Thanks to social media tools, marketers are finally learning the value of sharing the spotlight with their customers. In the old days, product information flowed directly from the brand to the customer. Marketers would put their heads together and develop the story they wanted to tell, the narrative that would (with any hope) stay in the mind of the customer when the purchase window moved from locked shut to wide open. Of course, branding in this sense still exists; we need only look at the most recent Super Bowl to see advertisers jockey for attention and spend exorbitant funds on commercials to sell pancakes and tax assistance.
As forms of advertising, these commercials show how the narrative in branding flows from the inside, out. Crowdsourcing, on the other hand, works by soliciting the narrative directly from your customers. As a result, the creation of the narrative resembles not a straight line, but rather a loop between you and your audience. And what better way to post a question to the crowd than by using Twitter, a free and flexible crowdsourcing tool?
A well-crafted tweet can be an immediate call to action. Got a great idea for a new product but having trouble naming it? Wondering if people would rather view ads before or during a video segment? As long as you’re able to restrict these questions to 140 characters, you can receive real-time information from a diverse range of followers within minutes. Like it or not, Twitter is big, at least for this moment in contemporary social media, so we might as well use it to our advantage.
One such advantage is its ability to disseminate and collect information quickly to and from a varied audience. In his book The Wisdom of Crowds, James Surowiecki outlines four principles of crowdsourcing: diversity of opinion, independence, decentralization and aggregation. In this sense, Twitter is a tool of aggregation; it draws together independent voices and displays them in a collective forum for you to analyze and dissect.
Surowiecki also encourages us to stop “chasing the expert” and instead pose questions to the crowd.
In other words, share the spotlight! When you’re trying to sell something – a pancake, a tax service, or an idea – your audience can be the best source of information because it can help you write the most compelling and relevant narrative.
Among other reasons, crowdsourcing works because people like to feel included, not manipulated. Giving your customers a voice creates an invaluable feedback loop that helps to create and refine your brand. So, while Twitter is far from finding a cure for halitosis or predicting the winner of March Madness, it does hold sway as a crowdsourcing agent. Just ask the crowd.
Watch the super bowl online here.