IDEA SOURCING

Idea Sourcing is simply the process of allowing anyone in an identified group, party, or network to make suggestions to help solve problems, come up with ideas, and create initiatives.

In other words, instead of sitting up all night worrying about how to best position your company for a specific client you are pitching, you allow people from varying backgrounds and areas of expertise to make suggestions.

It’s as if you’re using multiple computers networked together to solve a problem instead of just the one you are sitting at.

In this case, your brain is the computer.

If you have ever enjoyed an animated series from Pixar, you should know they did not animate, shade, and render those films such as Toy Story or Finding Nemo on one computer! As obvious as that sounds, why do we take that very approach? Most great masterpieces require involvement, engagement, and collaboration.

If you’re not familiar with the term, I want to introduce you to an extremely important concept called:

Social Capital

Wikipedia defines Social Capital as:

… a sociological concept used in business, economics, organizational behaviour, political science, public health and the social sciences in general to refer to connections within and between social networks. Though there are a variety of related definitions, which have been described as “something of a cure-all”^[1] for the problems of modern society, they tend to share the core idea “that social networks have value. Just as a screwdriver (physical capital) or a college education (human capital) can increase productivity (both individual and collective), so do social contacts affect the productivity of individuals and groups”.

Your friends, families, co-workers, employees, neighbors, you name it, all have different “values” than you.

We can discuss the reasons why some friends are closer than others, or why you avoid that one co-worker all day long, and yet we rarely ever think about the business value our relationships carry.

While this is a favorite topic of mine, I will keep this on topic by simply saying that in my experience there is no reason not to tap into the Social Capital in my life other than ignorance of the abilities possessed by the people in my life or my own pride and fear!

So with this working definition of Social Capital, let’s look a little further at the process of Idea Sourcing.

Probably the easiest way to do this is online where people feel the most comfortable to engage.

While you can offer opportunities where a profile of the user is not available (so they feel more comfortable),  you might want to be careful with that option because you are inherently throwing out a great deal of “data” about their suggestion.

It is important to note here that the greatest results to date with Idea Sourcing have come from offering a wide array of people with varying ideologies, educations, and life experience the ability to engage… not just who you think would have good ideas.

Always remember: the laws of “small worlds” or “social networks” cannot be predetermined. You will always be amazed at what someone knows or has experienced beyond what you could ever have imagined!

Let’s look at one of my favorite examples I have been talking about for almost 2 years now:

CASE STUDY: Threadless.com

Before Threadless.com came on the scene, we had all been to apparel websites and perhaps even visited a few T-shirt websites.

I want you to think about the process of creating and selling t-shirts online.  There’s the costs of design, manufacturing, advertising, processing, shipping, customer service and returns.

Image via CrunchBase

But the biggest problem is that the consumer has to shop and shop to find anything unique and honestly most t-shirt sites at the time were all selling the same fare.

Enter threadless.com

The concept is so simple, it passes us all by.

Create an online environment that allows anyone to upload a design for a t-shirt.

Then once a month have a vote for the best artwork of that month.

The person selected then has their artwork put into limited T-shirt runs (ensuring demand) and… voila!

You have your super cool T-shirt business.

But here’s the part most of us miss: they have outsourced the most expensive and risky parts of their business.

They are not paying for design work AND they know that the t-shirts will sell because of the number of people who voted for it!

SO they mitigated risk (they don’t have boxes and boxes of t-shirts in storage somewhere because they couldn’t sell them…like I did once)

One more vital component here… think about the mind and basic nature of an artist who would upload their designs.

What do you think the possibilities are that artists will do their best to make sure everyone they know sees their art work and buys a T-shirt?

Pretty good, right?

This process creates a new, natural, organic, viral campaign EVERY MONTH for Threadless!

Just because they are an online business doesn’t mean there aren’t great applications of this model for your brick and mortar business.

Just remember: when a consumer BELIEVES they have a say in the decision or outcome of a business they immediately feel a sense of loyalty.

And it’s that loyalty you build upon.

Let’s look at just a few methods and tools you can use in your own business.

TOOLS

There are many great tools available to you ranging from Social Media to surveys and polls.

Social Media - there are so many great social media tools for this I could dedicate an entire blog to this subject, so I will just cover a few for now.

LinkedIn

This is probably my favorite!

No matter how many times I give this tip when I speak, I am always amazed at how many people have not heard of it.

