10 Crowdsourcing Success Tips
I previously reviewed IndieGoGo Crowdsourcing where people are turning to the internet in the hopes of raising money through crowd donations. I also talked about crowdsourcing student travel abroad.
You might also try a Crowdsourcing success book.
When you decide to try crowdsourcing, there are many steps you can take to ensure a successful fundraiser, but there are two key elements to success:
- Have a worthy cause – connect emotionally with your readers
- Get Exposure – your crowdsourcing campaign must be found
Here are ten steps that may help accomplish the two top key elements of a successful IndieGoGo program: A Worthy Cause and Exposure.
- Choose relevant text for your url: When you set up your IndieGoGo campaign, you have the opportunity to choose specific keywords for your url. Choose words relevant to your campaign cause. This may also give your campaign a little nudge in ranking well in Google search results. Choose 2-4 keywords. Shorter is better because a long url can be difficult when trying to share it in sites such as Twitter.
- Write a good pitch: Start with an outline of perhaps three headings and type paragraphs that will connect with readers. Consider: Are you doing anything for charity? Are you a volunteer? Will you interact with or benefit the community? The more you can connect, the better chances of receiving a donation. Think about why you donate yourself. You donate because you relate to someone’s struggles, beliefs, challenges, and so forth. You connect. Use the pitch area to describe anything you can think of that might help readers relate to you and understand the need to raise money to achieve the goal. For example: Student travel fundraisers might connect with parents, educators, musicians, travelers, or fans of South America.
- Add an image or video At a minimum add an image relating to your IndieGoGo Campaign fundraiser. People love pictures and videos. Your chances for success will increase with a video because readers will linger longer on the page and might skim the text while listening to the video. (Windows Movie Maker is free and fairly easy to use.)
- Link & Allow People to Embed Your Video: If your video is hosted on YouTube, there are THREE tips you can implement to aid in IndieGoGo success.. Go into YouTube and using the annotations feature, embed your IndieGoGo url text right onto your video to tell people where they go to donate to your fundraiser. (My daughter did this at the end of her video shown above. Viewers do have to copy and paste the url. It is not a clickable link.) Also add your url in the YouTube video description, along with a paragraph or more describing your video and using keywords for your campaign fundraiser. Lastly, double check your video embedding settings to be sure others can “Embed” your video.
- Offer Perks Offer small rewards for various denominations of donations. Browse other campaigns to get some unusual ideas.
- Choose a Good End Date: While IndieGoGo says most successful campaigns are roughly 60 days, my daughter decided to go out as far a she could to have extra time to reach her goal. She hopes to avoid the extra 5% fee charged by IndieGoGo when a goal is not met.
- Choose a Good Goal Amount: My daughter decided on the full amount needed for her student travel trip, but another option would have been to run several smaller campaigns, such as one for airfare, one for the program, and one for the extras. If you have a significant amount of time to run your campaign, you might consider breaking it up into several smaller campaigns. Remember IndieGoGo charges 4% for all campaigns but an addition 5% if you do not meet your goal, so smaller campaigns might be more likely to avoid the 5% IndieGoGo fee.
- Share and Ask Others to Share: Exposure! This was key step #2 to IndieGoGo success. Internet ideas include sharing on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, your own website if you have one, emails, and your email signature. Other ideas might be handing out flyers, posting signs locally (if permitted in places like grocery stores or perhaps libraries.)
- Click “Like”Go to your IndieGoGo url and be the first person to click the Facebook ‘like’ button and then ask all your contacts to click ‘like’ as well.
- Post Updates: Go in often and post updates to your IndieGoGo campaign. Just like a blog, this will help add fresh content which will not only nudge your page up in search engine rankings but your updates are also emailed to contributors which keeps them informed on the success of your fundraiser. Who knows, maybe one of these people will contribute a second time!
Time will tell if these crowdsourcing strategies will work. Don’t forget to research the term crowdfunding too. You should get some more unusual tips for success.
IndieGoGo Success with Facebook
How to Use Facebook to Push your IndieGoGo Campain Forward
Are there other strategies you use to make IndieGoGo a success? What are your favorite perks? Tell us in the comment area.
Books to help you be a success:
