Pre-Campaign: Social Media Strategy & PR
Lesson 14 from: Launch a Successful Crowdfunding CampaignChristopher Hawker
Pre-Campaign: Social Media Strategy & PR
Lesson 14 from: Launch a Successful Crowdfunding CampaignChristopher Hawker
Lessons
Class Introduction
07:56 2What is Crowdfunding?
32:23 3Is Crowdfunding Right for Me & My Project?
21:22 4How to Build & Manage a Team
12:23 5Choose a Crowdfunding Platform
11:44 6Create the Campaign Page
12:49 7Campaign Page Examples That Work
29:44 8Set the Campaign Timeline
08:18Determine the Perk Strategy
12:04 10Campaign Goal & Referral Strategy
11:31 11Produce a Campaign Video
02:23 12Campaign Videos That Work
46:59 13Pre-Campaign: Build Email List & Buzz
41:50 14Pre-Campaign: Social Media Strategy & PR
08:36 15Launch Your Campaign
07:57 16Live Campaign: PPC & Facebook Ads
12:08 17Live Campaign: Email Updates & Adjust Goals
18:32 18Post-Campaign: Workflow & Delivering Your Product
23:47 19Post Campaign: Obstacles & Backer Communication
07:01 20Your Crowdfunding Future
02:22Lesson Info
Pre-Campaign: Social Media Strategy & PR
So now let's talk about social media in the pre campaign phase, so the pre campaign phase social media's another import tool, though it's a much less important tool than the email because you can't drive the kind of, uh, call the action you can with an email. That doesn't mean it's not important, however, like you really want to build a facebook page and a twitter account, but it's not about brand building so much as it is about building leads. So what we do is we use their facebook, and then we'll use that we use a tool called heo, which allows you to run contests like for people but like, how do you call people to action using facebook? It's it's difficult, but if what you're doing saying hey win a chance at a free product, that people are much more likely and this isn't like getting people sign up for an email address where you're trying to entice people have become interested. These people have already voted that they're interested by liking your page and becoming part of your netw...
ork for that page, so we use the facebook page tryto build the audience by interacting we just use social media managers who will go out and interact with other pages and like other people and communicating in iraq, it's also a place where people ask questions and answer questions so, you know, social media could be a big part of building buzz and building excitement. Also using paper, click in facebook, then you can also drive people to your facebook page, azzam one possibility, and you can purchase likes on facebook, which are really likes that theirs is presenting its serving it up to people who have identified as potentially interested parties, and then they have to choose toe like it so it's there really authentic likes from real customers who wanted your is paying to drive the traffic of people who are potentially authentically interested. This also creates a certain type of social, or if someone shows up on your page, has a lot of likes. This shows that people are interested in your product. If you put up a page and there's like ten likes, then people show up, it just shows up weird if there's ten likes so again, like invite your family and friends, it's got to be willing to activate the networks about your family and friends, and you can invite them to like the page. And, you know, most people have hundreds of people that they're friends with at this point, if not thousands and like, get those people to like your page and then use it to keep people up to date created, you know, a living page we're showing people behind the scenes what you're up to and get them involved in seeing you know all the exciting stuff that's happening with whatever you're getting ready to back the preparations so they feel connected to it you're communicating with it you can also answer questions as well as use it to try to gain leads were not so much carrying about engagement is where like how do we convert this into leads how do we concrete lee create leads that are going to drive sales in the campaign using twitter in the same way to let people know and twitter is more like a fire hose and we've put out two or three tweets a day just letting people know because people miss most because unless they're turning in to twitter most people miss most of what happens there so we're just like getting people a pair of this campaign's going and then fresh content not always just like check out the campaign but you know really a lot of that's like here's this campaign here's this campaign here's this campaign and then also on the facebook page it doesn't all have to be specific to the campaign like if you're interested in carbon fiber airplanes maybe we're talking about other airplanes requirement fiber just things like that that create a spot for people if they were interested in this product they might be interested these other things and you're creating value for people we use hoot suite tio set up our you know you can schedule post so he's hoot suite for scheduling posts super simple useful tool and we also used twitter arrived I think it works for both and then the other thing is working with social influencers we've got some friends who have larger audiences than we do and encouraging them to tweet and facebook post and share posts is a valuable tool and creating that just overall awareness for people and a lot of times I think it's like advertising it's not maybe the exposure you know, singing on facebook doesn't necessarily causing take action there, but then they see an ad and then they said go, I saw your sermons were talking about it or sorry twitter tweet about it, they're more likely pig action when they see the ad, which is like the real called action and here you can see a few samples of post like with carbon fire talking about a super cool nasa plane that came out that was carbon fiber and then here, like with the the eagle cap off just you know, we did a whole lot of social posting around, you know, showing the cap