Author: Aliza Sherman
Publisher: Alpha-Penguin Books. 320 pages
Book Review by Paiso Jamakar
What is “crowdsourcing”? This is not a new word. This term was first used about five years ago by Jeff Howe in an article in Wired Magazine.
Aliza Sherman, who is described in the book as a web pioneer, social media innovator and a commentator on the subject of the Internet, says the crowdsourcing “is set of processes that leverage the Internet and our ability to gather groups or crowds of people online to get something done.
The range of things that one can get done through crowdsourcing is virtually unlimited.
Think of what you have been able to do through the Internet, which includes social media.
In the case of BIZ INDIA for example, by establishing a presence on Facebook, with a little bit of help from a couple dozen friends we made on that social medium, we now have about 7,200 “fans”. Without the power of Facebook we would have had to do a lot of work to get people to go to our site.
The effect of other activities to get people to go to the Facebook site of BIZ INDIA would have been very limited. Mass emailing, speaking at events, mailings, would have had very limited results, if our objective was to get thousands of people to go to our site. Facebook now has over 800 million people worldwide with their personal and business sites.
We realized that it was imperative for BIZ INDIA, which started as a print magazine in 2002 June and continued as such for ten years until June 2011, to start an online newspaper, in order to grow our online traffic. When our website was merely a source of information for advertisers about our readership audience and nothing else much, our website traffic was very little. Once we launched our online newspaper in September last year, our website traffic numbers zoomed up.
Our experience and activities on the Internet and Facebook and the resulting increase in traffic to our website (an online newspaper now for a year-plus) is indicative of the importance of crowdsourcing in increasing traffic to your website. Crowdsourcing can also accomplish goals limited by the type of audience you’re trying to reach, your objective and your time frame.
Aliza Sherman has written quite a detailed book on how to use crowdsourcing to accomplish your objectives, whether they’re short-term projects or long-range goals that require ongoing effort and activity online.
She has five parts to her book, and they have to do with: how to get crowds of people to achieve the results your seeking; getting feedback and input from that audience, how best to tap into personal-business connections and social networks on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and other social media; how to harness and tap into people’s talents, abilities and connections to further your business, advance in your career, or simply help you in whatever it is you’re trying to do yourself that can be done more quickly with the help of people; and lastly, additional ways to crowdsource, including using other technologies.
This is a comprehensive book on crowdsourcing, with chapters on how best to use crowdsourcing to get done what you need to get done whether it be for business, civic or social purposes; understanding crowd behavior; defining your projects and getting your employees or others involved in them; getting ideas and solutions to problems from your online crowds, starting online crowds and building and refining them on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter; getting crowds to work for mutual benefit, including rewarding them through competitions; getting freelance, troubleshooting, customer service and other type of work done through crowdsourcing.
Aliza Herman has rendered a valuable service to business owners and executives, professionals and others by providing her knowledge and insight into this new field of crowdsourcing within the social media area. To brush up on and keep abreast with how the world has changed in getting work done, it is imperative to pick up a copy of Crowdsourcing, read it and keep it with you as a handy reference source.
