Charitable organizations often make excellent use of social media and have highlighted its crowdsourcing potential. It has long been held that making a video for your start-up project is one of the most essential steps in order to tempt people into donating. Turns out, being active on social media platforms can have the very same effect for crowdfunded projects. Here are 5 ways to effectively use social media to help crowdfund your next project.
Start as early as possible
Most people tend to overlook the possibilities that social media can offer to crowdsourcing campaigns. Only when the crowdsourcing drive loses momentum that people start looking towards social media in an effort to jumpstart it. However, that is a big mistake. Social media needs to be an integral art of the crowdsourcing campaign from the get-go. In fact, your social media campaign should probably kick off even more the actual crowdfunding starts on Kickstarter, Indiegogo or whichever platform your campaign is being run on.
Make some noise!
The whole point of having a social media campaign is to spread the word about your crowdfunded project to as many people as possible. Simply notifying your Facebook friends and Twitter followers about the project and hoping that they will pass on the message to others is clearly the wrong way to do things. You have to take the initiative and make some noise! People won’t be looking for your crowdfunded project on social media sites; you are the one who has to catch their attention. From community pages to clever hashtags, there are a number of things you can do to be proactive on social media platforms.
Keep it interactive
Don’t make the mistake of thinking that social media is used only to keep people informed. If you truly want to create a buzz about your project, you have to get people excited about it. And that requires interaction. Use social media as a forum to interact with possible backers and make them feel more involved. The more people interact with you and your team on social media platforms, the higher the probability that they will not only fund your project, but also help spread the word.
Countdown reminders
Quite often, people want to get involved in a crowdsourced project, but put it off for some reason or the other. They intend to donate at a later time and run the risk of missing the deadline for the project. This is where social media platforms really shine. Tweets and Facebook posts can be used to remind people about the countdown to the deadline; an incredibly handy feature that every crowdfunded project can benefit from.
Successfully funded? Don’t slack off
Once the project is successfully funded, your tryst with social media does not end there. You can use the social media platforms to keep you backers updated about the project. Sure, you could send out a mass email using the mailing lists on the crowdfunding site, but we all know just how often people bother to read emails before hitting the ‘Delete’ button. Besides keeping your backers informed, it also helps notify others who may not have backed the project financially, but retain a keen interest in its future.
‘Social media’ and ‘crowdfunding’ are here to stay and there is no reason why they can’t be of help to each other.
