Crowdfunding Projects Benefit From Community
If you are about to create a crowdfunding project to raise money for a cause, a project or a vision, you need to strategize, in advance, how an online community can help the project grow.
Communities are interactive.
In other words people in a group Inter-Act. Let your online community share ideas. You all benefit… and you can see where the collective passion leads. It may inspire your next crowd funded project! What are the types of activities you can engage your audience with?
1. Conduct Surveys, Ask questions.
Use your community as a sounding board for both your current project and for future projects. People LOVE to be asked their opinion. Maybe there is an aspect to your current crowd-funded project that remains open. A book or CD cover; a soundtrack for a film; a logo or a marketing plan. Yes, in the beginning it is your idea and you need some cash. Now take things to the next level and leverage the collective knowledge of your community to make your project wildly successful after you have the money to create it.
2. Connect People.
In the micro-second, multi-tasking world of Twitter, Instagram and Facebook we begin to think that true friendship equates to share a funny picture of our pets taking a bath. Of course that’s not true. Friendship can take us to new levels of personal growth and business success. To realize the deeper benefits of friendship we need to spend more than a few seconds with people who share our passion.
Online communities allow us to connect the dots…. for ourselves and for others. First, to find people who share our passion. Second, to really dialog and share meaningful conversations and content with our online colleagues, sponsors and friends.
3. Enlarge Your Vision
Perhaps the most important thing is that a good friendship; a better connection; provides the opportunity to grow and realize a bigger vision for your projects. What initial began as a crowd funding project to raise capital for your vision, expands into a community of people who share a passion for your vision; and can help you create something larger than you could ever imagine by yourself. Ongoing success begins when your crowd becomes a community.
Use Community to Engage Your Audience
Most popular crowd funding sites, including Kickstarter, Gofundme, indiegogo and Crowdrise offer a variety of tools to engage your audience. These include the ability to describe your campaign with words, visuals, videos and, of course, rewards.
A Community Platform Makes It Easier to Answer Common Questions
One of the big challenges when running a crowdfunding campaign is that often individuals may have specific questions about the use of funds, timing, rewards, etcetera. In most cases you have to reply one-on-one to these people. It can take a significant amount of time….when you need to devote your full attention to getting the word out, not answering questions.
An online community can help. It’s easy to connect the dots and have all of your potential sponsors, donors or investors uploaded into your online community. Then, all you have to do is post the questions and answers that you get from your audience to the entire community. Of course you can always do one-on-one when appropriate; but you will save a lot of time with simultaneous communications.
Next Steps – Leverage The Energy of Community
- When your crowdfunding campaign is live you can use the ability of the online community to get the group to collectively promote your idea and share thoughts with each other.
- Let your community participate in the viral messaging that is so critical to the success of your campaign.
- One aspect of community is the ability of members of the crowd to interact with each other. This is critical. Interaction is what generates the ongoing enthusiasm and energy for action… in this case the action is providing financial assistance.
- Every member of your community will have a Facebook page and many of them will have Twitter, YouTube and other social accounts. Take advantage of this network.
Then, as you approach your funding deadline and goals, the community can kick into action to get you over the top!
Visit my HomePage and learn more about how Bill Eager can help you grow your crowdfunding project and utilize online communities.
