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Exceeding The Limits Of Crowdsourcing For Video Production

The dominance of video in today’s content-driven digital marketing world is hard to ignore. The growth of connected devices has led individuals to view more video on their televisions, smartphones, tablets, and PCs than ever before - often shopping for or researching products simultaneously.

This “second screen” has led today’s brand marketers to consider that screen agnosticism – the idea that video, no matter where it is seen – is becoming the simplest and most convenient way to reach their audience.

As a result, large enterprises are distributing marketing videos in escalating numbers. This year, the Aberdeen Group reported that 92% of these businesses are including video in their content marketing strategies, while a recent survey of video production professionals by the Web Video Marketing Council reported that 85% of respondents expect the volume of their video production to increase in 2014, with 37% expecting it to double.

However, despite the wide adoption of video, the medium is still young and presents challenges to many who have recently joined this stampede. Video production is intrinsically a local, highly creative, process performed by small groups of professionals with specialized skills and equipment. It can be very difficult – and very expensive – to produce large quantities in a short amount of time.

So how are marketers meeting the demand for high-quality videos without becoming hindered by project management issues and escalating costs?

Crowdsourcing May Be The Answer

Many businesses today are investigating crowdsourcing—the process in which tasks are distributed to a large network of people—to benefit from collective intelligence. Brands are now learning they can access a growing legion of freelancers, among them videographers, and are experimenting with this solution to procure their videos for marketing, training or advertising purposes.

However, while the crowd represents an opportunity, it is not without its own challenges. Basic crowdsourcing is ideal for easily definable and simple tasks, but can be problematical when applied to complex projects such as video production. This is especially true when large volumes of video are required.

Most problems arise because simple crowdsourcing of video production often generates results that range in quality and consistency, requiring the marketer to undertake a great deal of time-consuming administration and evaluation. Also, it can be extremely difficult for companies to manage a large number of projects across a geographically dispersed group of freelancers.

Then consider Crowdsource Workforce Management (CWM), a shift in crowdsourcing where the crowd is highly screened, managed through a platform, and given pre-determined tasks to perform within a project framework.

Developed to manage the crowd on behalf of the business user, CWM allows strict planning, control and reliability, and so provides a new layer of integrated project management which guarantees costs, quality and quick turn-around schedules.

CWM platforms work by turning large and complex creative tasks into a series of well-defined micro tasks. Specific actions are re-engineered by the application of detailed requirements and outcome definitions, micro-level task tracking, extensive quality control, and the organization of a task-based workforce by skill level and expertise.

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