We have often heard that “A friend in need is a friend indeed.” Yes, with time this popular adage has come true again. For a startup, getting funds is the biggest impediment. But with social media and the emerging concept of crowdsourcing, getting funds for your start up has become an easy job. Now you can easily approach your friends on social media networks and direct people to invest in your business and see it grow up day by day. But you can use crowdsourcing in lots of different ways.
Let’s take a quick look at five of the best ideas for how crowdsourcing can help your emerging startup.
Create hype with pre-sales or donation-based crowdfunding
Crowdfunding is a super hot formula to win over funds. The basic idea is you need to get popular wherever you tread. Develop your product in its MVP stage and sell it among your network. Once it gets popular among the masses you can develop it part by part using the funds that follow. You can check out some platforms like Kickstarter or Rockethub. They have helped startups to launch via donation. All you have to do is promote your MVP or ask people to help with your finances to realize your dream startup. However, remember not to offer any premiums with the donated amount as it can lead you into legal trouble.
ROI is important, so state it
Whenever someone is thinking about investing in your startup, make sure he/she gets a full and final understanding of the ROI (Return on Investment). Unless you do so, people will not be able to build that trust factor on your business. Define the ROI on every level of contribution. If you are planning to give them monetary credits, then declare it. You can also announce benefits like free access to your web portal, promotional gifts, lifetime memberships, and more. Use merchandise to promote your business further. You can use platforms like Zazzle to sell and propagate your merchandise. Make sure your products are used and promoted by some of your socially popular friends and connections.
Hiring the right candidate is essential
Yes, you read it right. Recruiting the right talent for your startup is as essential as water is for life sustainability. You might be on social media, but it is not guaranteed that the right candidate for your startup will be in your networking list. So take advantage of crowdsourcing for recruiting! There are platforms like NotchUp where more than 1,200 talented scouts nominate candidates for jobs posted by employers. This will undoubtedly save your time and help you win the right candidate for your startup business.
Channelize your workflow the right way
Are you the one who spends more than half of his day looking out for prospective business partners, journalists, ad people, and SEO builders who will help grow your business in the future? If so, we have a smarter solution for you. Instead of using your time and big bucks to get this work done by someone else, start crowdsourcing! There are a lot of microtasking sites working these days like Clickworker and TaskRabbit where people do these odd jobs for you for a paltry amount. So ideally you’re saving money and time to invest in some other important business activities.
Test before you go live
Lots of startup websites fail miserably because they do not test their work before making it live for all. Don’t make this mistake! If you do not have testers in house to do the work for you, utilize the power of crowdsourcing. Just pay the crowd to use your portal and gain some great insights. Get members to your website by using platforms like MemberMob, ErliBird and more. Or if you want to get your bugs detected, try out the crowd in platforms like Utesting, FeedbackArmy and the like.
Follow these tips and get set to rock your startup using crowdsourcing! If you have some cool ideas let me know so that together we can crowdsource to get work done in a jiffy.
Published: May 17, 2013
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