Social media and crowdsourcing are the two buzzwords that have long spelled the difference between success and failure for startups. But what make these two essentially vital for startups are their uncanny similarities and the set of benefits they offer. No wonder, many new-age tycoons, technology barons and media pundits strongly believe that social media and crowdsourcing are the two vital components that lay the foundation of success for modern day startups.
Social media and crowdsourcing share similar growth trajectories and strengthen each other’s presence in more than one ways. Let’s dig a little deeper and explore the similarities between the two terms and understand how these two come handy when it comes to helping startups grow and nurture.
1. Tapping Thriving Community
Both social media and crowdsourcing, thrive on an ever-increasing community of people. Startups may use popular crowdsourcing platforms such as Designhill to harness the power of open innovation and tap into the crestless waves of creativity of the crowd, to procure logo design, web design, brochures, flyers and a wide range graphic of other design solutions affordably and quickly.
Quite like crowdsourcing, social media sites too provides startups with a meeting ground to gel with their prospects and target audience, a podium to air their business values and a groundswell to solicit support from the crowd. From marketing their services to exploring new business opportunities, social media manages to create outright value for start-ups, thanks to the enthusiastic involvement of its users.
2. Harnessing Like-minded Belief
Crowdsourcing brings together a large group of people with similar interests at one place effectively at the same time. In fact, in a blog published at Forbes, writer Chris Cancialosi reveals that crowdsourcing helps businesses reach beyond boundaries and connect with like-minded professionals to get quality custom solutions for their business requisites in no time and at affordable prices. Similarly, social media also offers a common ground for like-minded people. People connect with start-up businesses based on the kind of values they share with them. Many prominent brands that enjoy hundreds of thousands of fans on popular social media platforms such as Facebook or Twitter testify the support that their creative ideas garner from general public.
3. Unleashing Social Mojo
Huge budgets for market research are very rarely available to startups. And for that reason, the task to effectively pick out qualifying leads becomes too daunting for start-ups. Here, the crowd can help to quickly identify potential customers and extract relevant information and data records. Likewise, social media is a powerful tool to collect marketing data, according to INC. To receive reliable information about target customers, a part of the fan community on social media can be polled through surveys. The community can also be tasked with researching and collecting data such as stats of competitors.
4. Creating A Buzz
Crowdsourcing is often considered to be the best tool to create a buzz around a brand. Startups can gain immense profits from the many incoming ideas and suggestions. Startups don’t have to worry about how ambitious their concept is the power of the crowds makes it possible to set benchmarks of success. Jose Vasquez, President and CEO of QuezMedia.com clearly explains in one of his blogs posted on Huffington Post about how startups can use of social media fan pages to create a buzz around their brand at zero or near zero costs. It’s just the smart social media marketing that makes all the difference for start-ups. No wonder, many start-ups are able to create a lasting buzz around their brand without humungous budgets.
5. Grabbing Reciprocal Benefits
Owing to the striking similarity, start-ups use social media and crowdsourcing as hand and gloves. Social media uses crowdsourcing as an invaluable tool more often than we realize. And crowd sourced projects need the help of social media to reach beyond boundaries to those who may be able to contribute meaningfully to the project. While a number of marketers crowd source their business requisites to get users’ thoughts and inputs, social media helps spread the word about such crowdsourcing projects. In addition, social media also helps build a positive image for a crowd sourced project and encourages action on part of the user.
Clearly, social media and crowdsourcing are two of the greatest developments that have gained traction around the same time. Well, it would be safe to say that individually each one of them has the power to change lives and build fortunes, especially for start-ups.
Author Bio:-
Rahul Aggarwal is the Founder and Director of Designhill.com, one of the fastest growing custom design crowdsourcing platforms. He has built his career around his passion for helping startups and small businesses grow a solid online presence, source affordable graphic design solution for effective branding and thrive in the ever-so-competitive digital world. Follow him on Twitter @A10Rahul.
