The Case for Crowdsourcing Projects as a Business

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Is your business struggling to come up with a new idea or innovation to solve the latest industry challenge? If you’re not too proud to admit defeat and seek inspiration and ideas from elsewhere, you might find that crowdsourcing is a breakthrough concept that can help you to break new ground and potentially disrupt a market.

The concept of crowdsourcing dates back to 2005, when Wired magazine journalists, Mark Robinson and Jeff Howe, coined the phrase. Companies such as Qmarkets have since developed industry-leading crowdsourcing services for corporate clients that give firms a chance to engage and incentivize large groups of people – be it fellow professionals or customers – to tackle unique business challenges. The roots of crowdsourcing can be traced as far back as the early 18th century, when the British government sought help from members of the public to develop the best way to measure a ship’s longitudinal position. A cash sum was offered as an incentive.

Does your business suffer “blindness” to problems relating to your operations and its industry as a whole? If you can’t see the wood for the trees, here are three reasons why crowdsourcing innovation can help take your brand to the next level.

StrategyDriven Tactical Execution Article | The Case for Crowdsourcing Projects as a Business
 
Get a fresh perspective

When you live and breathe a business 24/7, it’s all too easy to become all-consumed by the day-to-day “grind”. You might have your own vision for how a project should go, but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the best possible vision for your business. By crowdsourcing a business project among colleagues and even external contractors, it’s possible to get lots of minds and ideas around the table at once that often go unheard.

The saying that “two heads are better than one” has never been truer when it comes to crowdsourcing. It’s a chance to free your colleagues and other professionals from the shackles, giving them complete freedom to think as creatively as they want. In doing so, you’ll also maximize the number of options you have, rather than forging ahead with an idea just because it’s your only idea.

StrategyDriven Tactical Execution Article | The Case for Crowdsourcing Projects as a Business
 
Retain a firm handle on your overheads

Crowdsourcing is rapidly growing in terms of popularity among business owners because it’s proven to be a cost-effective option for idea generation. In reality, the time it takes to sit colleagues down, brainstorm, validate ideas and put them into action is often hugely underestimated. By seeking external input from the “crowd” it can actually help to lower the overall cost of your innovation project, cutting the time it takes to reach your end goal(s) and only paying for the insight and ideas that you use.

Engage your customers and build trust

Another form of crowdsourcing for growing businesses is to utilize customer feedback. Businesses that are looking to build long-term, trusted relationships with consumers are increasingly inviting valued clients to get involved with the idea generation process, helping them to feel like they are making a difference. Ultimately, these people are the ones you’re targeting your products and services to. They should know the problems your target demographic is experiencing and the best way to solve them. Crowdsourced innovation shouldn’t be viewed as a one-way street though. Ensuring your customers are engaged and rewarded will help to ensure sound, worthwhile knowledge-sharing.

How Educators Can Accommodate Varied Learning Styles

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Those who are educators will know that there are varied different learning styles and that to reach the understanding of your whole group; you need to be able to tap into each style equally. Whether working as a teacher, learning assistant, tutor, or a training provider in a workplace setting, it’s vital to consider how you can accommodate different learning styles.

Auditory Based Learners

Some of those in your learning setting will be auditory based learners. For these individuals, it’s essential that you put in place plenty of instances whereby they can listen to themselves and others. Such methods could include listening to task directions instead of reading them. For educators to accommodate these learners, it’s also a good idea to implement the use of podcasts in your sessions. You can use recording devices to have learners record themselves retelling vital information and then play it back. Provide audiotapes of your classes or training sessions for the same reason. Ensure that you read your students the learning material aloud and also have them read it out loud to one another. When auditory based learners have too much to read in their heads, it’s difficult for them to take it all in.

Kinesthetic Based Learners

Those who are kinesthetic based learners will absorb information better with a hands-on approach. Kinesthetic learners prefer to hold or touch to learn new things. Kinesthetic learners enjoy the principle of jumping in and trying things first! To aid these kinds of learners, you can help them to understand an idea with the use of physical objects. You could also make use of art supplies and allow students to move around and act things out. School Furniture and its layout, can help you to accommodate these types of learners. You might be able to use your furniture in a way that creates a great environment for kinesthetic learners. For example, by positioning the chairs in a circular shape facing each other or creating an open space to stand, move or create art on the floor.

Visual Based Learners

Visual learners gain the best understanding when they can observe and see things. They will produce their best work when they can look at demonstrations, diagrams, videos or pictures. If these learners can watch someone else complete the task at hand first; they will be able to absorb the information and produce their own results quickly. To accommodate visual-based learners, it’s a good idea to use flashcards, photographs, maps, flowcharts or video content. You can ask students to act out demonstrations for each other to watch and in this way, you’ll be catering to kinesthetic learners too.

When you are providing a class or a training session, you’ll always want to incorporate methods that appeal to every different learning style. By doing so, you’ll extend your reach and allow everyone in the group to reach their full potential. When your training session or class is complete, you can always ask your students for feedback so that you can make improvements ongoing. Training and education in the workplace or classroom, is best achieved by catering to every individual personally.

Why Online Tutoring Is the New Effective Way to Make Money at Home

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StrategyDriven Starting Your Business Article | Why Online Tutoring Is the New Effective Way to Make Money at HomeWhen we think of someone working two jobs, we often picture people working in retail or the food service industry, or someone who is trying to break into acting and doing another job on the side. While these are all real-world examples, the reality of job juggling is a lot different than we assume. In fact, in the US there are about 13 million double-job holders that are working multiple jobs to make ends meet.

How popular is the gig economy?

The gig economy has been exploding recently, leading many people to picking up two or even three jobs to help make ends meet or to pay down their debt. Intuit performed a study that predicted that, by 2020, 40% of American workers would be independent contractors doing short-term, contract-based work for companies near and far.

While some people may think of this as misery inducing, the gig economy actually provides a lot of flexibility to a younger workforce that is demanding a more sustainable work-life balance. Gone are the days when people could start at a company at 22 and stay there until retirement. With our work rapidly shifting from a local to a global perspective, workers are finding themselves cashing pay cheques from far-flung employers who may only pick them up for a couple contracts before they move to another employer. This is perfect for stay-at-home parents who still want to contribute to the family’s income, people who prefer to travel too often to maintain a traditional office job, or for spouses of military workers or other workers who are forced to move on a regular basis.

The explosion of the gig economy is mostly thanks to a more mobile workforce due to our advances in technology. With reliable high-speed Internet, smartphones, and laptops available to almost anyone, anywhere in the world, working from where you are has become much more feasible.

Where are the biggest changes happening?

One of the biggest increases we’ve seen in the gig economy has been within the teaching and tutoring community. People with the skills to tutor people can help students across the world learn languages and basic skills like mathematics and science concepts. While it used to be that utilizing those skills meant moving to far-flung countries, you can now do it from anywhere with a decent Internet connection. However, you want to make sure you’re not going to end up accidentally giving away your services or getting ripped off. Money Done Right explains how you can earn money from tutoring without losing out.

Most people assume (incorrectly) that being an English tutor or offering tutoring in a subject means you have to be a teacher, but often it just means you need to be patient and skilled at what you’re trying to teach. This is a great way for college students to earn extra income while bolstering their own skill set.

But does it count in the “real world”?

Wondering if distance tutoring counts as something you can put on your resume? It does! A job doesn’t have to be with a large or local company to still be a real job. If you can demonstrate the skills you learned and what was expected of you, a part-time, distance contract can add just as much value to a resume as any “traditional” form of employment.

3 Ways To Harm Your Online Marketing Campaign Before It Gets Going

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StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article | 3 Ways To Harm Your Online Marketing Campaign Before It Gets GoingIt’s often seen that social media marketing opens up a massive amount of marketing potential. That is true to an extent. Now customers potentially hold your miniature-billboard in their pockets, and throughout many social media timelines may see the product you are offering. However, while this sounds easy, it’s important to understand what you are now competing against.

You are competing against other notifications and ‘skip ad after five seconds’ video options. You are competing against consumers are effective at ignoring marketing due to being bombarded with it day and night, at least in most countries around the world. You are also at the whim of simply being too boring, not engaging enough, or not as clear as you could be regarding your business messaging.

This means that without care, you could harm your online marketing campaign before it even gets going. That’s unlikely to be a scenario anyone wants. So, let us help you subvert that with the following advice. We only hope it can help you reach the business heights you have been dreaming of:

Fail To Find A Clear Message

You might have some art-school ambitions in you, but it’s not up to the audience to try and figure out what product you are selling or what the point of your entire messaging was. Even vague, suspense-building campaigns, such as Orange, one of the UK’s most famous telecom firms in the mid-2000s, announced its launch by placing Orange squares on billboards allowing people to question what that meant. However, pretty soon they revealed their intent, and allowed people to see what their presentation was, until there was no doubt in the mind of those who had previously questioned this approach. Isolate your message, because when distilled, it can have the most impact.

