No. This is Not a Rock Concert But Good Guess.

Yeah. My sister crowd 'sources.'

Crowd sourcing. I am sure those who don't know what crowd sourcing is would say crowd sourcing is similar to crowd surfing. As my group member and I presented our PowerPoint presentation about crowd sourcing to the class she could not stop saying crowd surfing. I knew my group member understood crowd sourcing's definition. However, I thought that maybe some people would really think that the two words were similar in meaning.

Crowd sourcing is basically getting feedback and ideas from people through various social media and online sites. This is very beneficial seeing that this can save a company time and money because they do not need to hire a marketing researcher to gather ideas. Instead, the company can gather ideas quickly by asking a random sample of people who will put their opinions online for a lesser cost, and as long as the company includes a small incentive.

Getting people's feedback or ideas would probably be most effective through Twitter. Tweeting has become so popular and the time to tweet is instantaneous. People will be willing to give feedback or ideas in 140 characters or less. In Realtime Marketing & PR the book gave an example about the Superbowl and how they ran a competition on Twitter to see which commercial was the best. There were thousands of tweets and the campaign was successful.

So, the next time you think about marketing strategies and how to develop an idea you may want to consider the general public as your brainstorming group. Consider them because you can save time, money and effort.

* Other sites you can use include Facebook, SurveyMonkey and Wikipedia.