Keeping it Personal — Crowdfunding Tips by Claire Anne Taylor
Crowdfunding is an incredible thing to do and really lends itself to artists. In the current age of online music consumption, where it is getting harder to sell music in physical formats such as CDs, it is increasingly difficult to come up with the funds you need to undertake your next music project. Crowdfunding to me, feels like the artist’s modern-day solution to declining CD sales and is a terrific way to generate the funding for your next big music venture.
Make it personal
Conducting crowdfunding campaigns with Pozible has taught me a lot about the importance of being authentic and having your own voice come through in your campaign. Over the years perfoming as a folk singer, I have come to appreciate the need to be honest and completely myself when I am on stage. It not only gives the audience an opportunity to get to know me, but also allows them to access and feel their own emotions and experiences through mine. The same applies for your Pozible campaign. Being yourself and allowing your quirky and unique attributes to shine through is a great way to connect with your audience and it will allow your campaign to stand out.
Video updates are best
As a musician, video posts are an engaging and creative way to keep your audience connected to your campaign. Throughout my campaign, I tried to post a video at least once a week. This would often be as simple as recording a snippet of myself playing a song on my phone and uploading it to my social media platforms. I didn’t take myself too seriously in my videos and even went as far as filming a short video with an echidna that lives at my house. Now, I’m not suggesting you should go out and take videos with bush animals, but utilising your instrument, your music, and your sense of humour, to your advantage by including it in creative video posts, is a great way to grab people’s attention and encourage them to support your campaign.
Tell people face-to-face
Performing artists are lucky in the fact that they already have a stage and a platform to share the details of their latest creative projects. Throughout the course of my crowdfunding campaign, I made the most of self-promotion by mentioning my campaign at my live shows. I would say things to my audience like: “this is a new song of mine that I am hoping to record on my new album. If you would like to get behind me and support me to make my new album, you can jump online and check out my Pozible campaign.” I found that this kind of face-to-face interaction really made a difference to the success of my campaign.
Be grateful…and creative about it
Another thing that I found important in my campaign success, was to constantly acknowledge and thank my supporters along the way. I did this in the form of huge, colourful posters that I made with the name of each supporter hand-written in texta. Each week I would add the names of those people who had made a pledge for that week and I would take a photo of the poster and upload it to Facebook. I would then tag each person in my Facebook post so that it came up on their Facebook wall. This is a very clever way to spread the word about your campaign and to keep the gratitude flowing all the way through the campaign.
Claire Anne Taylor is a folk singer songwriter from Tasmania. To hear her new songs, and upcoming tours check out her website here.
