If your company is looking for ways to expand its client base and position itself as a thought leader, consider hosting a MOOC.

For our purposes, consider a MOOC to be a free, open-ended, online course involving potentially thousands of participants using all kinds of social tools like websites, blogs, Facebook, Twitter, discussion forums — you name it — to discuss and learn about a topic from every angle and generate a body of knowledge that all can share.

I usually ask clients what they can give away for free that will increase their brand recognition or status. A MOOC is a great example.

the necessary ingredients for a MOOC: Knowledge or the opposite of knowledge: a question to which you don’t have an answer, but that you’d like to have answered. People to serve as facilitators. A digital infrastructure.