Fail To Care About Sudden Trends

Social media moves at a staggering pace these days, and is also one of the most lucrative means of marketing your business. We would recommend utilizing expert social media analytics to stay ahead of the curve, allowing you to focus on your approach with dedication and care. Staying relevant and able to keep on top of data points, of building a picture regarding your audience and also keeping forecasts of activity in mind can help you truly become the business that catches the early worm.

Fail To Incentivize

It might be that you are happy to offer a 10% off code to those using your services for the first time. This is a solid incentive. But instead of factoring that into the price and not mentioning it, mention it as you should. Show that Twitter users have their own code if they follow your link, or perhaps even more concessions made to those who have tried to learn more about your business. This can help you reward those who engage with your firm, slowly investing them and heightening the chance that they will return.

With this in mind, we hope you can solidify your online marketing campaign, and avoid issues before they happen.

Why Your Online Presence Needs Maximizing

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It doesn’t matter what sort of business venture you are hoping to launch, from a restaurant to a street food van, and from a tee shirt printing company to a freelance blogger, you will need to hone your online presence. Being online and visible is vital in the twenty first century. Your main market will be the millennial. These are individuals who are keen to get online as much as possible and utilize every aspect of the web to source their news, their services and their shopping. You need to ensure that you can tap this market.

The millennial demographic will communicate with their potential market online and will be keen to source companies via reputation. Your online presence can enhance your ability to appeal to the millennial market. Take a look at how you can maximize your online presence.

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Website Development

The face of your business will be your website. While you could have an all singing and all dancing website with most impressive of flash animation, this is pointless if your navigation is cumbersome and it takes an age to get to your shop page. As a rule of thumb, you should keep things as simple as possible. Have a short and simple menu and make it easy to get to your shop page within two clicks. You need your website to be attractive, but don’t worry about this so much that you forget about functionality and ease of use.

The most important aspect of your website is its visibility. Your website could be phenomenal, but what if no one can find it? Instead, you need to consider what is it worth to rank #1 in Google? The answer is everything. Google is the number one search engine that all Internet users have on hand should they need to locate a business or have a question that needs answering. Google always has the answer. Forget Lycos and AskJeeves. Times have moved on, and Google has emerged the winner.

You need your website to be searchable. So how do you compete with your already established industry rivals? You need to harness the power of SEO. If this sounds like a whole different language to you, consider outsourcing this business function. This could be money well spent. Otherwise, you could find yourself wasting a small fortune on an AdWords campaign that is not fruitful. An off site specialist will formulate a strategy to help you achieve your aims, whether this is enhancing your following on Twitter or converting more hits to sales on one particular product. Your online presence needs to have your website at the center of everything within your digital strategy. This is the platform that will result in sales and leads.

Social Media

Your social media channels are a great way to feed traffic towards your website. Ensure that you have a Twitter feed, an Instagram page and a Facebook account. These channels will allow you to display your wares, communicate with customers, post relevant content and promote discounts and offers. All of these strategies will help to direct more traffic to your website, and will enable you to increase your following online. With more shares, you will reach a greater number of people within your niche market.

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Reputation

Being online means being at the mercy of the elements. Nearly everything online is public from the comments on your Twitter feed to the remarks under your Instagram snaps. If someone chooses to review your product or customer service, it will be visible for all to see. You cannot expect a potential customer to pay a premium for your services if you have a swathe of negative reviews. You cannot allow it to get to this point, as the first thing people will check out about your company will be the reviews.

Ensure that you under promise and over deliver. If you know that you can deliver a product in two days, state that you’ll have it on the customer’s doorstep in three. This way, you can make it appear that you’ve gone the extra mile when your customer has a pleasant surprise a little early. Add an incentive, a voucher code or a freebie, and focus on customer experience. Get this right, and the positive reviews will flow in online, resulting in a more glowing presence to show off to your demographic.

You shouldn’t forget the more traditional methods of marketing, but your online presence should be the main focus in your early years as a startup. Get this right, and your business will thrive.