off with different exotic beers that beer craft beer aficionados are familiar with and giving people sneak peek so just using social media the way people use social media your other option is to build buzz with p r so before the campaign you don't really do the pr you know, reaching out to people, but what we do is we start identifying journalists who might be interested in covering it once it's live so it's not like ok, now we're live now let's look firm like we have someone who is like looking around for journalists who write about this type of thing either blog's and then specific people who might want to cover it and we've built a spreadsheet with a list of all the people and try to find one hundred different journalists who might be interested we're not a pr agency we've worked with parry agencies and honestly we've gotten better results working at ourselves overpaying five, six thousand dollars to an agency to work with us. Why? Because it's authentic because it's a crowdfunding campaign and it used to be like two years ago if you were a crowdfunding campaign that was like guaranteed exposure, everyone in the press will cover you. Interestingly, that shifted one hundred eight degrees now there's a lot of publications, a lot of dogs that said we won't cover crowdfunding campaigns because we've gotten burned too many times but people shipping late and were jumping on the other bandwagon now the bandwagon of, you know, anti crowdfunding, so I don't agree with either of them but what we do is gather the names so that once the campaign is live, we can go after people and we'll talk about this a little more in a minute. The truth is, you don't want to even go after the pr opportunities and tell you've already shown momentum until you've already hit that thirty five to fifty percent point, because if you called on the press people and they saw their like if you get him to click that link, then they come to the page and there's no, they're going immediately leave if there's not already showing a lot of momentum and really you want to have already hit your goal and showing a lot of momentum. So that's what I do but there's a lot of obvious places you could find that people who are covering your type of product identify them and be ready to act once your campaign is live. So then you've got this go, no go choice point and I've talked about this over and over. I can't reiterate enough you've got to prepare, be prepared to cut bait, cut your losses if at any point you find out that the date is coming back repeatedly making a clear indication that you should not move forward if you're testing the waters, no matter how hard you try, you can't get your cost of leads below five dollars or ten dollars then like it's probably not going to work don't go forward and ten dollar leads like it doesn't mean it's not a good product but now you're going to very likely have a public failure which make it hard to proceed if you're committed to the product so you can't be so attached having a crowdfunding campaign that you're going to do it in the face of data overwhelming data this as you shouldn't do it so same your cost of lead cost of conversion et cetera you know pay attention to the data learned from it you can always delayed say ok we need to rethink our strategy we need to rethink our pricing we need to rethink different things we're going toe just like say never mind sorry eat the cost in the list we'll get back to you later and then come back to the question you talk about facebook I see a lot of people using instagram now have you had any experience with using instagram? We've toyed around a little with instagram it's not been something we've invested hugely and we're not a social agency so I'm sure you can use in stream and pinterest probably to great effect snapchat so there's other things you can use we've you know we're a crowd funding specialists and product development firm so we've focused on the super obvious ones there I'm sure you can use instagram and had espresso you can use instagram with facebook. So I haven't had the town. They use facebook. But I think it would be easy to, probably, yeah, that also.
Class Materials
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Ratings and Reviews
Dyan deNapoli
Really helpful class for anyone planning to launch a crowdfunding campaign! Christopher was a great presenter (very comfortable and relaxed), and he clearly knew the topic extremely well. His presentation was very thorough and well thought out. One thing I would've like to have seen is more questions taken from the virtual audience. There were quite a few on the thread, but the moderator only passed along a few of them to Christopher to answer. Another thing that would have been very helpful is advice about creating successful crowdfunding campaigns that are for projects or experiences or ideas, rather than for physical products (which this class was focused on). Maybe Christopher can do a short crowdfunding part II class?? But I still give this class an A+!
Elizabeth Best
This was very helpful. I feel like it answered so many of my questions. It made me realize what a huge commitment crowdfunding is! As an entrepreneur I can see how this video saves trident a lot of time on calls and emails explaining what needs to be done. Great idea! I am amazed at how much technology is involved and online or social media marketing. I better develop a stronger team with millennials who know how to make it happen. Thank you.
a Creativelive Student
I was fortunate to be part of the live audience for this course. It was truly amazing! Chris does a great job of providing tactical and strategic insight behind crowdfunding campaigns. One of my favorite tools was the spreadsheet he has developed to determine crowdfunding goals. I also think Chris is a very humble, knowledgeable guy who genuinely wants you to succeed in your crowdfunding efforts. I highly recommend this course of anyone who is serious about crowdfunding.
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