Crowdsourcing For Dummies

Chapter 10

Engaging the Crowd with Your Project

In This Chapter

Knowing what attracts a crowdworker

Getting crowdworkers on board

Setting up an Internet-based hub for the project

Using training as a promotional tool

When you start crowdsourcing, you need an idea, a means of dividing labour, a platform for the work, and, of course, a crowd. If you don’t have a crowd or if you’re building a self-organised crowd (a group of people given a task and told to solve it in the way they think is best), you have to recruit members. If you’re using a commercial market, you may find that the crowd’s already gathered at your gates and is waiting to find work. However, even in this case, you may find yourself looking to grow the crowd.

The first steps of building a crowd are very similar to the work of Internet marketing. You’re trying to attract a group of workers to your project, so you build a presence on the web via websites, social media pages and blogs, through which you express the goals and ideas of your crowdwork. You can use conventional tools as well, and you can recruit people from ...