(As a "How To" blog you will want to start with the first post and work your way up to this one)

Promotion

I have to put a little reality check in here at this point. I knew that I was going to have to be the one to promote my project. I read enough and know enough about fundraising to know that putting something on Kickstarter and sitting back waiting for the money to roll in was not going to happen. Please realize this and plan accordingly!

This is how I went about it.

I contacted the people in the community that support the arts and asked them to help promote the project on their blogs, Facebook and anywhere else they could.

I contacted local papers and offered to provide text, high res photos and anything else they might need.  I sent emails with screen shots of the project, links to the project and a short well worded plea for support to my family and even business associates.

I set up a Facebook page for the project and linked it to my Kickstarter project (DO THIS- even if you hate Facebook like I do). You will get traffic and donations from Facebook, so embrace it at least during the project. I have the ability to see how much traffic is coming from Facebook and it is A LOT.

I put announcements on internet bulletin boards, sent data to the local TV station and printed off small posters to go on real bulletin boards around town. I printed off a ton of business cards with all the data on it to pass out and leave around. Below I will show you the two sides of the cards that I created.

Finally, I contacted everyone I ever knew and even those I had not talked to for 10 years. I used the project as a fun way to get back in contact with people I had not seen and talked to in years. They were thrilled to pitch in a $1 and hear about what I had been up to. 

Make it fun and exciting and keep the momentum going!

 

Timing

How long to run the project and when to end it?  This is such a personal thing, but I will share my ideas about it. When a project runs a long time people can tend to sit back and procrastinate about making that donation. Also, if you make a project go on and on people can get sick of hearing about it and tune out.  I decided to go with 3 1/2 weeks. I figured a few days just to get the promotion machine started. Then one week to get rolling, the second week to really allow the social media web to spread and the final week would be the big push to the finish! Short and sweet.

This is great for small project goals like mine. If you are asking for $20,000 or so you might want to give it some more time and allow more time for more extensive promotion. The exception to this is if you have a project that is so cool it goes viral on Kickstarter. If that happens no promotion is really needed, it just spreads like wildfire!