Using Social Media to Grow Your Business, Literally

Crowd-sourcing is an extremely popular tool you can use on social media to gain customer feedback and let your customers set the tone for changes in your business. You can combine this with hashtag marketing so that consumers can participate across all social media channels, including Facebook.

Have you ever wondered if you are selling the right product or service or if a small adjustment could increase sales? You can find out through crowd-sourcing. For example, if you own a local restaurant and want to freshen up your menu you could run a campaign asking your customers to tell you what dishes they would like to see on your menu. You could select your top ten, make a sample, post a picture, and ask your fans to vote for their new favorite. You can create a catchy slogan and use the same hashtag concept that has been used in Twitter marketing for years. This way you can organize the votes and feedback.

If you are a product based company,you can use crowd-sourcing to vet your ideas and find out if there will be consumer interest for the final product. This can save you thousands in R&D and manufacturing. By only producing goods consumers want, you can reduce expenses and improve your profitability. Start by creating sketches of your ideas and asking your fans how they would improve it. For example, would they like to see a certain color or feature added? This can easily be done on Facebook,and if you promote your post, you can reach people beyond your existing fan base for very little money. Once you have gotten sufficient feedback from your social media sites, create a prototype. Upload videos and images of the prototype until you are confident that it has been perfected.

Companies have been doing this same concept on crowd-funding sites like Kickstarter with huge success. Backers have gotten so excited about new products that many companies have ended up with pre-orders that are sufficient enough to cover all of the production cost. This removes much of the risk that is associated with launching a new product line. As an added bonus, when people participate in a crowd-sourcing campaign they are more likely to purchase the product once it is complete.

Launching a Crowd-Sourcing Campaign on Social Media

• Create a campaign name and use hashtag marketing to organize the data. If you have done Twitter marketing in the past,you may be familiar with this concept. For example, upload an image or feedback with #crowdsourcingisawesome.

• Ask customers what they want. Use this as a platform for gaining insight into your customers needs. This is the free version of an expensive focus group.

• Respond to feedback. Make sure that your customers feel appreciated and that their feedback is important. Respond by thanking them and letting participants know you are carefully considering all of the requests you have received.

• Host a contest. Give participants a prize, discount or reward for participating in your Facebook campaign.

• Compare products. If you have ten products and want to narrow it down to five, ask people to vote on their favorites.

• Name our product. If you want to include customers in a product launch that has already been decided,you can have a producing naming competition.

There are an unlimited number of ways that you can incorporate crowd-sourcing into Facebook, Twitter marketing, an all of your social media campaigns. Whether casually or on a large scale use it to gather the information you need to make informed business decisions.