What is Collaborative Consumption?

Collaborative Consumption (CollCons) describes the rapid explosion in traditional sharing, bartering, lending, trading, renting, gifting, and swapping reinvented through network technologies on a scale and in ways never possible before.

From enormous marketplaces such as eBay and Craigslist, to emerging sectors such as social lending (Zopa), peer-to-peer travel (Airbnb) and car sharing (Zipcar or peer-to-peer RelayRides), Collaborative Consumption is disrupting outdated modes of business and reinventing not just what we consume but how we consume. New marketplaces such as TaskRabbit, ParkatmyHouse, Zimride, Swap.com, Zilok, Bartercard and thredUP are enabling “peer-to-peer” to become the default way people exchange — whether it’s unused space, goods, skills, money, or services — and sites like these are appearing everyday, all over the world.

Business Problem

The Collaborative Consumption website (www.collaborativeconsumption.com) does not provide a global hub for news, information and discussion around the global movement. Currently, these activities are dispersed between several location, mainly on websites not curated by the CollCons team.

Goal

Increase site views to 50,000 in the first 3 months of launch in the first quarter of 2013.

How can we increase views on the website after the launch of the new CollCons hub?

Four Questions

1. Who are our target markets and how do they currently engage with the CollCons site?

Solution:

• Use Facebook insights to pull data about current users. Segment by age, sex, location.
• Read industry reports and research on CollCons and the Sharing Economy to extract useful data
• Analyse media that refers to Gen Y and Millenials and how they use CollCons services (lots of statistics surrounding these services can be found in media articles)

2. Which social channels are used to connect with CollCons? Which are more successful?

Solution:

• Make a list of channels currently utilised by CollCons team
• Also make a list of social media channels that mention CollCons or sharing economy
• Compare these two lists, identify the gaps present
• Use social media analytics tools to see which social media channels are most effective at reaching target market

3. What content is most relevant to the target market?

Solution:

• Use google analytics to analyse current site content and click-through rates
• Use Facebook analytics to have a look at how posted articles were received
• Look at competitor sites to see how their posts have been received. Focus on number of comments and use OpenStatusSearch and Advanced Twitter Search to look for social media mentions of identified content

4. Who are the competitors in the space and how are they engaging users?

Solution:

• Create a list of competitors
• Use social mention to search social media mentions of competitor websites and important posts

Strategy

"How can we increase views on the website after the launch of the new CollCons hub?"

Create a new/revised CollCons hub and website to build a global community