Crowdsourcing a New Project

I've written about the power of crowdsourcing before, but other than a children's book that I'm trying to get created via Facebook friends, I've never really put this into practice. We do quite a bit of pseudo-crowdsourcing at work for minor ideas and feedback, but nothing that truly goes outside the walls of the existing organization.

One of the projects we have this semester involves some research into an aspect of international business that we could apply back into our existing business, or possibly use for a future business. My project involves potentially two real businesses, neither or which I am directly involved with, but at least one has several elements that would be core to something that I am very interested in starting in the near future.

The challenge of this project is that there are elements where I believe I can bring quite a bit of value and expertise, but other elements where I am really not confident that my instincts are on the right track. My gut tells me that I'm letting some (subconscious) preconceived expectations restrict my ability to see a bigger picture. So instead of making a mistake from lack of exposure, I thought I'd open this up to the Internet and see what comes back. I have no idea what sort of response I'll get back, but maybe 300-500 followers on Twitter, LinkedIn and Facebook can share a few ideas that will point me in directions I had never imagined before. Let's hope so.

The one caveat I have is that I'm under NDA for this project, so I'm going to need to be somewhat vague about certain specifics. I don't think this should be a problem, as most of my questions are broad and could apply to several markets or products. I'm hoping that this doesn't become too restrictive to creative ideas.

All ideas are welcome....

Still trying to figure out Audience Targeting

These are some pictures of user maps from this blog, (Top-Bottom) oldest-to-newest over the past 6 months. In terms of density or quantity of visitors, the site has made some progress. It gets anywhere from 5-25 visitors a day. This makes sense to me as I've learned a few tricks about cross-promoting it on Twitter or LinkedIn. But the slight demographic shift from Europe to Asia still has me somewhat confused. Obviously I get a little more traffic because I've been writing so much about our trip to China over the past month, but I'm not sure where all the European visitors came from previously. Other than "WFU MBA" or "bgracely", almost none of my topics or keywords would trend high enough to make the first couple pages on Google.

This is still in experimental mode. It's nice to be able to experiment and learn while doing something you love to do (writing), which is maybe the best lesson I should be learning from this. Find something you love to do, and then figure out if you can earn any money from it. I make nothing from this now, but hopefully I'll be able to translate some of the learnings from this digital identity experiment into something more sustaining over time.

The Power of Web Analytics

As everyone knows, a good chunk of MBA programs are teaching students how to collect, analyze and make decisions based on data.  "So sayeth the data!!",  "Show me the numbers".  "Follow the money...connect the dots."  And while companies spend millions on sophisticated systems to track their customers, product inventories, brand awareness, etc., one of the beautiful things about the digital economy is how simple it is to track and analyze data.  And all of this data collection and analysis can be done for extremely low costs (or free).

For example, here are some of the things I'm able to track on this website:

1. How many people visit the site?  How many times have they visited before (returning vs. newcomers)?  This gives me a sense of whether I'm creating loyalty or interest in the readers.
2. Which pages are the most popular?  How many times has each page been read?  What type of content is popular.  What types should I try more or less often.
3. How did people find the site (Search Engine, Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook)?  Where are the best places to advertise the site.  How are associations with specific words, searches, people made.
4. Where are people visiting from?  If I was seeing certain geographic trends, I could alter my content to appeal to different demographics.
5. How long do they stay on the site?  How many pages / articles do they typically read?  This helps me determine how interesting the content is, and how well linkage between pages is working.
6. How are they accessing the site (domain; type of device; specific browser)?  This could eventually be used to make sure that add-on functionality is compatible with the most popular access methods.

There are several other things that can be tracked, trended and analyzed, but the important point is how simple this has become.  I can quickly understand my advertising, customer interests, customer loyalty and many other factors.  

So far this blog experiment has provided me with many valuable learnings, as well as some benefits that I never expected.