Marketing a Kickstarter Campaign

Posted on July 16, 2012 by The Young Urban Unprofessional

One crucial but often over-looked aspect to Kickstarter campaigns is the marketing required to successfully reach the project’s funding goal. Due to the nature of “crowd-sourced” funding, it is necessary that thousands of people see the project page in hopes that 100 might actually donate cash to the project. This can only be possible through the use of social media, i.e. sharing/liking/tweeting/blogging/etc. Most successful Kickstarter videos I saw online had well over 1,000 “Likes” on Facebook and some had well over 10,000. So it goes without saying that social media reach can make or break a campaign. Therefore, I decided to spend some time looking into how to launch an effective social media marketing campaign for my Alpine Hammock Project.

My new Facebook Page for the Alpine Hammock Project. This is in addition to a new Twitter account (@AlpineHammock) and a Gmail account (AlpineHammock@gmail.com)

In terms of projects gaining traction, many blog articles talk about how important it is to get your Kickstarter project picked up by a major blog related to your project early on in the campaign. Typically, once a well respected entity covers your project (Gizmodo, Mashable, NY Times, Boston Globe, and other media in your field) then dozens of others are likely to pick it up and give you some type of press coverage over their social media networks.

Here's Outside Magazine featuring a Kickstarter project called Snow Guardians, a documentary about the men and women in ski patrol.

So I spent several hours trying to find every outdoor gear related blog that I could get my social-media-savvy hands on. My search came up with almost 200 online entities that deal with the outdoor gear industry in some fashion, everything from small blogs to large companies, all actively using social media. I’m sure I could have found more but honestly I got tired and decided that ~200 was more than enough to start with.

Like any good engineer (read: nerd, data-enthusiast, etc), I created an excel document in an attempt to wrap my arms around all these social media opportunities for my Alpine Hammock Project. I segregated the entities I found by theme: Gear Testing (like GearJunkie.com), Climbing (like EveningSends.com) , Adventure (like AdventureJournal.com), General Outdoor Media (like Backpacker.com), Winter (like WildSnow.com) , Large Companies (like Outside Magazine), and even Hammock-specific forums (like HammockForums.net, and yes there are multiple websites devoted to people who love hammocks). It is a goal of mine to get my Alpine Hammock project picked up by as many of these 200 sites as possible in hopes that the project reaches their networks of outdoor gear addicts like myself, even better if it reaches people with the disposable income necessary to help make this project become a reality.

Backpacker Magazine is insanely popular in the outdoor world, so getting a Retweet, Facebook Like/Share, or even a feature on their blog would be monumental to the progress of my project.

Having a lot of media options is great, however, it’s not as simple as just spamming the social media scene. In fact, this method is often counter-productive because people will get annoyed with you if you’re constantly pushing your product. It’s about building a community of people who dig your project and want to see you succeed. Just because you have 1,000 Facebook Likes doesn’t translate to them giving you their hard-earned cash. Generally you get money from the lead users of your product who are willing to put down some extra cash to be the first ones to own it. They want to see you succeed just as much if not more than getting the product itself. So being relevant and thoughtful while sending out frequent project updates is a great way to attain the funding goal.

Next, after separating each piece of online media by theme I dug a little deeper, creating columns in the excel document for hyperlinks to Twitter usernames, Facebook fan pages, and email contact information specific to that website.

Collecting this information was pretty boring and took a long time but I think the investment will be well worth it when on my project’s launch day I can easily send messages to all their social media pages. I drafted a few sample 140 character tweets, direct messages, Facebook posts and stock email paragraphs but the only way to really get picked up is to be authentic. I follow many of the outdoor gear websites daily so I don’t think it will be too hard to message them while referencing some relevant content that I’ve read on their site. Plus, it might actually be fun considering I have an addiction to outdoor gear. After my 100-Item-Challenge last November, I realized that 57% of the items I held onto were related to outdoor adventures. Also, despite having a 9-5 desk job, my Randomized PhotoJournal in October showed me that nearly 30% of my time while not in work is spent outside. So clearly outdoor gear and the adventures they enable are a huge part of my life, this is why I have a passion for making this Alpine Hammock Project a reality.

Now for the timing of Kickstarter PR. Almost every blog and personal friend who has done a Kickstarter campaign has talked about the “Dead Zone” i.e. the time through which your project is neither new nor almost finished. The beginning and the end are the two most exciting times in a project’s life, therefore, they see the highest amount of pledges. However, the lag time in between known as the Dead Zone typically results in minimal funding. This is why the vast majority of successful Kickstarter campaigns last 30 days or less, just enough time to maintain suspense, build the excitement, and reach the funding goal without people getting bored or losing interest. Here’s an example from a book called “Art Space Tokyo”:

I found this graph in an epic blog post about Kickstarter campaigns, check it out http://craigmod.com/journal/kickstartup/

Art Space Tokyo was a five week campaign that saw $1700 on its first day and $1300 on it’s last day. However, around the fourth week there was a 12 day dead zone that hit with full force. What this tells me is that I should really push the promotion of my campaign during my next-to-last week in order to combat the lag in interest. The first and last days are usually very powerful in terms of funding but consistent donations seems to be key to successfully raising enough funds.

In the days leading up to my project’s Launch Day, I plan to follow (on Twitter) and like (on Facebook) as many relevant blogs and media sites as possible. Hopefully this will help spread awareness of my project before it is actually launched. If you have any suggestions along the way feel free to message me via Twitter, Facebook, or Email (AlpineHammock@gmail.com).

7 Tips for How to Live Young, Urban, and Totally Sober

Posted on April 2, 2012 by The Young Urban Unprofessional

Each month I create a Twitter List for that life experiment’s topic and I follow as many people as I can. It helps me to stay current on the topic and to learn as much as I can in a fairly short period of time. One thing I noticed during this month was that there are VERY FEW resources out there to help people stay sober as compared to topics like environmentalism or random acts of kindness. Perhaps promoting sobriety just isn’t a lucrative venture so not many people do it. There are a couple of popular resources for drug addicts on Twitter but I could hardly find anything besides Alcoholics Anonymous for boozing. Although, following Alcoholics Anonymous is a bit ironic because it’s no longer anonymous once you start following them on Twitter, it kind of defeats the purpose.

I was able to find roughly ZERO resources for sober living in Boston which was really too bad considering it’s filled with a few hundred thousand students under 21. There should definitely be more online resources promoting things that aren’t drinking. LivingSocial and Groupon do a good job at offering fun things to do in the city but there’s no resource explicitly devoted to sobriety as there are with the other experiments I’ve done: environmental, conversation, random acts of kindness, vegetarianism, etc.

With that being said, here are a few things that I learned throughout the month about being sober in Boston. I distilled them down into 7 tips that helped me stay sober for 30 days in an urban setting. It is by no means a comprehensive list and nor will it work for everyone, but here it is nonetheless.

