How to warm up your Facebook crowd

When watching from afar, crowdfunding can seem completely effortless. You see the support rolling in, happy project owners sharing gratitude and sending virtual high fives and hugs.

However, the reality of it is that crowdfunding is a lot of work and behind the scenes, there’s a person working tirelessly to co-ordinate, plan and schedule their project, which may include planning social media posts both before going live and during the campaign. We caught up with Georgie, Social Media Manager here at Crowdfunder, to find out her top tips on getting started with Facebook. 

As the Social Media Manager here at Crowdfunder, I think that the first and most important bit of advice I could give to anyone is that crowdfunding starts before your project goes live. In my experience, a common mistake made during this planning phase is to overlook how social media could work for you and take your project to the next level. Quite often, I see people launching their projects and thenconsidering how to use social media for their campaign.

Did you know that, on average, around 50% of pledges on Crowdfunder.co.uk come via Facebook? And this all starts when you begin warming your crowd up before going live.

Perhaps you’re a Facebook newbie, or maybe you just have no idea where to begin. Wherever your starting point is, I wanted to share my top tips with you on how to warm up your Facebook crowd beforegoing live to get you set on the right tracks, so that when it gets to launch day, you’re feeling super confident.

1. Create a Facebook Page

Creating a Facebook Page is really simple and shouldn’t take you very long. Here are some things to bear in mind when creating your Page…

A picture speaks a thousand words, so tell a story with your cover photo – You need to tell your brand’s story with imagery so that people know what you’re about from the get go.

Use an engaging profile photo – This is the image that your followers will see every day, so be sure to put some thought into this.

Update your ‘About’ section – This is one of the few places where you can use a hyperlink, so be sure to include a link to your website (or even your Crowdfunder project URL when it’s live). Write a short, sharp bio that includes key words so that your Facebook Page is easily found on Google.

2. Invite people to like your Facebook Page

Now that you have created your Page, it’s time to build your crowd. Here are some useful ways to do this…

Invite your friends –  On the right hand side of your Facebook Page, you will see an ‘Invite’ button where you will be able to invite all of the people on your personal friends list to like your Page. ↓

Share – Share your Facebook Page to your own personal timeline, to a group, on a friends timeline or even to a relevant event. ↓

Invite to like – Once you have built up a few followers and have started sharing content, you will notice that people will start to ‘Like’ your posts. From here, you can select to view who has liked your post and if they don’t already, you can invite them to follow your Page. ↓

3. Post regular, interesting and relevant content

So you have a Facebook Page and a good foundation of followers, so it’s now time to start creating your brand. Here are some top tips on how to keep your content the best it can be in preparation for your crowdfunding campaign…

Use images – Images are great to tell stories quickly & powerfully and thereby get more exposure in the News Feeds of your followers.

Check your grammar – If you don’t use grammar properly, it could reflect badly on your brand. Don’t rush! Read your content through before you post it.

Keep it brief – As Facebook doesn’t have a character limit, there’s the temptation to waffle on and forget the fact that most people will only read the first sentence of any post. So try to get the juicy stuff in at the start. Remember: always ask yourself this question when creating content for Facebook, ‘what would my audience want to engage with?’

Ask questions – A great way to engage with your followers is to ask them questions. You could ask them for their opinion by using strong words like “why”, “what”, “who”, and “how”.

Don’t be all ‘me me me’ – A third of your content should be about you, your product or service of whatever it is that you have to offer. A third of your time should be talking about the relevant industry you work within and the final third should be used to engage with your followers.

4. Engage with your followers

Having conversations with your Facebook followers is a great way to build the engagement and brand awareness in preparation for your crowdfunding campaign, but why?

Visibility –  Many brands use social media to increase their brand awareness. They often dismiss engagement and focus more on the reach of their posts. What they don’t realise is how engagement affects the visibility of their content! One of the most important types of engagement is shares.

Knowing your audience – Engagement can tell you what kind of content your audience like to see.

Trust – Reactive and proactive communication with your followers creates a good foundation of trust before you start asking your followers for their support when crowdfunding.

5. Tell your followers that something is coming

This is what most people think of when they hear the words, ‘warm up your crowd’. Although it’s not the first step, it’s definitely an important one. We know that if you just simply surprise your audience with, ‘I’m crowdfunding, give me your money’, it’s just not going to work. Here are some different things you can try on Facebook to let your followers know that something big is coming.

A countdown – This can be as simple as counting down the days to when your project goes live. However, it can often work well to be a little more subtle with your approach. You could use your rewards to drum up interest like Catch The Sunrise did! ↓

Ask your audience what they want – Not only does this warm up your crowd, but this is a great opportunity for you to make your supporters feel part of your crowdfunding journey right from the start and feel confident that you are offering the right rewards to suit them. Facebook is a great place to ask these questions and gives you the easy tools to be able to do this. ↓

I hope that you have found this useful! If you haven’t done so already then head on over to the Crowdfunder Facebook Page and hit the like button. Feel free to send me a message if you have any questions.