Cartoon: Crowdsourced Homework

18 Days In Egypt: A Crowd-Sourced Documentary

18 Days in Egypt aims to be a crowd-sourced documentary about what happened there. Launched just a week ago by former New York Times video journalist and current Knight fellow at Stanford University, Jigar Mehta, the site wants to tackle the difficult task of providing the right context for the raw videos and news that others have posted and collected.

Girl Geek Dinners Melbourne: Panelists Needed!

This October Girl Geek Dinners Melbourne will be holding a panel discussion on the topic of Crowdsourcing: Wisdom of the Crowds. This is a very exciting topic and one that is increasingly prevalent in tech articles and University experiments.

We are interested to engage to any Melbourne-based women working in tech or sciences that apply the principals of crowdsourcing to their work. This doesn't need to be on a grand scale- the basic prinicipal of crowdsourcing is that solicits tasks performed by a large group of people or community (a crowd), through an open call.

Essentially surveys are a form of crowdsourcing. The facinating impact of current social software technology is that it is even easier to connect people to a cause or task.

If you are interested to be a part of our panel discussion and are located in the Melbourne area, please contact me: jessica.lowry@gmail.com

Collaborate or Perish: An Introduction to Social Media

Yesterday was an incredibly long day for me. On top of my regular non-stop schedule I presented an introduction to social media seminar to a few of our existing clients. You can check out the presentation on Slideshare.

For those who have read some of my earlier posts, you’ll know that I moved from Toronto to Melbourne last year, and I had a really hard time figuring out how to market myself to potential employers. The job titles I had at home aren’t traditional and aren’t seen as roles within a corporate organization. Titles such as: Online Community Specialist and Online Community Moderator, are roles that fit into online gaming or user management on platforms, but not traditional company’s, right?

Wrong.

After 9 months I realize that the roles I had do fit into Australian businesses, but it’s a lack of connection between the marketing strategies and the business objectives. I believe there is a disconnect and the people who are meant to be initiating these activities are not receiving the right kind of guidance.

To me, the main reason company’s should engage in social media is to create a dialogue. And not a always a literal dialogue where you create a group and lamely ask random questions to a disinterested audience. A dialogue can be a lot of things. The narrative is in assembling all of the communication to create a message.

If you look at a platform, such as Twitter, you can assess the functionality and use it to create your communication strategy. Twitter is a great way to extend your customer service and find ideas for customer-centric solutions. Facebook is a great place to conduct surveys and solicit feedback based on opt-in offers. It also allows you to conduct research to a broader audience. LinkedIn helps you generate leads and find potential partners.

The point of these examples is that you can extract metrics of measurement to build business strategies that are future-proof. Your services can identify solve problems in a more timely manner then traditional reviews. All of this data and information needs to be disseminated by someone within your organization. It doesn’t need to be only one person’s job to manage and communicate, but there should be someone collecting and reporting on the information. Teams should have access to this information to form the basis for the day to day practices of your business.

Interestingly, at the end of the presentation a woman asked me about privacy. She said, “how are company’s supposed to control what their employees say to people online?” This is a classic response and something I expected to hear. My response to this is that employees should sign confidentiality agreements that clearly stipulate what they are permitted to share with others outside of the company. If you are a car manufacturer, you might not want your employees leaking information about a product soon to come to market, but it would be ok for your employees to solicit information about people’s favorite car or the story of how they bought their first car. Or even what types of software they’d love to have in a car if they were able to design their own. Alternatively, if a car designer wants to find out whether people like 2 door or 4 on a particular model – why not ask people? Isn’t it better to find out what people want before launching a product that may or may not satisfy the demand? No one is suggesting that employees give away the secret sauce, but the world is full of great ideas and specialists. If you turn your back on the crowd you will surely find yourself out of business sooner than you think.You need to relinquish control.

Ask the Audience

When was the last time you watched, Who Wants to Be A Millionaire? Harnessing the collective wisdom of many is a great way to find the right answer. The audience is rarely wrong.

Several years ago I read, 'The Wisdom of Crowds: Why the Many Are Smarter Than the Few and How Collective Wisdom Shapes Business, Economies, Societies and Nations', It's a book written by James Surowiecki about the aggregation of information in groups, resulting in decisions that, he argues, are often better than could have been made by any single member of the group. The book presents numerous case studies and anecdotes to illustrate its argument, and touches on several fields, primarily economics and psychology.

In a recent report entitled Social Influence Marketing published by Razorfish, Bob Lord states:

"We respectfully suggest that what you say — or your agency says — about your brand or your product matters less than what your customers say about you. And what matters most to them is what your brand does."

You can read the entire report here: http://fluent.razorfish.com/publication/?m=6540&l=1

I think this example from Cadbury is the future of advertising. It's not about what the company thinks is best for it's brand - it's about what your customers want to buy.