In LinkedIn there is a brilliant feature titled “Answers”.

It’s a bit misleading because it isn’t just answers, but questions as well.

You can post a question about any topic and direct it to specific markets.

For example, if you are a small business owner and you just had a serious problem with your CPA or bookkeeper you can log in to LinkedIn and create a question such as “what should I look for in a great CPA?”

You can then select who in what market (because in LinkedIn you have to select a preselected field of work when you create a profile) you want to submit this to.

Now I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking the answers you receive will be shameless self-promotion such as:

Answer: Yeah, I do. Hire me!

That does occur from time to time, but you will be amazed at the overall quality of answers, referrals and long term contacts you will receive.

Remember, people behave on LinkedIn because it’s for business and their peers are always watching:)

Twitter

I hear all the time how frustrated people get with Twitter because they don’t know what to talk about and they can’t seem to get people to engage them. Yet these same people are facing decisions, comparisons, and challenges all day every day!

Sounds like a great match to me!

Just a few of the Twellow Catagories

Ask questions on Twitter and you will get answers. If you need to ask questions to a specific market, and you don’t have many of these users following you, then head over to sites like Twellow.com

and search by interest. When you find the market you are looking for, follow the people listed. When they follow back , as most do, you’ll have your free market research waiting for you!

Grow your networks by solving problems whether they be your own or someone else’s.

Surveys and Poll

LinkedIn

sample LinkedIn poll

Again, LinkedIn weighs in at the top of my list because they offer you a polling feature cleverly titled… “Poll“!

LinkedIn says it best “Add the Polls application and leverage the wisdom of millions of business professionals on LinkedIn.”

There is even a paid option so you can submit your poll to users you are not connected to if you need to access their brains!

Of course Facebook has a slew of applications that allow you to survey your friends. Check out their options here: Facebook survey applications.

I have not used this myself but have been told several times that http://twtpoll.com is awesome for polling your Twitter community.

Now if you’re looking for options you can email or place on your blog or website then I suggest any of these:

FREE:

surveymonkey.com

polldaddy.com

PAID:

Constant Contact

While many people use Constant Contact for their Ezines and email lists, few realize they offer an amazing survey tool at an additional cost.

I have found that instead of setting up separate polls for every site, you can simply create one, place it on your blog or website, and then, if your Social Media funnel is set up correctly (like we teach you),  you can direct folks from your Twitter, FB or LinkedIn accounts to the poll on your blog or site.

Regardless of your business model and challenges, I encourage you to experiment with Idea Sourcing.  If you have even half the results we have, and our clients have, you will make it a primary part of your business.

So what do you think? Let me hear from you and please post your thoughts and questions below.

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“Damian, how do you pick which companies you work with especially in the Web 2.0 world?”

I usually get that question when speaking or on a panel somewhere and inevitably it is from someone wanting to hire me to develop their Web 2.0 concept into a viable business.

One of the answers I always give is that I look for an idea that would be second, third or even fourth to the market. Not first!

I believe this is crucial because you are mitigating risk by looking at existing models and perfecting that model. I know it’s not as exciting as being a trail blazer but I can tell you raising venture capital is much easier!

The second element I look for is what’s commonly called “CrowdSourcing“.

by Sami Viitamäk

The working definition found in Wikipedia (which is a site based on crowdsourcing by the way) for crowdsourcing is the act of taking tasks traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, and outsourcing it to a group (crowd) of people or community in the form of an open call. The term crowdsourcing has become shorthand for the trend of leveraging the mass collaboration enabled by Web 2.0 technologies to achieve business goals.

We are seeing this every where. New York Times now makes all their content available for free, Flickr allows you to upload and tag your photos so others can use them in most cases. And don’t forget about amazing companies such as Threadless,  Goldcorp Inc. not to mention our very own goverment and the new methods emerging everyday for crowdsourcing security measures. I’ll get to them in later posts.

There are many terms already associated with this trend such as:

• Wisdom of Crowds
• Open Innovation
• Social Collaboration
• Human Computation
• Citizen Science
• Collective Intelligence to name a few.

This is a massive area of study but for our purposes today lets just say this.

If 2 heads are better than 2 then 50 heads are AWESOME! LOL

Image of New York Times lead articles mapped on the NYT API from blprnt_van

Here’s the point.

We are in the information age NOT the industrial age

UUUH no shoes in the office Jim? Really?

Is your business still working like a factory?

