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CrowdFund Marketing Tools (2013)

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Recently Indiegogo posted a list of tools to aid crowdfunders in their campaign creation and managing their crowdfunding campaign before, during and after.  This was compiled by Indiegogo staff blogger Andrew Nunnelly.   This is an excellent list and resource.  We have quoted many of the services below along with many additions to the list which we have encountered over time.

Crowdfunding is not a Panacea – you cannot just post a campaign and expect the masses to shower their support upon your incredibly unique  idea or project.  You have got to work it.

Creating and managing a successful crowdfunding campaign is lot of hard work.  Preparation requires weeks or months of advance planning.  Managing an active campaign is a marathon of engagement requiring great attention to detail and interaction with your supporters.  If you have successfully crowdfunded your project your supporters expect to be involved for the long haul.  They have bought into your vision, now it is your responsibility to keep them engaged.

The tools listed below can help in your crowdfunding project.   Many of these applications are free or have a level of usage which is free up to a certain point.  We use many of them here at CrowdfundInsider.  If you have a suggestion to add to the list please email us and let us know at [email protected].

  • Pitch Video
  • Video Hosting
    • Vimeo — consider themselves home of high quality video.  Good editing tools.
    • YouTube — Part of the Google portfolio, great for sharing.
  • Blog — Many projects use their campaign as their blog.  Some continue to use it after the campaign is completed. Below are several options for off site blog applications.
    • Tumblr – now part of yahoo, great for content which is heavy on images.
    • WordPress – king of the hill for open source cms platforms
    • Blogger – Google blogging application
  • Landing pages:
    • Unbounce — Allows you to create landing pages for surveying your campaigners or advertising your campaign via things like Google Adwords.
    • Launchrock.com
    • Grid
  • Social Media Presence:
    • Facebook — A must for any crowdfunding campaign.
    • Google+ — Creating a Google+ Page for your campaign is great for connecting with a slightly different crowd than on Facebook.
    • Twitter — Another must have for any crowdfunding campaign.  Best to build your follower list early.
    • Pinterest — A great place to get involved in the conversation around the topic(s) of your campaign — as well as a place to share pictures relevant to your campaign.
    • Instagram — Picture sharing. Great for everything from sharing pictures of perks to snapshots of their campaign page.
    • LinkedIn— Social media with a business twist.
  • Shortened Links —
    • Bitly — Bitly’s tracking tools to see how many clicks you’re getting and from where.
    • Google
    • Owl.ly – from HootSuite
  • Music Sharing — Musicians, you probably already know these ones, but if not — these are great ways of sharing your current music with potential contributors to get them excited about supporting your musical efforts.
  • Photo Editing:
    • FotoFlexer — Whether you need to edit photos for your campaign page or perks, this is a free and user-friendly online solution.
  • Create Infographics — Great for generating graphic explanations and visual data of your campaign.
  • Slideshows:
    • SlideShare — A good way to share images from your campaign.
    • Scribd – Another good platform to share, distribute or embed documents.
  • If You Need an Extra Hand:
    • TaskRabbit — Outsource your tasks.
    • Zirtual— Virtual personal assistants.
    • Mechanical Turk – From Amazon, brings workers and tasks together
    • Elance – Hire freelancers for anything.  Strong on graphic design projects.

 Campaign and Team Management

  • Task Management:
    • BaseCamp — A great way to delegate and manage tasks with your campaign team.
    • Teambox – Project management platform.  Apps are available.
    • Trello – Project management.  Apps are available.
    • ZenDesk– This is more of a ticketing / support platform but depending on your project – you may need it.
    • Hojoki – This is another application which is tough to classify as it can do so many different things and integrate with so many other applications.
    • Doodle – Web based meeting scheduling tool.
  • Document Collaboration
    • Google Docs – Google docs allows you to share / edit all types of files.
    • Evernote – it is a bit hard to classify Evernote as it can do so many different things.  It also integrates with many other applications so this is a good place to start.
    • Apple iCloud – if you live in the world of Apple this is the one.
  • Sharing Large Files — Many email clients have limitations on the size of files you can share. These sites provide free and paid services for exchanging larger files.
  • Tracking & Data:
    • Google Analytics — Industry standard site tracking tool.
    • Batchego — Batchego let’s you take the information in your campaign and create a world map of your contributors.
    • Krowdster – Cloud-hosted analytics and discovery tools allow you to use the power of big data to research platforms and campaigns, discover and connect with supporters of similar projects, optimize your campaign page and to make evidence-based decisions about your crowdfunding strategy
    • TheCrowdfundingCentre – The Crowdfunding Centre provides crowdfund promotion and real time big-data-driven tools & insights for crowdfunders, backers, platforms, investors & analysts including daily and weekly charts & news.

Spreading the Word – 

  • Create Pre-Campaign Buzz:
    • LaunchRock — Launch Rock allows you to create a “Coming Soon” page.
  • Email Management:
    • MailChimp — Email marketing tool. Great analytics, plenty of apps.
    • Sendy – Uses Amazons SES
    • Boomerang for Gmail — A plugin for Gmail that allows you to schedule emails.
  • Social Media Best Practices:
  • Social Media Management:
    • HootSuite— You can schedule tweets in advance.
    • TweetDeck — A free alternative to Hootsuite, developed by Twitter.
    • Klout — Social Media measurement tool. Creates a “Klout score” for social media accounts.
    • Webstagram — A web-based app that lets you monitor Instagram hashtags and mentions.
    • Pinstamatic — A manager for Pinterest.
    • Instajelly — Similar to Pinstamatic — but for Instagram.
  • Social Media Amplification:
    • ClickToTweet —  Provides you with a link that serves a tweet you’ve written for people to send to their followers.
    • Paper.li — Allows you to create an online newspaper around your campaign’s social activity.
    • RebelMouse – real time social publishing
    • Scoop.it – share ideas that matter
    • ThunderClap— Amplify your message with the power of the crowd
    • BackerClub
  • Finding Related Audiences:
    • Google Alerts — Tag key words on topics and receive alerts.
    • Meetup — Search for interested groups, schedule meetings.
    • HelpAReporter— Connect with reporters by sharing your expertise.
  • Engagement Tracking:
  • Paid Advertising —
  • Additional Exposure:
    • Reddit—  Great resource for everything on the internet.

Fulfillment

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