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According to Wikipedia at the time of first publication of this post:
CrowdSourcing is a neologism for the act of taking tasks traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, and outsourcing it to a group (crowd) of people or community in the form of an open call. For example, the public may be invited to develop a new technology, carry out a design task (also known as community-based design[1] and distributed participatory design), refine or carry out the steps of an algorithm (see Human-based computation), or help capture, systematize or analyze large amounts of data (see also citizen science).
The term has become popular with business authors and journalists as shorthand for the trend of leveraging the mass collaboration enabled by Web 2.0 technologies to achieve business goals. However, both the term and its underlying business models have attracted controversy and criticisms.
=======End Jargon, Enter Tellman=========
As you have probably figured out, I am running across the USA barefoot right now – and usually have my Iphone strapped to my arm…
And I kinda got tired of just listening to Eminem all the time, so I decided to plug into some audio-books and learn some stuff.
So far on the trip I have listened to:
- Half of Think and Grow Rich by Napolian Hill
- The Art of Money Getting by P.T. Barnum
- GroundSwell by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff
- Born To Run by Christopher McDougall
- and all of CrowdSourcing -
Right now I am a little over half-way through my second listening of Groundswell… but what I’d like your opinion on today is CrowdSourcing…
The author of the book coined the term “Crowdsourcing” and I first heard about it about a year an a half ago from a good friend Tim Brady – who runs http://www.HereForTheBeer.com
Tim and his wife Amy are both super-awesome and extremely sharp individuals, and marketers (in disguise).
They run the highest-rated bed and breakfast in Vermont, (and that is according to Trip Advisor) and the brand-spankin-new-rage-of-a-success-website http://www.hereforthebeer.com – yes, it’s so good that i needed to link to it twice.
At any rate, Tim was in my local mastermind for a long time (sorry, it has been disbanded, you can’t join) and he told me about this Crowdsourcing concept.
You’ve already read the official definition, but I am thinking about it in different terms.
See, I think that crowdsourcing is the next level. The next level of ListBuilding.
Most folks in the marketing world know of me as the ListBuilding guy – I mean, I built a multi-million dollar company around that singulair topic…
So, here is the question.
If you build a small list, or a large one – your primary objective as a business person is to find things that the people in your “tribe” want to buy, and make it available to them.
If you do a good job of this, they will come back time and time again and take your advice… And if you do a good job of bonding with your followers, they will do almost anything you say – so you better be sure that you mean what you say when you send them email.
But, what would happen if your subscribers, your tribe… your Crowd were to start telling you what they want…
What if you made it possible for them to help create the products and services you produce?
What would happen if you held a contest for them to write the best sales copy to sell the products your company creates?
Enter Threadless. (http://www.ThreadLess.com)
I am amazed when I talk with my marketing buddies that so few of the are familiar with Threadless. If you have been studying Crowdsourcing for any amount of time, then you have probably heard the story of Threadless a thousand times…
But if you haven’t then there is something that you’re gonna love.
See, Threadless sells T-shirts.
But not just any T-Shirts. For one, they are all limited runs – they have a limited quanity of every product they sell.
However… They produce new runs of t-shirts all the time… and guess where they get their designs?
Their Crowd – their subscribers, their customers, their list!
Threadless has a company where the folks on their list actually compete just to get their designs put on the T-shirts!!!
But it doesn’t end there.
The Crowd then votes on the designs they like the best, click a little box that says “i’d buy it” and then Threadless knows how many to print.
They turn around and print the shirts, sell them back to the same community that submitted them and they are off and running.
How cool is that?
Check out their site at http://www.Threadless.com to find out more about how the system works – and if you have an ounce of creativity in your brain, submit a design just to see how the process works.
What kind of ideas does CrowdSourcing give you?
How could you use it in your business?
How could another business you know of use it?
Let us know below -
SHABAMBO!
-Tellman
P.S.
If CrowdSourcing is too “heady” for you and you want something that you can use to grow your business in the next couple of days then check this out.