Guest post by Len Kendall, co-founder of the3six5 project.

For years now, since the concept of user-generated content has become commonplace in the marketing and PR world, companies have thought of crowdsourcing as a shortcut to building community that will mean less work for them.

Here’s how the conversation usually goes:

“Let’s put together a contest where target X can create Y content and upload it to our community. The best contributor will win a prize and gain status amongst their peers. We can just sit back and watch the community build upon itself.”

The challenge I would like to address is the misconception that the above is an actionable idea for most parties undertaking it.

The intentions are positive, of course, but the execution can appear lazy or short-sited if the proper investment of time and people isn’t applied. (more…)