Crowdfunding Tips: How to Build an Audience & Engaged Community Around Your Project

Time Stamp: April 14, 2021 2:55 AM
Source Node: 834677

‎

It’s a great question and one that we thought was worthy of a full-length blog post to cover our top tips on identifying, building and nurturing an audience around your campaign (and beyond!)

Building an audience is a crucial skill that will allow you to succeed not only in crowdfunding but in communicating your ideas online, effectively curating a brand image and gaining more visibility online.

While an independent artist or a small community group may have an important project or message, without an audience to listen, engage, share and support, the effectiveness of their voice is diminished.

Read on for tips on how to think about your online audience and produce content for them, including setting your goals, measuring success on your terms and being consistent with your brand message.

Taking the time to clearly outline your main overarching mission statement will allow you to use this to guide all your other decisions. You should write a clear mission statement of 1–2 lines that sums up who you are and why you do what you do.

Image from Team Clean Tasmania Pozible campaign.

“Team Clean Tasmania are a 100% not-for-profit volunteer expedition dedicated to protecting some of Australia’s wildest and most remote coastlines.”

‎

Make your mission statement as specific and unique as possible because once you’ve identified the who and the what, you can set out to find the group of like-minded people who will be most receptive to helping you do it.

‎

Now that you know what you want to achieve, think about who you are doing it for. Is it a new art exhibition that is going to benefit local artists & collectors? Or perhaps a biography on the lead singer of a cult band that will intrigue 80’s music heads?

Try to build a persona of your ideal audience member—be as specific as you can! Think about their age, gender, physical location, interests and any other attributes that will easily help you identify and group them together.

Remember that not everyone is going to be interested in what you have to say or what you’re doing, and that’s perfectly ok. You don’t want to be reaching the people that couldn’t care less—instead, you need to focus your time on the ones that have a good chance of wanting to learn more and be involved.

‎

There have never been more ways to connect and communicate with people online than there are now, with new social media platforms popping up and innovating on how we connect with others. But that also means that there are millions of people competing for attention across many different channels.

Rather than try to reach everyone with a generalised message that is sent out across as many mediums as possible, you need to identify where your ideal audience persona is hanging out and consuming information.

For the sake of your sanity (and free time!) you should be aiming to pick one or two main platforms for your audience to follow you. This will allow you to focus and create content that performs best for those.

An audience that responds to high-quality visual content with a curated feed of images that tell your story, would naturally be engaged on Instagram. Or perhaps your network is more business-orientated and would be more aligned to a LinkedIn page sharing updates and long-form articles?

The main idea is not to spread yourself too thin. Instead, focus on the platforms where your core audience is already active.

Jump into some niche groups and participate in discussions, share your own insights and become an active member of any social platforms that you are focussing on.

This may include researching any current trends or existing groups to join, that have already got an existing audience of engaged people that are following and participating.

i.e. If you’re looking to launch a pre-order campaign for a new household cleaning product, you may want to join groups that share similar values, ethics or promote local brands to their members.

*Hot tip!* Use cross-promotion to drive followers from one channel to another. Let your Facebook audience know that you’re posting on Instagram as well and how to follow you over there.

‎

You should have a pretty good idea of what to publish based on your goal and brand identity. This should guide you in your decisions to create content for your audience, as well as time, expertise and any materials you already have at your disposal.

You can use your smartphone to create some amazingly high-quality content in 2021 and tell the story of your project or brand. Or if you’re a wordsmith, you can win your audience over with regular blog posts on topics that fall within your niche.

Be transparent, show the behind-the-scenes of your process & give exclusive insights that won’t be found anywhere else. Make your audience feel like not only are you creating this specific post just for them, but that they can’t access it anywhere else.

Make it appealing with a strong call-to-action (CTA) telling your audience what you want them to do. This could be to comment a response, tag a friend or to click through to the link in your bio. Whatever you are trying to achieve with that specific post, tell your audience exactly what you want them to do.

Remember that your audience is human too, and no-one wants to feel like they are being used or “marketed to” at every possible chance. Switch it up and curate a mix of educational, informative and insightful posts.

‎

Make a plan to post at a regular pace that works for you.

You can also use tools to see when the best times are to post per platform, but also remember to monitor your engagement from your own accounts and learn from your own community habits.

When are the people you want to talk to online? Once you figure that out, show up at those times and stick around to engage with any comments or messages that you may receive. This will help you to foster a relationship with your key audience members and provide them with an even greater experience.

Image by Sprout Social.

Being consistent also means using repeat motifs or themes, as well as branded hashtags that allow you to see your content in one place. For example, at Pozible we use the #MakeItPozible hashtag so we can promote trending campaigns but also so creators can use this hashtag for us to see their posts.

Use the same design or colour scheme that fits your brand, and deploy it across all your posts. A great way to do this is to create a Brand Kit on a graphic design platform like Canva to easily refer back to when creating your content.

Sign up to Canva for free here!

Be inspired: look at similar brands, campaigns or established voices in your chosen industry or niche and take inspiration from the types of content they are posting.

Don’t directly copy or use anyone else’s material (without proper consent & credit) but take note of what types of content are working: is it short-form videos, inspirational quotes or multiple image carousels?

By participating in Step 4 and being an active member of your community, you’ll soon be able to tell what works and what doesn’t. Don’t try to re-invent the wheel, but instead attach it to your cart and push it down the hill!

‎

There might be a new trend or style to try out, or you might find that your audience isn’t engaging as much with a particular type of content you’re putting out.

It’s important to bring everything back to your mission statement and what your underlying goal is that you are trying to achieve. Are you trying to promote a new album release or spread the message about an endangered species of bird?

Be willing to try new things but also willing to change things up if they don’t work. Remember that while it is important to be consistent, you should also be aiming to only be publishing quality content that serves a purpose to your project or brand’s goals.

Source: https://blog.pozible.com/crowdfunding-tips-how-to-build-an-audience-engaged-community-around-your-project-20b6363c7477?source=rss—-ae0d23b22248—4

Time Stamp:

More from Pozible