Whatever happened to crowd-sourcing?
Crowd-sourcing, user-generated content, consumer-generated content: these were huge buzzwords from 2004-2008. Every brand was talking about the
consumer's impact on a brand's ability to convey appropriate messaging. Viral marketing was all the rage, with marketers touting their ability to harness the power of the consumer to create
cost-effective, impactful solutions. Then along came Twitter and Facebook. Social media became the darling of the moment, and crowd-sourcing became a casualty of growth.
Guess what! The
UGC space and crowd-sourcing are still very much alive and kicking (to quote Simple Minds), but the focus seems to have shifted from consumers creating the content, to their becoming a waypoint for
the content as it spreads. The consumer's perceived value has become less that of an instigator and more as the kinetic energy needed to pass the messaging along.
The promise of UGC was
that it would dramatically reduce the costs associated with creating content for brands. Members of the agency world have not embraced that fact, because it scares them. The creative agencies don't
want to give up the high margin on creating content for marketers -- so why recommend platforms that are going to take away their lunch money, so to speak?
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Facebook and Twitter are easy
scapegoats, because these platforms are another place to create a presence that needs to be managed by the agency, and used as a launching pad for messaging rather than a sourcing platform. Facebook
and Twitter are social NETWORKS, and they provide a networked platform for friend-to-friend referrals, rather than sourcing the development of content.
But don't overlook the value of
consumers to create content as well. Crowd-sourcing has been used to create products (i.e. Swiffer) and campaigns (i.e. Doritos) to great, positive effect. It is a fundamentally sound and very
efficient tool for finding new sources for ideas and driving innovation -- but innovation can be painful, and not everyone believes the old idiom of "no pain, no gain." That being said, most content
on the Web, when you break it down by page views and time spent, is user-generated. From blogs to comments to independent Web sites that aren't corporately owned... this is user-generated!
The present strength of digital marketing lies in its balance between broadcast and word-of-mouth. Broadcast refers to the standard banners, buttons and rich media units that most publishers
employ. The word-of-mouth component encompasses all of the social media efforts like sharing and referring friends, endorsing brands and becoming fans of your favorite products. Crowd-sourcing fits
directly between the two. Its day is still likely to come, as more marketers finally grasp how to use both aspects -- broadcast and word-of-mouth -- individually and together.
Some of the
ways that marketers can use crowd-sourcing include:
Advertising: development of campaigns, including video. PR: including blogger outreach to develop
promotions targeting specific groups. R&D: researching new products and requesting immediate input or feedback on the use and effectiveness of these products.
Testing: use your audience on Facebook and Twitter for copy or creative testing.These people love your brand, so why not engage them in the process?Crowd-sourcing may not be a top-10
buzzword anymore, but it's a slowly building undercurrent to what online marketers are doing -- and doing well. As a fundamental of the Web it shouldn't be overlooked, especially as more marketers
explore cost-effective ways to create and distribute their messaging to targeted audiences.
How are you using crowd-sourcing to its fullest effect?