Simplex Design blog : 5 Ways to Use Social Media for Crowdsourced Marketing

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5 Ways to Use Social Media for Crowdsourced Marketing Posted: 09 Jul 2014 08:43 AM PDT Crowdsourcing is the act of making an open call to a large group of people via the Internet. Companies love crowdsourcing because having many individuals working on the same problem as opposed to just one in-house employee is much more effective. In the case of crowdsource marketing, your customers are your brand advocates, not your employees, says Impact Branding & Design. And fortunately, social media has made it easier than ever to engage your audience and get them involved in your marketing process. Host Facebook Contests Rewarding your audience's good ideas with prizes is an effective way to increase the level of engagement and receive a high number of responses. For example, if your business is looking to revamp its logo you can crowdsource to graphic designers and ask them to submit an entry. Holding this type of Facebook contest will earn you a new logo and a happy customer. AllFacebook suggests making contest rules clear to avoid misunderstandings and create a positive experience for your fans. Use Rich Pins Who hasn't heard of Pinterest? This image-based social media platform has more than 70 million users and is still growing. The Rich Pin is a new type of pin that allows businesses to include extra information. Currently, there are five types of Rich Pins: movie, recipe, article, product and place, notes Pinterest. Each of these pins comes with a different feature. The article Rich Pin includes a headline, author and story description, while the product Rich Pin has pricing, availability and where to buy sections. Crowdsource your clients by including useful information in your pins to encourage sharing. Amp Up Your Content Marketing Content is king in the digital age and crowdsourcing makes creating engaging content easier. Additionally, by involving your audience in the process you'll become known as an interactive brand, notes The Huffington Post. However, outsourcing content means you'll have to invest in quality control because not everything your customers write or design will be top-notch. You can improve the quality of your content by choosing subject matter experts from content creation platforms like Clearvoice.com, Scripted.com, Contently.com. Solicit Follower Feedback Asking for a client's opinion is yet another way a business can crowdsource. Social Media Examiner comments that asking open-ended questions on social media sites is the best way to collect feedback that can be used in a marketing campaign. For instance, LifeLock often posts financial and identity-theft related questions on Facebook. Relating the questions you ask to your products and services, like LifeLock has done, gives you a better idea of what is currently working and what should be changed. Avoid having to fund expensive research studies by going directly to the sources online. Add a Human Touch E-Consultancy warns against aggressive crowdsourcing. When businesses are busy focusing on their own goals it can be easy to forget about a client's needs. You can avoid this by adding a human touch to everything you and your employees do. When asking for a consumer's opinion on a product, include his or her name in the reply. Simple personal acts like these can make your company more welcoming and your audience more responsive. Plus, if your customers see you less as a business and more as a trusted Facebook friend, you'll get a higher participation rate when crowdsourcing.

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