by Helena Kaufman
Communicate to Propel Project Success
Launching your Kickstarter Project
You’ve chosen to create something that matters. While you may have followed Kickstarter’s well designed and guided model, it and some of the new demands in marketing may be a bit out of the “business as usual” mode most of us were raised in.
This means that some people experience ‘fear of shipping’. In this instance we’ll use shipping as used by Seth Godin, a marketing pioneer known for bolstering creative types who are carving out new models. To succeed you must actually get your product or message out there. Communication is one of those critical and ongoing requirements.
Barriers to getting the word out well might include fear, project fatigue, hesitancy to promote yourself or simply lack of know-how. These can delay or avoid communicating about your project and its various interesting and essential components. Each stage has a ‘shipping’ situation that must be met to make it real and to help it meet with success.
Ship Shape and Ready to Communicate
Let’s simply reframe this pressure and call it sharing. Kickstarter has some suggestions to ship out information and ensure your success at this more than mid-way time in your project:
Project updates – share progress, post media, and thank your backers. Posting a project update automatically sends an email to all your backers with that update.
Maintain momentum- inform and inspire project supporters for the duration of your fundraising period. Sharing fun followups helps spread the word while your contribution time clock ticks.
Say Thanks Inclusively – A meaningful thank you to all the people that helped make your fully funded project possible is accomplished by sharing your process.
Boost communication success by sharing:
- photos
- progress such as finding artists, supply sources
- personal experiences of the process
- decisions, feelings about meeting goals, challenges and even asking for feedback
- celebrations such as reviews, press, and photos from your project out in the world-being read, played or viewed.
Keeping backers informed and engaged is essential to Kickstarter and other outreach models.
Unfold your story, rather than simply posting pledge requests—bring it to life for your backers. You may find communicating with your backers to be the most rewarding parts of the process for you. Try it. Everyone will like it.
Be creative,
Be in touch,
Helena
Helena Kaufman is a writer and communications trainer. In 1982, success at promoting, marketing and writing about 200 artisans launched Helena as an event publicist. The designers who sold at the Annual Manitoba Christmas Craft Sale exhibited original functional and decorative pieces in fibre, pottery, metal, oil, paper, wood, distinctive wearable art and more. Helena worked to raise their profile, bring media attention and increase their sales. She now shares some of that savvy in the Artisan Ally series. Helena’s writing and communications site can be found here.
