Crowdsourcing is one of the hot topics in today’s business landscape, especially now that the internet and social media has made it so easy to connect with millions of people at once.
But can you use it in YOUR business?
First, let’s look at the basic definition of crowdsourcing:
…obtain (information or input into a particular task or project) by enlisting the services of a number of people, either paid or unpaid, typically via the Internet.
As crowdsourcing has become easier and more popular, people have been finding increasingly creative ways to use it.
Here’s a big list of ideas based on ways people have already used crowdsourcing successfully in business. I’ll bet there are at least a few that you could use!
- Blog posts
- Articles
- ‘How To’ content
- Lists
- Testimonials
- Success stories
- Personal stories
- Comments
- FAQs
- Answers to customer questions
- Wikis
- Product/service reviews
- Product descriptions
- Captions
- Social media status updates
- Translation
- Transcription
- Editing and grammar check
- Data verification
- Infographics
- Illustrations
- Product-in-use photos
- Product use stories
- Service photos
- Promotional imagery
- Quote images
- Photo tagging
- Product videos
- Service videos
- Promotional videos
- Video ‘How To’ guides
- Promotional songs
- Customer favorite things
- Customer least favorite things
- Product ideas (dream products)
- Service ideas
- Which product idea is best?
- Product tweaks
- Product features
- Product names
- Product variations
- Logo design
- Website design
- Business card design
- Flyer design
- Brochure design
- Print/Online ad design
- Packaging design
- Product design features
- T-Shirt design
- Promotional goods design
- Business stationery design
- Website testing
- Product testing
- Product funding
- Service funding
- Charity funding
- Ways to help the community
- Ideas for apps
- Software solutions
- Plugin solutions
- Tech questions
- Math problem solutions
- Science problems/challenges
- Startup funding
Don’t forget that you could also crowdsource content for your core business itself.
Some hugely successful companies are entirely designed around crowdsourcing their content. For example, t-shirts (Teespring), crafts (Etsy), car service (Lyft and Uber), accommodations (Airbnb), app content (Waze), etc.
Can you think of any other example of crowdsourcing?
Want a downloadable, pdf version of this list of ideas?
It's great to have it handy when you need to do some crowdsourcing brainstorming 🙂
If you'd like to download a pdf version of this blog post and list, CLICK HERE
Want to learn more and teach others about tapping into the collective wisdom of the crowd?
Check out our customizable, ready-to-go course on Crowdsourcing Essentials.
CLICK HERE to see what you can teach in Crowdsourcing Essentials.
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