Jason Spector.com

As many of you may have noticed, my presence on this site lately has been a little sparse. Since my fun wrap up of 2009, a lot has happened and I took a small hiatus to soak it all in. In short, I’ve made the move from an employee to an independent consultant and entrepreneur . Why? To be honest, it was thrust upon me as so many others before me. And like many others before me, I took it as an opportunity to explore what I want to do, where I want to be and how I can make the greatest impact.

But before we look forward, we should take a look back…

As job losses and business closures continue to increase, more and more people are turning to social media to give them a boost – both in the job market and as a tool of self-promotion. There isn’t a place more evident of this trend than on LinkedIn, where the site’s foundation is based on business and other professional connections. Looking through my connections list, for example, I see a sharp decrease in business names under “Company Name” and an increase of more generic terms like “self-employed” or “independent consultant”.

Seems innocent enough, but what you may not know is that labeling yourself this way adds you to the growing number of employees of the “Self Employed” company.

One of the benefits of working from home is that I don’t always have to work from home. I can pack up my laptop, plug in my iHeadPhones and head off to the nearest wifi hotspot. In most cases, that takes me down the street to the local (non-Starbucks) coffee shop. I usually spend some of my “working” time observing the shop’s space, staff, customers and how they all interact.

On this particular day, I was wondering how the shop could bring in more customers. Specifically, how could crowdsourcing and social media help drive up their customer base. The following is one idea and the grand plan to achieve it.

During one of my many Southwest flights commuting up and down the east coast, I came across this article in Spirit, the in-flight magazine. Before you pass judgement, I’d like to state for the record that the magazine’s really pretty good. Plus, there’s not much else to do while I’m listening to the safety features for the hundredth time and waiting impatiently to turn on my laptop.

Anyway, there was an article about what Coca-Cola’s CEO Muhtar Kent does to get focused and stay on top of things as he watches over a company of over 92,000 employees in 200 countries. To manage his time and perspective, he spends an hour a day on some key tasks:

Crowdsourcing, once an innovation by a few forward-thinking companies and organizations, has spread into a diverse industry of firms working in ideation, design, development, philanthropy, customer service, venture capital funding – you name it. Do a simple search for crowdsourcing and you’ll see how many have popped up in the few years.

Recently, a new player entered the arena – the companies themselves.