Guest Blogger - Erin Anderson: Crowdsourcing

Erin will be leading the class in a "Trending Topic" discussion about crowdsourcing. Below is her blog post review of the subject.

Crowdsourcing: to outsource work to an unspecified group of people, typically by making an appeal to the general public on the internet.
In my opinion, crowdsourcing is a clever advancement in advertising. It allows consumers to become involved in choices the company will make. Allowing consumers to become involved in a company's process creates interest in the company.

Crowdsourcing also creates an increased revenue. Generally, when people are involved in something, they become interested. For example, when Mountain Dew introduced the Dewmocracy campaign increased sales of the product. This result is very common after a crowdsourcing campaign. Dewmocracy

American Idol was also discussed in crowdsourcing. Thirty-three million people watch American Idol every week and three-forths of those viewers contribute to the voting. How many of those viewers do you think would still stay true to the show if they weren't able to vote? A lot of the viewers watch that show are intrigued by the fact that they are allowed to participate in the decision making.

A huge topic in the blogging community is how to use crowdsourcing effectively. Effective Crowdsourcing is a website I found on how use crowdsourcing to benefit your company or cause most.
The first thing it says to ask is will the crowd care. This means, if you are selling a toy for children, you should not ask adults to participate in your voting process. This crowd will not care about a child's toy. The second and third things to consider are crowdsourcing requires time and needs structure. People must be hired and plans must be made for the way you will get your ideas out. People want to know what they are contributing to or voting on. The forth and most important when you have started your campaign would be to enforce the rules. In 2007, Pepsi became overwhelmed with votes from the same people. They needed to enforce the rule of one vote per person.