New research shows that organizations seeking innovative ideas from crowdsourcing platforms can gain more responses to their problem statements by engaging contributors' imaginations while not limiting their creativity. The authors suggest five best practices for using crowdsourcing sites: personalizing the problem, challenging solvers to surpass the status quo, explaining customer needs, asking engaging questions, and highlighting tensions to be resolved.

Few CEOs of large companies leverage the power of Twitter to the fullest extent. As of September 2014, only 42 Fortune 500 CEOs had Twitter accounts. The authors argue that rather than waiting for impressions to be driven by the media or by individuals with ulterior motives, CEOs can use Twitter to help shape their public image and that of their companies. The authors studied the Twitter activity of 25 CEOs of publicly traded companies who were active on Twitter and identified common patterns and themes. Based on the type of content tweeted most often, the authors classified the CEOs they studied into four groups: Generalists, Expressionists, Information Mavens, and Business Mavens. Generalists used Twitter to share a wide range of content. At times they tweeted about personal opinions and interests; other times, they tweeted information closely related to the business (for example, strategy, existing products and services, customer references, etc.). However, on average they had the smallest networks among the groups of CEOs, perhaps because they were not sharing information that was unique. Expressionists used Twitter extensively for non-business content sharing. These CEOs shared their opinions about events and politics and gave their followers an insight into their daily lives. In many ways, they used Twitter as a brand-building platform for themselves as they do for their companies. Information Mavens frequently shared links to information, news, and other happenings. However, they did not generally tweet information specific to their company, acting more like curators of content. As a result, relatively few people retweeted or "favorited"their tweets. Business Mavens used Twitter extensively and primarily shared business-related content. In contrast to the other CEO groups that the authors identified, Business Mavens often shared new product announcements, information about existing products, customer references

This is an MIT Sloan Management Review article. Many companies are trying to leverage the power of Twitter to connect with customers and promote their brands and products. The authors studied the marketing communication between 47 companies and their followers for about three months. Their research identifies factors that increase the likelihood of "retweeting"so that a company's tweets will be shared with recipients'networks and identifies which activities should not be pursued.<BR> <BR>Retweeting is desirable both because the original tweet reaches more people and because a retweet is essentially an endorsement from recipients to their followers. That said, since tweeting by companies is basically a marketing function, there are several practices that don't work well. The most important to avoid is blatant hard-sell messages. In addition, neither using hashtags nor embedding links increased retweeting. Finally, announcing contests or other promotional techniques also did not increase retweeting.<BR> <BR>The authors did find nine practices that increase retweetability, including keeping messages short so there is room for retweeters to add their own messages. Opening with an attention-grabbing headline is important, as is simply asking the recipient to pass the message on. Humanizing the brand has the highest likelihood of causing retweeting, increasing the odds by as much as 70%. The authors also suggest providing information that people can use and act on; offering a deal that can save people money; and making the message relevant and topical. And the best practice of all is when organizations combine several of these practices to get the most out of their marketing messages.<BR>