Let’s walk through an example.

OLD MODEL: Crowd Surfing

not to mention the awkward gropping...

In the previous model (industrial age) of problem solving was approached by going to someone or a small group of someones that have a specific related skill to solve your problem. So let’s say you are the proud owner of Jarvison & Minx CPA firm, (totally made that up) if you had a problem with say high employee turn over in your company you would talk to your friends and associates at the office and then finally when it cost you enough pain you would try several ideas and if that didn’t work you would look for an expert in HR.

And that expert would bring their experience into the mix and undoubtedly over time help you solve your problem. And the solutions would fall in typical areas such as improved working conditions, better atmosphere or even greater incentives.

Now in order to solve this problem you need to sit back and asses the costs to the company. The lose of revenue by loosing trained employees and always hiring and training new employees, the cost of the meetings to figure out the problem which basically results many times in lose of productivity and of course the cost to the HR expert.

I call this Crowdsurfing because of the image it conjures up. We have all seen someone crowdsurfing at a concert right?

Whether your the average board and disapointed youth at a modern day concert (major soap box of mine)

www.youtube.com/watch?v=OR7Pg6rq_fs

or just another psyched out Obama fan we have all seen the results:

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sk0i_Ot92g0

I know it was never you but still you know what I’m talking about.

Here’s what has always amazed me about that idea of transportation… I have NEVER EVER seen someone crowdsurf and get what they want!

They always want to travel closer to the front by the stage and yet if they manage to get there all that happens is some massive security guard grabs and throws them all the way to the back so that they are actually worse off than when they started! Sound familar?

But this is my favorite part of crowdsurfing… plane and simple. 90% of the time they are dropped!

Haha I know I shouldn’t laugh and all that and of course I would never want them to actually get hurt.

But why is it so common to see a crowdsurfer get dropped?

Well I believe its because NO ONE LIKE TO BE STEPPED ON!

Well usually no one likes getting stepped on...

Oh sure you might be game for a while but after enough butt and boots hit you in the face you tend to no longer have the strength to hold them up! LOL

Here’s my point. The old method for solving so many of our problems are a lot like this. We rely on people to get us where we are trying to go but they get tired of it because of one main reason…

They are doing ALL the work and you are having ALL the fun!

NEW MODEL: CrowdSourcing

In today’s methods (information age) information is king! We have all heard that content is king but all content is really is presorted and organized information that we want. So now a savy owner of Jarvison and Minx CPA firm has options.

What we now have the ability to do is to poll everyone’s mind equally to see where we find consitent areas of frustration. Not just the manager’s or the sales team.

Think about it for a second. What we have basically learned to do in business is apply a cast system that none of us would ever agree to or submit ourselves to. As if it’s impossible that George in your accounting department has NO clue what makes a compelling sales pitch.

That’s insane.

Do you have any idea how many sales pitches he sees on an average day? Any idea how many of them work on him or don’t. We as humans carry impressions from birth!

These are accesible to anyone at any time if you are willing to look past a degree on a wall.

At it’s most basic principal it is the same concept as a suggestion box. You don’t create a suggestion box for every department!

So in todays arena a frustrated business owner can access the problem and solve the problem all the while reinforcing that his/her employees matter.

Why do they feel that they matter?

Because you are turning to them for a solution and now they are engaged at a personal level!

So back to our business owners delima. What can he do to crowdsource this issue.

Well for starters they can create a survey in any number of ways with tools like: SurveyMonkey.com, SurveyGizmo.com or even Constant Contact.com.

If you want to really get in depth responses then you can simply create a basic form using Google Forms! Literally in seconds you can ask any question and send it out. The best part is that when the employees in this case respond Google Forms arranges and exports the information into a spread sheet!

Oh and don’t forget that at the base operating level of all social media is crowdsourcing. Asking opinions, giving opinions and of course there are apps in Facebook as well as LinkedIn for polls and surveys.

So now our business owner is getting information that he is probably unaware of in the first place to better asses the problem.

Think about it. What is one of the first steps a operations or HR consultant takes when they are hired?

Start interviewing the staff!

Why? Because they need the same info you do… you must remember that what has traditionally made someone an expert is their focus in a field. Well isn’t it possible that the very focus you are paying for is blind to other solutions because they do not even consider it or even know it exists?

Now I want to leave this example because we can get into a lot of minutia here but I want to draw your attention to this basic concept.

