Creative Crowdsourcing with Crowdspring

The dynamic and near real-time requirements of today's socially-engaged world has shortened the shelf-life of the corporate Web site.

This presents quite a challenge for small businesses that are constrained by the reality of limited resources.  It's simply not economically feasible to retain a creative and graphics team on-site or on-call to ensure the corporate Web site remains fresh and relevant in its presentation.

Plus, its inappropriate for a Web 2.0/social media site -- such as an executive blog, Facebook fan page or LinkedIn profile -- to pull double duty as a company's online presentation. 

That's due to audience expectations.  For instance, when a visitor arrives at this blog or connects with me on Twitter there is an understanding that its content will have a thought leadership orientation -- best practices, lessons learned, trend evaluation, etc.

In comparison, visitors to Strategic Communications Group's (Strategic) corporate site recognize that its dedicated to our competencies, track record and executive staff.  The site's mission is to support the sales cycle by validating our credentials and leadership.

This past week I stepped into the world of crowdsourcing.  After evaluating a couple of options, I selected Crowdspring out of Chicago as the creative community to tackle a redesign of Strategic's corporate site.

Crowdspring offers an easy-to-follow process to engage its stable of freelance creative designers, as well as a guarantee of quality in the final delivered product.  In fact, I've already received notice from nearly two dozen designers who are taking on the assignment.

Yes...the price for creative design and layout is dramatically less than what a traditional design shop charges.  However, equally intriguing is the possibilities that come with tapping a collection of qualified and experienced minds for counsel and ideas.

You can view the public portion of our Crowdspring creative brief here.  I'll keep you posted on how this project comes together.