An Effective Social Media Campaign

One of the most important concepts to remember when promoting anything is momentum. Plainly stated, nothing can be sold effectively in a vacuum. And for creating buzz about anything, very little can top the results that can be achieved with social media. It’s easiest to think of social media as word of mouth on steroids. It is for this reason that social media campaigns should be carried out with all due diligence and attention to detail. Social media campaigns can be scary. And there is a lot to keep in mind. On the bright side, a well-run social media campaign can carry the load of many other aspects of a promotion. The key to making it work, however, is planning. Here are the seven critical components to keep in mind for using social media to promote your Crowdfunding campaign.

1. Have clearly defined goals. How will you know whether you have achieved your goals if you never sit down to decide what they are? Begin this process by writing on a small Post-It note what success for you and your campaign will look like. If you can’t boil it down to a statement this short, it’s not clearly defined enough. Goals such as “Increase Crowdfunding campaign awareness,” “Support demand generation,” or “Test for future campaigns” are ideal.

2. Determine ideal campaign components. After you have determined your goals, map out a strategy that will help you reach them. In most cases your campaign hub will be the Crowdfunding site that you have chosen, but don’t expect that site to carry the job alone. Even after you have made the site pretty your job has only started. Measurement can be done, at least in part, by adding up Tweets that mention both your brand and your campaign hash tag, since this is one good way to auto populate Tweets for those who are invited to do so.

Crowdfunding sites are ideally created to measure the effectiveness of your efforts by providing a visual count of those who are supporting your campaign, but there are other methods that can support this. These include having more than just the Crowdfunding website to support your effort. This is a great way to keep track of your standings and invite feedback in response to your campaign.

3. Create a campaign calendar, and stick with it. Another import part of a successful campaign is building excitement and anticipation, and there are few things that are better suited to that purpose than the social media. Further, sending out regularly scheduled content at a reliable cadence is an excellent way to build anticipation and excitement in your audience. Ideally, you should create as much of your content before the beginning of your campaign as is possible so that you have a map of where your campaign is going. This also gives you a clear picture of what is working and how well, so you can modify the upcoming messages in your campaign to capitalize on what is effective in getting results.

4. Partner. Everybody knows that having friends is a good way to get things done. After all, the more the merrier, right? So why is it that when it comes to promotional campaigns, so many people choose to go it alone? Fortunately, implementing a social media campaign to accompany your Crowdfunding campaign is a great way to not only toot your own horn, but to promote the fact that you have others who are joining in your effort as well. Using this method, not only do you enjoy the publicity, but also so do they.

5. Be timely. Watch out for opportunities to send out social media messages that can play on current events and other topics of interest. This not only grabs the attention of others better, but will also help them to remember that your campaign is important and should be paid attention to.

6. Make your message obvious. Unfortunately, when we attempt to send out regularly scheduled information, we lose sight of the fact that there has to be a reason for each message, and that this reason must be obvious. Don’t let your audience have to figure out what it is that you are trying to tell them and that you are trying to convince them to participate in your campaign. Otherwise, you will find your message quickly getting to the junk pile.

7. Test. Test. Test. At the risk of sounding overly analytical, make sure that you test at least one thing with every message you send out. This is one message that the direct mail marketing folks have learned well, and so should those who want to use social media to its greatest advantage. And even though this method takes extra work on your part, in the long run you will learn better what works in your messages and what doesn’t, making you the winner in the long run.

8. Measurement. It should come as no surprise to point out that the purpose of your social media campaign is to support your Crowdfunding efforts. That’s obvious. What might not be so obvious is that there are ways to determine how well you are doing on your way to accomplishing your goal. The trouble is that most people either don’t know or choose to ignore this. Be careful that you don’t fall into this trap. When you learn how to effectively measure the results of your campaign efforts, not only can you better assure yourself that your efforts are effective, but the end results will be more apparent earlier in the game. This will allow you to make changes as needed to your campaign so you can achieve the desired results.

Social media campaigning might be the latest thing when it comes to promoting anything, including Crowdfunding efforts, but that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t lend itself to old-fashioned methods of control and evaluation. It does. As a result, you should be able to understand and implement these methods in order to create the outcome you want for the success of your program, regardless of what that success might look like.