Imagine what you can do with your existing clients, prospect clients or even disgruntled clients with crowdsourcing.

It doesn’t have to just be a survey either. There are many great tools available for your own crowdsourcing project.

Over the next few weeks I will take one of these methods and break it down so we can all begin to work smarter and not harder and brand ourselves as those savvy business’ that consumers love to discover!

In the mean time write and an let me know what you have done with crowdsourcing or peer production models or even what you would like to do and I will address it in the upcoming blog posts.

If you want more in depth study on this subject here are just a few excellent blogs:

Wikinomics by Dan Tapscott and Anthony Williams

http://bit.ly/4nCj0I

Crowdsourcing by Jeff Howe

http://bit.ly/1m1hW

Flirting with Crowds by Sami Viitamäki

http://bit.ly/3CrBKY

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I titled this posting “Shock and Awe”  because so many of my clients have said these exact words to me.

Either “we need a Shock and Awe method to FORCE them to read our emails

or

“What can I do? They just wont read anything I send.”

If your like me you like to communicate. But that doesn’t necessarily mean it is effective communication.

The sad reality is that most emails are never even opened!

Click picture to purchase this shirt.

It has long been a known fact that you have to catch folks in the title of your blog or letter and it is especially true when it comes to sending an email to your list or clients.

The race for supremacy in the internet based businesses has been really heating up and many sites have been put up to help others to get ahead for a small fee. But there are also ways in which you don’t have to pay so much to make yourself a good list of loyal followers. Having a satisfied web traffic and visitors allows you to put up a foundation wherein you can build an opt-in list and make it grow from there.

An opt-in list allows you to provide newsletters to your subscribers with their consent. When people sign up, they know that they will be receiving updates and news from your site and the industry your represent via an e-mail. But that doesn’t mean that all of those who subscribe read them at all.

Many lists have been built due to an attachment with free software or for a promotional discount and such. Some are not really interested in receiving e-mails from companies and just treat them as waste of cyberspace and delete or trash them without so mush as opening the e-mail and scanning them.

You can change all that.

While forwarding an email message is relatively after producing your newsletter. Getting people to open them is not as easy. You don’t want to waste all the time and effort used in making the newsletters, you want people to read them and have their interests piqued. Interested enough to go to your website and look around and most especially purchased and acquire your products or services.

One of the numerous ways you can tempt or persuade your subscriber is by providing a well thought out and well written subject. The subject of an email is what is often referred to when a person or a recipient of an email decides whether he or she wants to open or read an e-mail. The subject could easily be regarded as one of the most important aspect of your  promotional e-mail.

Your subject must be short and concise. They should provide a summary for the content of the e-mail so that the recipient will have basic knowledge of the content. This is really vital in grabbing the attention of your readers and subscribers. You want your subject to instantly grab the attention of your subscriber and get them to be intrigued to open up your mail.

Remember, it is not necessarily true that a subscriber opens up subscribed mails.

A good subject must always be tickling the curiosity of your recipient. It must literally force the recipient to open the mail. A certain emotion must be ignited and get them to open the mail. It is essential to use specific words to get the reaction you need. Keep in mind that the recipient or subscribers spends only a few seconds looking over each subject of the e-mails he receives. You must grab your reader’s attention right away.

There are many forms you can use for your subject. You can provide a subject that says your e-mail contains content that teaches them tips and methods on certain topics. An example of this is using keywords and keyword phrases such as, How To , Tips, Guides To, Methods in and others

Image via Wikipedia

like that.

You can also put your subject in a question form. These may include questions like, “Are you sick and tired of your job?” Or “Is your boss always on your case?” Try to stay on the topic that pertains to your site so that you’ll know that your subscribers have signed up because they are interested in that topic.  This form of subject is very effective because they reach out to your recipients emotions. When they have read the question on your subject, their mind starts answering the question already.

You can also use a subject that commands your reader. Statements such as “Act now and get this once in a lifetime opportunity, or double, triple and even quadruple what you are earning in one year”. This type of subject deals with the benefits  your company provides with your product and services.

You may also use breaking news as your subject to intrigue your subscriber. For example, if you deal with car engine parts you can write in your subject, announcing the new engine that uses no gasoline, It runs on water. This creates curiosity with the reader and will lead them to open the mail and read on.

For more information regarding the how’s, what’s and why’s of an opt in list and building your list please contact me at damian@riotloungeent.com

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