Promoting your crowdfunding project, whether it’s Kickstarter, Indiegogo, or another platform, is a must, particularly within the first 7 days of launching your campaign. Check out our list below for some free ways to do this and leave a comment if we’ve left any out!
1. Reddit
Reddit is a user-generated news and entertainment website, or what is referred to as a “social bookmarking website.” Users can submit content, upvote it, and comment on articles/links. The community is divided into subreddits, which are essentially micro-communities surrounding topics like Kickstarter, Crowdfunding, Gaming, Music, and more.
On CrowdCrux, I wrote about how a reader harnessed the power of Reddit to attract $13,000+ in Kickstarter pledges. As with all communities, constant self-promotion is frowned upon, so it’s best to get involved early on in the subreddits most related to your campaign and mix in a bit of self-promotion every now and then.
2. Submit a Free Press Release
There are a lot of website online where you can submit a free press release for your project or news update. You can submit a free press release directly to CrowdfundingPR or you can use one of these free press release distribution sites.
Benefits of doing a free press release include:
- – Well formatted press release link that you can send to journalists.
- – Index in major search engines like google and yahoo for keywords related to your company and campaign.
- – Exposure to a larger audience via the website’s traffic.
While by no means a silver bullet, it’s a quick and easy avenue to promote your project.
3. KickstarterForum’s “Get Tweeted Out” Promotion
KickstarterForum.org is running a promotion for a free tweet on @crowdcrux’s twitter account. They also offer a VIP program that is free to join and comes with extra campaign promotion.
As with all forums and online communities, it’s important to take advantage of forum signatures (can include a banner advertisement) and avatars to maximise the chance that other users check out your project.
4. CrowdfundingForum’s “VIP” Program
CrowdfundingForum recently launched a free VIP program (no longer open to new members) to help engage the community and spur discussion. In exchange for participating on the forum, creators have the opportunity to have their link on the forum sidebar, be shared on social media, and conduct an interview on the forum regarding their project or startup. The forum is also running a twitter promotion to be tweeted out (no longer active).
5. Pinterest
Pinterest is a much overlooked social media site to promote a crowdfunding campaign. The key with Pinterest is to start or join an existing board related to your category. For example, if you are working on a new fashion accessory for women, you would seek to join a board related to fashion, or use the appropriate hashtags that others members are using. The board below has almost 1 million followers and has pins that are consistently re-pinned.
6. Social Media Websites & Blogs
We’ve already compiled an extensive list of blogs related to crowdfunding and have shown you how you can discover bloggers in your niche. In addition to these lists, I recommend checking out this compilation of top social media sites.
Creating social media profiles for your business will pay dividends years down the road. You can also customize the header and cover images to promote your campaign like the example below from the Reading Rainbow Kickstarter campaign.
Blogger and Journalist outreach is a bit more tricky than promoting your project on social media. When you’re marketing via a social network (ex. twitter), there are tools that you can use to track when people are clicking on your links or which postings are being shared most, like Buffer or Hootsuite.
It’s more difficult to gauge the effectiveness of your PR outreach. I recommend starting by creating a list of the publications you want to get on, then creating a separate lists of the journalists that work at those publications that are writing about topics similar to your story or product.
You can start to create this list by researching the publications that similar crowdfunding projects have gotten into. Once you have your list together, you need to create an angle for your story and nail down what is unique about your company and product.
The angle should take into account the publication’s audience and the topics that the journalist tends to write about. Think of this like sending out a resume. Your resume (or pitch in this case) should be tailored for each person you are sending it to emphasize what they will care about most.
When you send the email to a journalist, keep it short and to the point, with a eye-catching subject line. The journalist can then reference your longer version press release if they want to find out more information about your company. For more tips, see Six Ways To Get Your Crowdfunding Campaign On A Reporter’s Radar (written by a reporter).
7. BuzzFeed
Finally, BuzzFeed is another often overlooked platform to promote your crowdfunding project for free. In the recent record-breaking Coolest Cooler Kickstarter campaign, BuzzFeed was one of the publication that helped spread the campaign across Facebook.
There have also been members from KickstarterForum who have used BuzzFeed to promote their Kickstarter. Check out their campaign below and the BuzzFeed article they wrote.
To submit content to BuzzFeed, you must first register and then create a post on your user dashboard.
Conclusion
There are a lot of free ways that you can promote your Kickstarter, Indiegogo, GoFundMe, or other type of crowdfunding project. If you have any questions or thoughts, leave a comment on this artilce!
