5 Tips for Crowdfunding on Twitter to Run a Successful Campaign

Crowdfunding is more than just a trend. It’s become the most popular fundraising model to date, and it’s garnered most of its success from social media, particularly Twitter. It’s a simple and easy way to get consumers to both fund and support your cause. Those seeking to gain funding through Twitter’s widespread online organization may find the following tips helpful.

Crowdfunding on Twitter

Establish Your Posting Strategy

Once you’ve created a Twitter account for your business, brainstorm an effective posting strategy. A major part of creating this strategy is defining the reason behind your fundraiser. In order to garner attention from your audience, you need to solve a real problem, as Forbes points out in an article posted last year.

If the fundraiser doesn’t solve a real problem for your audience, you’ll have a much harder time engaging them.

Likewise, you’ll want to determine the type of content that will be most useful and relatable for your followers, and then determine the best times of day to post that content and the best times of day to ask for user involvement. This depends largely on your audience. For a younger audience, it could be any time of the day, and for an older audience, it could be between 12:00 and 1:00 in the afternoon or 5:00 and 7:00 in the evening when they are getting off work and looking to wind down.

Defining every aspect of your posting strategy is the only way to begin a successful campaign when crowdfunding on Twitter.

Build and Engage Your Audience

Twitter isn’t much different than compiling a list for email marketing, except that you’re limited to the followers you have on Twitter. Therefore it becomes integral to gain more followers and build an audience that will be sympathetic to your cause.

A large part of gaining the right followers for crowdfunding is catering to your audience.

Adam Connell of Blogging Wizard recommends in this post that you “focus on growing a targeted and engaged following of people that want to hear what you have to say.” If you aren’t gaining much support for your campaign, the problem could be that your audience simply isn’t interested in your cause or that you aren’t engaging them in the right way.

The answer is either to change your audience by finding effective followers or seek a new way to present the campaign that the audience can relate to.

Use Twitter Advanced Search

Twitter offers a fairly complex search function that allows you to browse the platform for those who can specifically relate to your cause. If you can find these people, you can add them to your list of followers and enlist their help in marketing your petition.

Many won’t want to have anything to do with crowdfunding, but others will see your campaign as an eye-opener that can raise awareness for something they also believe in, and they’ll be happy to help your fundraiser stay afloat.

Call for Retweets

Just like hundreds of shares is an incredible milestone on Facebook, multiple retweets are extremely important on Twitter. Many will retweet your posts on their own, but it never hurts to request retweets of your followers on occasion.

Connell found in his study of how to gain more followers that adding the simple phrase “Please retweet” at the front of a tweet can increase shares up to 4 times. Your direct call to action will help consumers know what to do with your information and deliver the result you want.

Enlist Twitter Influencers

Using influencers is the best way to gain attention for your fundraiser when crowdfunding on Twitter. Influencers are people who have so many followers that if they jump on board with your cause, you’ll gain an instant place in the spotlight.

These influencers are generally those who are also extremely influential in real life, such as celebrities and successful business people. It’s not always easy to catch their attention, but if you’ve been working to establish a relationship with them in the past through devoted followership, conversation, and original content, it will help your cause.

As soon as you gain the help of one of these influencers, the interest in your campaign is sure to increase exponentially.

As the latest and greatest way to raise funds for any cause, crowdfunding can be one of your best tools if used correctly. With devoted persistence and the right tactics, you’ll be well on your way to crowdfunding success.

Twitter Image via Shutterstock

This article, “5 Tips for Crowdfunding on Twitter to Run a Successful Campaign” was first published on Small Business Trends