Getting Started With Crowdsourcing

blogger

Whether you’re crowdsourcing promotional activity,content or ideas, here’s a quick set of generally applicable guidelines for getting started – sourced for this article in early 2009 from businesses that crowdsource (see below for acknowledgements).

1 Start Small: Recruit internal champions and nurture small crowdsourcing experiments first. Crowdsourcing veteran and Intuit co-founder Scott Cook suggests seeking organisational buy-in only after you’ve had some success. Otherwise, the countercultural jump of
crowdsourcing may be too big for many brands

2 Remember the 90:9:1 Rule: Temper participation level expectations; only up to 1% of any online community ever contributes actively to anything. 9% may deign to vote, rate or comment, whilst the overwhelming 90% only ever consume content.

3 Get the Motivational Mix Right: Participation in crowdsourcing is motivated by a number of factors but they boil down to the 4Fs – Fame, Fortune, Fun and Fulfilment. Good crowdsourcing initiatives should offer participants a mix of all four Fs.

4 Deal with Sturgeon’s Law: A complex law to understand, science fiction writer Theodore Sturgeon’s maxim is that ‘90% of everything is crap’ – and it applies to crowdsourcing contributions. So you’ll need a system in place, like user voting, to filter out the rubbish.

5 Harness Joy’s Law: The counterpoint to Sturgeon’s Law, ‘No matter who you are, most of the smartest people work for someone else,’ attributed to Sun Microsystems co-founder Bill Joy. The key to smart crowdsourcing is to identify and coalesce expert talent pools that lie outside your company.

6 KISS: Keep it Simple, Stupid: Crowdsourcing only works when the task is simple for contributors. Lengthy forms, obtuse IT and arduous tasks are crowd dispersers. 1-click participation should be your goal.

7 Community Rules: Community is the social glue of crowdsourcing, so allow contributors to connect with each other, as well as with the sponsoring brand. Where possible, build on existing communities rather than build new communities, and keep the focus on communities
of practice (based on what people do rather than what they think (designers, creatives, coaches etc))

8 Manage the Process: Crowdsourcing initiatives need to be actively managed. Starbucks has a team of 48 specially trained employees who act as discussion hosts, encouraging participation and feeding back on ideas. Jeff Bruzzo who heads up Starbuck’s crowdsourcing initiative says: ‘These are the people at a dinner party who make sure everyone is having a
good time.’

9 Get Legal Involved: Crowdsourcing often involves the transfer of some kind of an intellectual property,which is not a problem in itself, but you’ll need a cast iron ‘terms and conditions’ clause for contributors

10 Promote the Platform: Whether you’re using a crowdsourcing community or contest, you’ll need to enthusiastically attract contributors. Promote your initiative with online banner advertising, Google ads, and email campaigns, and even traditional media advertising and PR

Link-http://www.fleaser.com

Advertising Agencies Have To Adapt With New Media

blogger

Advertising agencies have dramatically changed over the last twenty years thanks to the Internet and online advertising. Most businesses realize the importance of getting online and using the hip new methods and processes associated with forms of Internet advertising.

Few could have imagined in the early 80s what role advertising agencies would take on today. The Internet has changed the way we live and do business. It has forever changed consumer habits. What was once the lifeblood of advertising, newspapers and magazines, is now on the decline and has evolved from direct response advertising to branding.

Advertising agencies have added such methods as search engine positioning, pay per click marketing and social media marketing to their arsenals. Not only do agencies develop video ads for television slots, they now create video ads for the internet and viral videos for YouTube.

Offline marketing has changed as well. Readership has dropped for many big newspapers and magazines. New services like transport ads have come into play. Even stationary billboards have gone high tech by playing full color video advertisements. There are more options today in offline advertising than ever before.

Advertising agencies have to create a larger variety of ads. They must design banner ads that are effective at getting clicks. They need to create videos that are accepted by social communities online that walk the fine line between advertising and entertainment.

Advertising agencies today have to be quick to adopt new trends since Internet media is constantly and rapidly changing. What works today may be ineffective next year.

Choosing the right advertising agency for your business will take a little work. You want to make sure you sign with a company that is on the cutting edge of adverting methods and not one that is stuck in the old methods of print media only.

It is more convenient for you if you sign with an ad agency that can handle your entire advertising campaign. They should be able to run PPC accounts, make YouTube videos and place print ads. It helps if they can design and create your ads for you. Having everything done by one company will help you stay organized and should save you money.

Look for an ad agency that has a strong reputation among its customers. View their portfolio of ads and go over their statistics. They should offer the ability to track and analyze the results you get from your ads as well.

Advertising costs must be cost effective no matter how you approach it. You need to be smart with your money and make sure the money you spend gets results in the form of a healthy return on your investment. That is why you need a strong agency that utilizes today’s latest advertising methods.

Instant Outdoor Advertising Campaigns Made Easy

blogger

An instant outdoor advertising campaign is one of the most cost effective ways to communicate your message to your potential and current clients who live and work in the area. Signs work to remind people you are there, implant thoughts, sharpen an identity and state a brief message. They are the original Geo-targeted advertising!

