll need to do their jobs even better.
A recent release of the popular TweetDeck app for Twitter power-users gives new life to software that had previously taken a wrong turn. Here's a quick walk-through of the new TweetDeck, to show you why it should be at the top of your Twitter toolkit.
Facebook's Graph Search may face some profound challenges and risks, first, because Facebook users haven't been thinking of their posts as product reviews; and second, because Facebook will now have to contend with the social-network equivalent of SEO "gaming" of results.
New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority is conducting a pilot test of digital kiosks to guide subway users to where they want to go more efficiently and at lower cost.
A growing number of HR managers are suspicious of individuals who do not take part in social media and view them as anti-social in real life as well as online.
As enterprises leap into the Web 2.0 world of blogging, commenting, and social networking, just 'being there' won't deliver ROI. You may want a 'Web Evangelist' to systematically harvest the feedback in order to polish your product or service.
More companies are trolling social networks to find and vet potential job candidates. Beware the pitfalls of blurring the line between personal and professional lives.
New tools like laptops, tablets, smartphone, and wireless connectivity let us work from San Diego to Katmandu, and anywhere in between. But time management remains a problem.
New York's Metropolitan Transit Authority is conducting a pilot test of digital kiosks to guide subway users to where they want to go more efficiently and at lower cost.
The whole Amazon.reader debate is a double-stupid. It's stupid to think that there's any e-book buyer who doesn't know Amazon's URL, and it was stupider to let ICANN launch the whole free-form TLD initiative to start with.
While NFC's original goal was to enhance mobile commerce applications, it is finding its way into a number of other uses, which is creating both opportunity as well as challenges for IT departments.
Enterprises would like to move to cloud computing but are hesitant because they are concerned about providers’ ability to secure company data. Here are some tips that help to ensure that if breaches occur, the business is not left holding the bag.
Edmunds separates customers into segments based on the info it collects on its site and from partners, and uses that to push out custom content, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
The automotive website uses propensity modeling to target ads and customer registration forms, said Brian Baron, director of business analytics for Edmunds.com, at Predictive Analytics Innovation Summit.
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M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
M2M: Rise of the Machines? Not Yet David Weldon In the 1970 science fiction thriller Colossus: The Forbin Project, two giant supercomputers from the United States and Soviet Union secretly join forces to take control of the collective nuclear might of the two countries. In the film, the two machines discover each other's existence, communicate back-and-forth, share their collective data, and cut their human creators out of the process. It is the ultimate example of machine-to-machine communications, or M2M. CLICK FOR MORE
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