Online Community Branding: Crowdsourcing and Seeding Strategies

This presentation examines the concepts of crowdsourcing and seeding within the context of community branding. It begins by defining community branding and its significance in fostering customer attachment and brand loyalty. The presentation then delves into crowdsourcing, where brands gather consumer input to improve products and services, using examples like Woolworths and Amara. It contrasts this with seeding, which focuses on initiating online engagement to build self-perpetuating communities, citing Amazon as an example. The presentation highlights the benefits of each approach, analyzing how brands leverage these techniques to create awareness, build relationships, and expand their market reach. The presentation also includes practical examples, references to academic sources, and the use of visual aids to illustrate the concepts. The content is based on the provided lecture and reading materials and is designed to provide a comprehensive overview of crowdsourcing and seeding in community branding.

Brand and
strategy

Introduction
 The presentation is prepared to discuss about the brand and
various aspects of branding strategy
 The topic will present an idea about the branding of community
and even focus on members associated with sharing systems,
values and standards
 The assignment will include brand leveraging the community
branding technique to create awareness among the consumers
 The internet based groups are also prioritised consisting of
crowdsourcing and seeding

Community branding
 The community branding enables formation of a community according to the
customers’ attachment formed to a product or service delivered by the brand
 It is an effective marketing technique that can analyse consumer buying behaviours
and create good connection between the brand and its customers
 It also stresses on the establishment of brand’s relationship with clients with the
inclusion of individual identity and culture as well

Community branding
(continued)
 The community branding has been possible by companies like
Amazon, Telstra, etc. through use of CRM software to create
connections with the consumers through online channels too
 The social media platforms are used to engage the clients too,
furthermore allow freedom of choices for them
 This creates more scopes and opportunities to reach local and
global markets, furthermore strengthen the customer base too

Benefits of community branding
 Community branding managed online has fostered higher level of
engagement of clients and even retained the existing customers
 It is quite cost efficient and is useful for drawing the feedbacks of clients as
well as respond to queries asked by the customers
 The community branding has enhanced trust level and thus the brand image
and name have strengthened
 One such example can be Inversoft, which is a technology company that
created online communities to engage clients together and facilitated
development of products based on the information and needs of clients

Build A Brand Community Using Social Media
 The social media marketing facilitates brand development and created an
online community where people can discuss about their needs and preferences
 For example, Starbucks created an online forum for the coffee enthusiasts for
discussing their ideas and opinions
 The brands have used social media to cultivate a feeling to highlight customers
ideas and put those into actions

Social media community branding technique

Crowdsourcing
 The are are multiple Internet-based user groups comprising of crowdsourcing
as well as seeding
 The crowdsourcing has been made possible by the brands through
acqusitions of consumers’ inputs ad using a software to focus on the
productivity of business with the engagement of individuals altogether.
 The businesses have been benefited by leveraging the creativity and
management of resources, which has further helped in developing innovative
marketing techniques and conduct research and development activities too.

Crowdsourcing (continued)
 It has reduced the labour related expenditures and improved production level
 Woolworths has used crowdsourcing activities to actively engage the clients
and create good communication to understand the clients’ needs and
preferences
 On such example could be the Amara website where videos from different
hosting websites are posted and added with subtitles for easy accessibility to
deaf and learning disabled people, furthermore reach wider audiences

Seeding
 The seeding on the other hand, facilitates online engagement to create
interaction among memebrs and allow for entering market with ease
 While crowdsourcing is limited, the seeding has enabled brands to acquire a
critical mass of memebrs who could help the community to become self
perpetuated
 High traffic is generated for brands like Amazon

Seeding (continued)
 It facilitates intrinsic motivation through use of Google analytics and even
motivating the users to generate higher content
 It has also kept the consumers of Woolworths, following the seeding
approach, remain motivated through various offers and discounts provided by
the brand.

Bibliography
 Bayus, B. L. (2013). Crowdsourcing new product ideas over time: An analysis of
the Dell IdeaStorm community. Management science, 59(1), 226-244.
 Bruton, G., Khavul, S., Siegel, D., & Wright, M. (2015). New financial
alternatives in seeding entrepreneurship: Microfinance, crowdfunding, and
peer‐to‐peer innovations. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 39(1), 9-26.
 Hajli, N., Shanmugam, M., Papagiannidis, S., Zahay, D., & Richard, M. O. (2017).
Branding co-creation with members of online brand communities. Journal of
Business Research, 70, 136-144.
 Teece, D. J. (2018). Business models and dynamic capabilities. Long Range
Planning, 51(1), 40-49.
 Wang, Y., & Hajli, M. (2014). Co-creation in branding through social commerce:
The role of social support, relationship quality and privacy concerns. In
Proceedings of twentieth Americas conference on information systems,
Savannah, Georgia.