There Ain’t No Crowd in Crowdsourcing Without Curation!

Crowdsourcing is a business model that aims to leverage the power of many. It involves ‘outsourcing’ tasks or problems to a group of people to gain answers or solutions. In terms of B2B marketing, it involves a group of people who are motivated enough to contribute relevant business data meaningful in developing extensive databases.

How Does Crowdsourcing Help?

• Crowdsourcing is a cost-effective solution to completing defined tasks rather than employing a dedicated professional for the same.
• It provides a better platform to gain access to a wide range of expertise and contribution easily.
• It serves as an extension of an earlier model of decentralized or global workforce.
• For tasks that are simple and require minimal management, crowdsourcing is a great source of data.

Crowdsourcing is not an industry – it is a management process that augments current processes. A popular saying is that, “there is no crowd in crowdsourcing only virtuosos or highly talented people.”

Here’s How You Can Get It Right

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• Set clear expectations – You have to be open to incorporating ideas from ‘crowd’ or co-developing one with them. Discounting or limiting their contribution at later stages is only diminishes the essence of crowdsourcing.
• Define roles of participants – You need to be specific about what role participants should play. Whether it is contributing data, updating information, developing new marketing ideas or creating ad campaigns.
• Take a risk – You can use crowdsourcing in unique ways beyond asking the crowd to vote or submit videos. As an important touch point, information from the crowd can be creatively utilized in marketing campaigns, product and service features and branding.
• Involve employees - This is important as employees will be able to guide the process, will be able to accept feedback through collaboration and will provide participants a real face and voice of the company they are contributing to.
• Recognize if not monetize – Crowd-sourced information is contributed by individual motivation. To continue with the trend, appreciation is important. Accolades, social mentions or badges are good ways of showing your gratitude.

Crowd Curation

The ‘curated crowd’ approach is the moderation of crowds to identify people who will be able to provide relevant information. Curation is usually conducted by introducing a survey for users to participate in to understand if their profiles fit and meet the criterion of database requirements. 

• It does not imply authoritative selection. It is individual choice of singular items. 
• It is not about creating bigger crowds. The information your contributing users provide need to translate to better results. 
• It is not about dictating, it is about moderation.

Anyone can be on the crowd, from a monkey with a crayon to a child with a lot of time on hand. The best way to filter everyone who wishes to join your crowd; is a quick survey or questions that can establish their credibility, authority and relevancy to the project.

While you may provide specific instructions for contributions, do not expect people to obey them.  Always verify data before integrating with house lists. Marketers need to realize that they need to listen more. Crowd curation provides a platform for the audience to engage and ‘do the talking’. 

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