Crowdsourcing and Engagement – Making the Leap

One of the fun things about talking about the word engagement when it comes to creating crowdsourced community, is the immediate association that it enjoys with that of a relationship.

What’s delightful about  that affiliation is that some of the engagement hang-ups are similar to the hang-ups that one experiences on the eve of proposal. So let’s look at some of the common cold-feet complaints and see if we can’t alleviate some tension.

Fear of Commitment:

Engaging a community shouldn’t be a prison sentence. It should be fun. Gamification is one of the key ways people approach this problem – making it fun for administrators of communities, as well as the community participants. And there are few businesses that can’t support the resource need of an open innovation community. Most crowdsourcing communities run well with just one person dedicated to monitoring the community’s growth.

It’s a Lot of Money:

Let me reassure you, that with the right community, how much you spend is going to matter very little compared to how much you get in return. Generating great engagement by investing time and resources can lead to cost-savings and efficiency, as well as industry buzz and innovation. And (unlike a traditional engagement) it is most often not as expensive as you think it’s going to be.

What If Things Fall Apart?

Look – there are very few instances where working to build a community is an effort that goes unrewarded. If you continue to foster that community: listen, nurture, be responsive, you’re going to get a lot in return. As in relationships, you get in return what you put in.

Engagement is one of the most widely discussed issues when it comes to open innovation communities, crowdsourcing solutions, and idea generation forums. How do you get people involved and how do you keep them coming back? At last month’s Crowdopolis event (an event entirely dedicated to all things crowdsourcing) almost 1/3 of the presentations addressed this question directly and most other presentations were referencing this issue at least tacitly. It’s something that a lot of people are thinking about, so IdeaScale put together a tip sheet built from client-generated best practices. If you’d like to find out more, you can download the tip sheet here.

How do you generate worthwhile engagement? How do you ensure that a community continues to grow?

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Jessica Day is a marketing and technology writer and editor for IdeaScale. She received her Masters in Writing from the University of Washington. Day also blogs about crowd-based innovation and idea management solutions at blog.ideascale.com.