7.1 Seed Ideas

When you kick off your crowdsourcing campaign, a useful way to engage the crowd is to have some ideas up on the platform right from the start.

These could be ideas created by your team or a template of an ideal example. While these are great for guidance, you want to have real ideas, too – from real people. Make sure you don’t put up weak ideas as an example, as you’ll be in danger of setting a low standard.

One of the benefits of a crowdsourcing campaign is that ideas get refined and idea-submitters gain access to people who may offer support or resources, or even join the team to make their idea happen. However, online engagement from participants does take a little work, especially in our age of information overload. We need to remember that participants are busy and often taking part in their spare time, so we must attempt to lower the barriers to participation. Activity inspires more activity (participants can be put off by an empty site), hence the importance of seed ideas.

Putting up some ideas will help participants get comfortable with what’s being asked of them. It is also helpful to post blogs explaining platform features, as a way to get early-adopters engaged quickly.

Start by putting at least five ideas up on the site before you launch the campaign and, if possible, try and ensure these ideas are representative of a variety of issues and backgrounds.

Before launching the campaign, you could:

1. host an idea-development workshop a few weeks before the official challenge launch;

2. ask for recommendations from enterprise networks: for example, Impact Hubs, subject-relevant university programmes and local business-support centres (it’s important this is done by phone rather than email in order to get a better response);

3. and check for winners of recent start-up competitions and awards in your focus city/ country and ask them to add their idea as a seed idea – if they fit the criteria. (You can also ask them to send out info about your campaign to their networks.)