Work your social network to showcase your campaign
You’ve written clear and informative content, made an introductory video, offered rewards and added your crowdfunding campaign to an online platform such as ZAAR.
It’s easy to assume that your work is now done, and all you need do is sit back and watch the funding roll in. Make this critical error of judgement, however, and you could be setting up your campaign for failure.
As successful crowdfunding depends on inspiring the interest of as many supporters as possible, a social media strategy should be a key part of your project plan if you want to spread the word online and direct traffic to your campaign page.
Select Your Social Media Channels
The most known, and most interactive, social networking sites out there are Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Their huge global popularity means that they all have a high reach, and offer Sponsored Ads if you wish to increase your outreach even further.
Each site has something different to offer, depending on the type of audience you wish to engage. But, overall, the key is to keep all content you add to these sites up-to-date, and to keep posting and updating even after the campaign has finished.
It’s best to avoid opening more accounts than you have time to update, or any on sites which you are not sure how to use, but social media management systems such as Hootsuite, Buffer and Sprout Social can help you manage your content.
Create a Campaign Page
A dedicated social media page for your campaign will give it an online home, where your community of potential backers can engage with each other as well as you.
It is the ideal place to post updates, news and milestones, to quickly and directly stimulate your audience, and to interact with them. Good quality images and interesting content are most effective at catching the eye of your audience on their busy news feeds.
Be sure to check out and learn from existing campaign social media pages, especially those connected to successful crowdfunding campaigns.
Build a Following Before Launch
Since rewards-based crowdfunding campaigns tend to be time-boxed to between 30 and 60 days, it makes sense to build up your online audience beforehand.
Rather than attempting to raise funds and increase your following at the same time (which decreases the chances of both), make sure to open social media pages and build up online interest before you launch your campaign.
Create a Campaign Hashtag
Adding a unique hashtag which includes campaign keywords to each of your social media posts will unify all online content relating to your campaign, and help you to track its progress.
This has the added advantage of making your followers feel more connected to your campaign, by giving them the option of adding the hashtag to their own posts.
Need more social media campaign advice? Talk to us at Zaar!