How to Create a Crowdfunding Social Media Strategy in 7 Steps
Crowdfunding is a popular way for non-profits and startups to raise funds. Social media platforms are important channels for fundraising, especially for a crowdfunding campaign. You should use your social media accounts to get your campaign noticed. The more people you reach on a social media channel, the higher your probability of success. It takes a well-thought-out crowdfunding social media strategy for a campaign to be successful. This article will teach you seven steps to create a crowdfunding social media strategy.
Establish SMART Social Media Objectives
At the start of your campaign, you should set SMART goals. SMART stands for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-specific. Whether setting personal or professional goals, using the SMART goal framework can establish a solid foundation for success.
Raising $10,000 within a month to support a new cancer research project is an excellent example of a SMART goal for a fundraising campaign for a school or charity. SMART goals are essential for everyone involved in the fundraising effort. A team without clearly defined goals lacks direction, which can result in a loss of focus and motivation. First, you must decide how much you want to raise during your campaign. You should also set SMART goals for each team member so that you can assess their contribution.
Utilizing a system of Objectives and Key Results (OKR) is an excellent practice to get into. It’s an approach used by some of the world’s biggest and most successful companies to track team productivity against targets.
Determine Whom You Want to Reach
You need to determine who you want to reach to attract the right target group. To help you define your target audience, you can create a customer persona, an idealized representation of your customer base. Spend time researching their channels and the relevant keywords and hashtags across social media channels. These can be words related to crowdfunding or terms specific to your industry or business. Examples include #crowdfunding #crowdfundtoday #fundraising #startup #invest. Choose hashtags that are unique, short, and easy to remember.
Peggy’s World Community Interest Company launched a fundraising campaign and promoted it on Twitter with these hashtags:
At this stage, it’s worth creating a list of social media influencers and popular accounts with whom you’d like to engage as part of your campaign. Try to identify influencers who are important to your target audience.
Select the Appropriate Social Media Channels
Next, determine which social media channel or channels to use. There are a few points to consider before making the decision:
- Which of your channels have most of the followers?
- Where are your potential donors most active?
- What people have the most significant influence on your audience?
- Which platform are you most comfortable with?
Today’s apps and online resources enable managing social media campaigns as a one-person team. Let’s examine some popular social media platforms used for crowdfunding campaigns. Promoting your crowdfunding through Facebook is a logical option. It’s one of the largest social media platforms.
Facebook lets you create a page for your campaign and build a community around it. You can also run Facebook ads for retargeting, which boosts engagement.
Twitter is another effective channel for crowdfunding campaigns. Crowdfunding tweets let you reach a broad group of similar-minded people who may be interested in your campaign. The tweets have to be short – you have a 280-character limit. Tweeting involves researching and strategically using popular and relevant hashtags.
Here’s an example of a crowdfunding campaign tweet from Amsat a few years back. The company builds and launches many commercial satellite technologies.
Some industries, such as food, DIY, design, or fashion, achieve great reach on Instagram. It’s an excellent platform for visual content and is best used if your business is product-based. Of course, you want to boost your Instagram followers before posting for even better results. This way, you can reach even more people with your content.
LR Spirits, a European startup, used Instagram heavily for a campaign. Here’s a post celebrating how they reached one of their crowdfunding goals in just two days.
Choose the marketing channels you feel will work best for your campaign. Some businesses use graphic design tools to create their posts, while others post pictures they take.
Define Your Key Social Media Metrics
Do you know how SEO campaign management is critical to successful SEO campaigns? Well the same goes for social media campaign management, which is vital to the success of any social media campaign. That’s why, from the start, once you’ve selected your social media channels, you need to set up some Key Performance Indicators to help you determine whether you’re hitting your social media goals when your campaign is already running. So, if you’re not hitting those goals, you can make the necessary campaign adjustments.
Some metrics you might want to measure are:
- brand mentions
- number of followers growth
- reach
- impressions
- engagement rate per post by followers
- engagement rate per post by reach
For every channel, you need a related metric. Knowing which channel is generating the most funds will be necessary for the success of your campaign. FundRazr’s free crowdfunding platform offers analytics and tracking tools and the ability to share updates across various SM channels.
Alternatively, you can use third-party social media analytics tools. Whatever your approach, monitoring and documenting your metrics and tracking your progress toward your target is essential.
Examine Your Competitors
Researching successful campaigns can teach you much, including best practices and avoiding mistakes. Campaign trackers like Biggercake and Backertracker help check campaign performance.
A homogeneous curve shows that the platform’s audience was continuously interested in the product. The most common curve is a U-shaped curve, which illustrates that a campaign got the most engagement on the first and last days. Try focusing on recent data from recent campaigns. Review different marketing channels to see how the company or individual ran the campaign, the channels they used, and their approach.
Branding on Social Media
Branding is what customers think about your company when they hear your name or see your logo. It is the best way to highlight your values and goals. Your online brand identity could attract a newcomer’s interest in your business. The brand identity should be evident across all social media channels. Monzo Bank is an excellent example of a successful business that keeps its branding identity consistent. They keep their logo, background picture, color scheme, etc., consistent across their social media.
It’s worth mentioning that this mobile-first bank launched two successful crowdfunding campaigns. In 2016, Monzo offered investors a 3.33% equity share. The campaign generated £1 million in just 96 seconds. In late 2018, the bank provided current account holders the chance to purchase shares in the business. They hit their target of £20 million in just 163 minutes.
If you’re using email marketing to support your social media campaign, make sure your email content reflects the same branding. The same goes for your website if you direct users from your social media platforms for your crowdfunding campaign. You can even generate a domain name that’s reflective of your brand. Consider creating a brand book, a document that records your brand identity. It should include the logo, fonts, colors, images, and more. Share it with the people involved in your business and stick to it.
Create Interesting Social Media Content
When creating social media content, remember the “80/20 rule”. Around 80% of your crowdfunding campaign social posts should be informative. The remaining 20% should be sale-type of posts. In crowdfunding campaigners’ case, you want to influence people to contribute or share your campaign’s social content.
Audience engagement is one of the most crucial success factors for your crowdfunding campaign. It has to be precise and to the point to help you achieve your goals. Remember, you are writing for people. If you want to share a post about a product, write about how the reader will benefit. Think about what merchandise you can share with supporters, too. For example, you could get people involved in your campaign by tagging you while wearing promotional merchandise. Getting people engaged with your campaign can boost your reach.
There’s a successful crowdfunding story behind the Veronica Mars movie. Fans of the TV series kept asking for a film adaptation, so a crowdfunding campaign was launched, offering donors incentives if they donated more than $10. It reached its $2 million fundraising target in just the first two hours. Most donors discovered the project through Twitter. That’s what we call the power of social media!
Wrapping Up
Crowdfunding is an effective way of raising funds, especially for non-profits and startups. The success of any crowdfunding campaign depends on how many people you reach and how well you engage with them. Social media is a great way to build a community around your brand and present your campaign to the right target audience. Follow the seven steps outlined above to create an effective crowdfunding social media strategy for your next fundraising campaign.
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