Managing and Promoting Campaigns

1. Identify an angle, theme, or story arc for the messaging you'll use to promote the campaign.   Simply asking for money may work with your biggest supporters, but to grow your base, you must find ways to a) capture their attention, and b) engage them in achieving your goals.
2. Create a hashtag or tagline to keep your messaging focused and consistent - and identifiable across platforms.
3. Instead of providing an urgent manifesto of need at the campaign launch, create a story arc that can be introduced over the duration of your campaign. Entice people to open/click/read/watch your message with content (image, story, facts, video) rather than an easy-to-ignore request to donate or support your cause.  
4. Tailor your messaging to the platform and audience:  emails and newsletters allow more depth, but little interaction; facebook is great for dialogue on perspectives and experiences; instagram is for visual messages; twitter handles facts and figures well etc.
5. Map out your story arc across platforms.  Rather than repeating the same message in multiple streams, strive to differentiate the content to add depth to the story.   Add each element to your organization's website as it's released to build and provide access to the comprehensive story/campaign.
6. Build on early support to expand outreach, keep your audience engaged, and add organic content.  By asking donors to share their reason for supporting your cause and the donation page with their own network - you can leverage their early support to reach and engage new audiences.   Posting regular updates to your campaign site can be used to share "behind-the-scenes" progress and stories and keep supporters engaged.   Instructions for using the built-in tools below:

When using the Crowdfund template, the confirmation screen prompts donors to leave a public comment: "I donated because. . ."

These comments can be powerful testimonials and their public display can influence visitors to your site to make a donation - or to increase their planned donation.

Here are some tips for facilitating a rich comment section:

• Help set expectations for the kind of feedback left by "seeding" the comment section with a terrific example.   Ask a team or family member or a committed supporter to make the first donation and to leave a comment that illustrates what you're hoping to see.  Of course, not everyone will respond in kind but the odds are better than if the expectation is set that "Good Luck"  and "Amazing" are the norm for comments in this community. ..
• Engage by replying to individual comments - thanking the user for their support/perspective/sharing provides an extra (and public) acknowledgement to the donor and reminds everyone that real people are working together to achieve the campaign's goal.
• Whether or not you've chosen to require approval before comments are posted live, make sure you've provided an email address for notifications - and that the email inbox or campaign site is being monitored regularly for content moderation.

Updates and posted to the campaign site AND emailed to all past donors*  and are an excellent tool to:

• re-engage with contributors
• provide progress updates,
• amplify noteworthy comments,
• provide shout-outs,
• encourage supporters to share the site with their networks

*individuals may manually opted out of Update emails.

Nothing is as effective as a recommendation from someone you know.  Encourage your supporters to use the Share tools to provide their networks with easy access to your campaign: