Social Media Crowd-sourcing:

           

       

         Social media, as I have now stated numerous times, has become an integral part of our everyday lives. To further prove this point, this week we are going to be talking about how you, or your company, can use social media for crowdfunding. But, what is crowdsourcing? Crowdsourcing is, simply put, the collection of ideas, services, and/or content with the help of contributions from a large number of people. The “crowd” part of crowdsourcing is in reference to a third-party entity that do not have a direct relation to the business that is using the crowdsourcing method. Companies, such as Netflix, who have used social media crowdsourcing are basically asking their consumers to give feedback, ideas and opinions on a particular topic. The company then uses the information gathered and applies them to further improve their product development, customer service, and even their marketing campaigns. By using crowdsourcing properly, companies can gain valuable insights about their customers and how they feel about the company and its products. Still not convinced that social media crowdsourcing can add value to your company? Well, I have listed below the top four reasons that your company should implement social media crowdsourcing.

Reason number one:

Crowdsourcing allows for your company to gain a better understanding of your customers.

Due to the fact that social media is such an important part of the majority of the worlds daily lives, it is also the quickest, and most direct way to gain feedback directly from your customers. I know what you are thinking. “But can’t we just look at the analytics on our social media post and analyze the customers behavior and preferences?” Sure, you can do that and, yes, that information is also valuable. However, by asking your customers directly specific questions about your company, products, or marketing campaigns, you will be able to get even more specified data and quotes that allow you to form a story behind how your users interact with your company and all that it offers. You will also be able to get a more specific idea of what needs your company, or products, haven’t fully met your customers needs, as well as ideas as to how to improve.

Enterprise.nxt, for instance, created a Twitter poll to understand how its followers manage their passwords. It even threw in a handy guide to creating more secure passwords so that they provide value to their audience while getting a better feel for an aspect of their behavior.

Reason number two:

Crowdsourcing allows for your company to improve your products and/or service.

Crowdsourcing is all about customer feedback. What better way to get feedback from your customers than asking them direct questions where the majority of them spend the vast majority of their time? By utilizing social media crowdsourcing you will be able to hear about improvement opportunities straight from the people who you are wanting to buy your product. Since they come in direct contact with your product regularly, they are the best people to point out what needs fixing to build a better product. An advantage of reaching out to your social media audience is that the group that will respond are typically some of your most engaged followers and users. They can serve as a focus group that knows your brand in detail and is motivated to help you improve them so they can benefit as customers too. While you can create polls and ask questions, that’s not the only way to collect product improvement feedback. Look at the comments on your posts, direct messages and reviews on your social media pages.

Reason number three:

Crowdsourcing allows for your company to optimize social media customer service.

Social media crowdsourcing goes hand in hand with the customer feedback you receive through social customer service as well. Every new review, every new interaction can provide vital information on how to improve your service. If you’re seeing recurring issues with your product or service, such as many customers experiencing shipping issues, you can start to diagnose problems affecting your business and improve. For many growing brands, a key issue can be the bandwidth of your service team itself. Maybe your team isn’t responsive enough or your limited availability is inconvenient to your customers. Some companies, such as Netflix, have even gone an extra step and created an entirely new social media profile directly focused on customer service. Netflix now has a Twitter account that is set up for their customers to have a more direct method of contact, or connection, with the company. However, that connection works both ways. By setting up this customer service profile, Netflix now has a direct connection to their users to let them know about streaming issues, updates, or anything else that the customers need to know about. This is a great idea when brands have high volumes of customer service-related queries that can’t be easily handled on the main account.

Reason number four:

Crowdsourcing allows for companies to have a way to assess their performance in the eyes of their customers.

            In any business, data is vital for the growth and success of the company. However, one of the things that companies sometimes fail at is being able to really understand what their customers really think about their product, or even the company as a whole. By implementing crowdsourcing, you will be taking the guess work out of figuring out how your customers feel about your company because the feedback is written by the customers directly. While analytics data can tell you almost everything that you need to know about your performance, there’s one aspect of your performance that it can’t measure; people’s sentiment and opinions. If you’re going to get a 360-degree view of its performance, you need to learn how to ask for feedback from customers about it. For instance, you may see a lot of engagement on your social post. But that’s not necessarily positive. People may be leaving negative comments or sharing it for all the wrong reasons. Crowdsourcing customer comments and feedback helps you gain a more complete picture of how your campaigns and your overall business decisions as a brand are faring.

Overall, social media crowdsourcing is an amazing tool that you, or your company, can, and should, use. Social media is a huge part of today’s society. If your company doesn’t have a strong social media presence, then I would strongly consider starting to building one. Social media is not going anywhere. If anything, social media is becoming even more important than ever. Social media crowdsourcing is a valuable tool for businesses and content creators alike. You can use it to inform your content strategy, promotion strategy, product development efforts and more. Make the most of the tips we’ve provided here to take an organized approach to crowdsourcing.