Many small businesses think outdoor advertising is just for big brands. The think the cost is prohibitive and never even consider it as part of their advertising mix. That is a big mistake.

Dollar for dollar and pound outdoor advertising is is one of the most cost affective methods you could use to target local markets.

Instant advertising campaigns can be set up where your customers live work and play in …well in an instant. The artwork is often included in a monthly fee for leasing a location and it doesn’t have to be a full size billboard costing thousands a month. Prices start as low as $50.00 a month for things like bus benches and usually reflect the traffic flow. Competition for return on investment guarantees this media is priced right because unlike newspaper advertising and other print media there is a limit to the number of locations available.

Street furniture like bus benches and recycling bins can be found in hundreds of cities in Canada and the US displaying advertising to local markets.

Outdoor advertising like this is a great place to start an advertising campaign, drive traffic to a website, build a local brand and remind your customers you are there for them.

Many of the businesses using this method start with one unit and scale up as businesses increases.

Does it work?
Well I manage advertising campaigns in 263 locations for over 100 clients. Most of them stay with me year after year, on average more than 5 years on a single location and some have been on several locations for more than 25 years.

Instant outdoor advertising campaigns are custom made for businesses on the street looking to master local markets. All kinds of businesses.

Our services are custom built for shop owners, doctors, lawyers, dentists, plumbers, real estate agencies, pharmacies, drug stores, dry cleaners, restaurants, garden centers, boutiques, publishers, physical trainers, pool cleaners, grocery stores, bookkeepers, therapists, insurance brokers and anyone else with a business, service or store with walk in traffic.

Printing Door Hanger Advertising Pieces

blogger

Door Hangers are useful tools that serve well for announcements and advertisements. These are commonly used at areas such as workplaces, hotels, schools, and universities. Printing door hanger organizers as a space for this information is easy to do with a little time and patience.

When starting this project you will need to make sure that you have the appropriate materials. These hangers are made from paper, but they need to be sturdy enough to withstand some wear and tear. You will need to use a good paper product such as card stock. Make sure that the printer you plan on using is able to handle this type of paper before you get started.

Use a basic layout program on your computer such as Word Processing, Microsoft Word, or Adobe Illustrator to design the door hanger. Create a rectangle shape in the size that you desire for your hanger, and add a circle at the top to represent the door knob. You can cut this circle out later so that your piece can be easily hung. Insert a text box in the rectangle and add the message that you desire your door hanger to convey.

You can also make use of illustrations, clip art, or other designs that you wish to add to your announcement. Use some imagination to come up with an attractive hanger, but remember to keep it fairly simple so that the message can be easily seen.

Once the hangers design has been created, you simply have to print it out and cut out the circle for the door knob; your hanger will be ready for use! If you want to take it a step further to make a hanger that will have a longer life and be even more attractive, you can have it laminated. This will give it a nice shine and allow you to use it many times without wearing it out in any way.

Finding A Micro Niche For Adsense – Avoid High Paying Keywords

blogger

AdSense is probably the most popular pay per click (PPC) program for publishers. Google, the company behind AdSense, always displays relevant ads regardless of the content on the page. This is very important because irrelevant ads will attract fewer visitors. The cost per click (CPC) depends on the market niche. It can be only one cent but you can also get few dollars for a single click. Since the average cost for each keyword or search phrase is publicly known, many internet marketers are trying to optimize their websites for those high paying keywords. Many such attempts fail and they blame Google for it. The truth is that the failure could be predicted. If you want to succeed in internet marketing including AdSense you should understand that you need traffic.

Traffic means visitors coming to your site. When they visit your site they will search for interesting content. If they will find AdSense ads interesting they will click on them and you will be paid for it. The best and the cheapest source of visitors is traffic from web search engines, especially Google. To get search engine traffic your website needs to be present on the first page of search results. The top position gets approximately 42% of clicks. For lower positions this number is significantly reduced. Therefore, you should target keywords that have high search volume and low competition. The so called “high paying keywords” have huge competition and you will never get high ranking and consequently required traffic.

The second reason to avoid targeting keywords with high CPC is the source of AdSense ads. Those ads do not come automatically–there are some AdWords advertisers that manage advertising campaigns. AdWords advertisers can choose where their ads will appear. The first choice is search result pages. Whenever somebody searches for target keywords their ads will be displayed next to search results. This is high quality traffic because those who search for specific keyword are actually looking for something. The second option for AdWords advertisers is user content or web pages with AdSense ads. The truth is that very few advertisers in highly competitive markets, where each click costs 10$ or more, use this option. Even if they do choose advertising on content pages, they carefully select websites where their ads will be displayed. The reason is simple. If you pay a lot for advertising you make sure this investment will return. Of course, this doesn’t mean that no high cost per click ads appear on websites as AdSense, it only means that there are less chances to get those ads with high CPC.