MightyRecruiterThe very first thing you’ll want to do is accurately explain your end goal. Just like all good stories start with asking what the main protagonist wants, your crowdsourced business strategy should start with you figuring out what you want. Do you want to reduce energy usage in smartphones? Figure out how to price mobile data in a way that’s more efficient? Or is your crowdsourcing goal to make education more affordable? Explore your end goal from every conceivable angle and figure out exactly what it is before you bring anyone else in. After all, you’ll never know if you’ve received the answer you want if you don’t even know what the question is.
Don’t Attempt to Cater to Everyone
No matter what your business strategy is, there are bound to be more than a few people who don’t believe in your decision or share your viewpoint for one reason or another. There’s no reason whatsoever for you to try and please everyone, because it’s a waste of time for you to do so. Stay strong in your decision and in your conviction. That passion and commitment is sure to shine through your crowdsourcing campaign and attract the people you want, not to mention there’s less chance of unintentional confusion.
Offer Incentives
While contributors probably aren’t expecting a check in the mail for their participation, you should think of offering them some type of incentive for their ideas. For instance, maybe you could add their names to a product or publicly acknowledge your top contributors for their efforts. If you’re unable to think of an incentive, ask your contributors if they have any thoughts on the matter.
Build a Community
No matter how far apart your contributors are from each other, recent technology has made it easier than ever for everyone to feel as if they’re part of a community. Make it clear that your crowdsourcing participants aren’t competing with each other so much as they’re all working towards a singular goal. Besides realizing your business strategy, this is also a great way to build and strengthen connections with your customers and target audience. On a related note, you can also bring in your vendors, media partners and suppliers with your strategy. For example, media partners are aware of the best ways to recruit reliable talent while your suppliers can help perfect your strategy with their knowledge of your supply chain.
Decide on a Process
Once you’ve decided on which questions to ask to get to the core of your business strategy, it’s time to figure out the process you’ll use to funnel and refine your crowdsourcing efforts. For instance, is it just ideas you’re looking for, or ideas and feedback on ideas? If you already have a collection of ideas, are you in need of individuals to help narrow those ideas down to the best ones? Once you’ve figured out your process, you may want to take this concept a bit further and develop a way for contributors to vote on ideas and another process for offering feedback on ideas. While all of this might seem like a lot of work, it will undoubtedly make it easier for you to figure out whether you’ve received the answer you truly want.
Don’t Work Alone
It makes no difference how seemingly minor your business strategy and crowdsourcing efforts might be, you’ll do well to enlist the help of a manager to keep from becoming overwhelmed. For instance, you could need help answering questions from people who are currently offering ideas as well as questions from those who would like to offer ideas but first require more details on your strategy. What’s more is there could be conflict that needs to be sorted out before your project prematurely collapses. Having a manager means you have someone with whom you can share the responsibility (and the stress). With the easy and instant access to an online community, there’s no reason you have to brainstorm your business strategy alone. For more tips on crowdsourcing and creating a better business, explore the rest of the helpful articles and tools available on Mighty Recruiter.