Go on a weekend adventure. For me, my heaviest periods of drinking are certainly on the weekends. I find that getting out of the city for the weekend has drastically reduced my exposure to alcohol. So weekend adventures really helped me avoid scenarios that are typically synonymous with alcohol consumption: bars, restaurants, boredom, etc.
Find out what your “anti-drunk” is. Find an activity that helps you to replace and avoid drinking. My anti-drunk throughout college was the Tufts Mountain Club. I spent many weekends exercising and/or just hanging out at the Loj in New Hampshire that otherwise would have been filled with binging weekends in Boston. After graduation I’ve started to realize how awesome that resource actually was. I’ve continued to use the Loj as a basecamp to avoid partying too hard in Boston. There’s certainly a time and a place for partying hard but spending every weekend in the city would be just too much for my liver (and my wallet). Hiking trips work for me, find something that works for you.
Avoid the “Just Because” beer. I often fall into the habit of drinking beer just because: “Just got home from work, I’ll have a beer.” “Cooking dinner, might as well have a beer.” “Watching the bruins game, I should go get a beer.” “I’m doing laundry, time for beer.” and the list goes on. This was probably a more difficult habit to break than drinking at the bar or at parties. I’ve gotten into such a habit of the “just because” beer, I mean why not right? The reality is that avoiding these “just because” beers has saved me a bunch of money and calories both add up although saving $ is more important to me than adding pounds to my figure.
Upcycle your alcohol habit. I had been keeping a few liquor bottles around for no particular reason so I decided that I’d upcycle them to hold bamboo plants. There was something about acknowledging my affinity for liquor and turning it into something green that was particularly satisfying. Owning up to how much you’re drinking is key to moving past it to a more tolerable or regulated habit, doing something positive about it (even though small) is even better.
Drink out of red solo cups at parties. All people really notice at parties is if you’re drinking or not drinking. I found myself fairly uncomfortable not drinking It wasn’t so much because I wasn’t drinking booze that I felt uncomfortable, it was because I’ve become so accustomed to holding a drink in my hand while having fun. I felt weird having both hands free. However, I found that no one knew and no one cared what I was drinking or how much of it I was drinking. Therefore, the red solo cup kept my hands busy while helping me to assimilate into the drinking culture without actually drinking alcohol. I had just as much fun without the alcohol (and had significantly better morning-afters).
Avoid keeping beer in the beer fridge. Perhaps having a beer fridge in the first place is a poor step in the direction of curbing a drinking habit. We have a beer fridge and it was pretty much empty the entire month. Not having access to beer in my apartment certainly helped to avoid the desire to drink one. I do the same thing with food, if it’s there I’ll eat it. Same with quantities of food, if it’s there I’ll eat it. The same idea translates to beer for me, “It’s there, why not.” So by not resupplying the beer fridge each week I was able to easily follow Tip #3: Avoid the “Just Because” Beer.
Don’t drink non-alcoholic beer. It’s just not worth it, don’t do it.

I definitely think my sober month has changed my perspective on partying and having a good time. I still like beer and whiskey but from now on I don’t think I’ll feel weird about not drinking at a bar, party, restaurant, hockey game etc. I highly recommend trying a sober month, I saved a bunch of money, lost a few pounds, and generally just feel fantastic, there’s not too many down sides.

Here is that Twitter List I was talking about. It’s a compilation of Twitter users related to sobriety, some are pretty helpful and others are pretty useless. Check it out and join the conversation:

Thursday October 27th – Saving My Worms, Whiskey, and Microsoft Excel

Posted on October 29, 2011 by The Young Urban Unprofessional

Tonight was a pretty successful yet probably uneventful evening. I had to troubleshoot my vermiculture composting bin because my worms were freaking out trying to crawl out of the bin. So I did some research and figured out how to fix the solution. I’ll find out in a week or so whether or not what I did will work. Then I spent some time doing a few logistical things with my blog. I updated the Facebook page I created a few weeks ago and then came up with an excel spreadsheet that will help me analyze my photo-blog challenge this month. As evidenced in the quality of my photos this month, my point with this challenge was not to be artistic, it was to take a look at my lifestyle through random photos (10 or so every day at randomized time points). So like a good engineer I’m going to do a bit of analysis afterward to look at trends and whatnot.

Self explanatory; reading Dracula on the train.

When I went to put my week's food scraps in my compost I saw that my worms were buggin' out and trying to crawl out of the bin. I did some research online and realized that my bin was probably too wet, so I added some dry newspaper bedding to help absorb the moisture. I'll check it again next week to see if it's less moist and if my worms are happy again.

I read online that your bedding should take up 3/4 of your bin. I was putting minimal bedding in assuming that the worms would be happy playing in the composted material in the bottom, but apparently they hang out in the bedding area. So I filled the bin about half-full with dry newspaper pieces (to help absorb excess moisture). I'll check next week to see if anything has changed.

Checking out my Blog's Facebook Page. When I upload a blog post it is automatically Tweeted (@youngandurban) and my Twitter feed is embedded in my Facebook page. This way now people besides my friends on Facebook and my Twitter followers can follow my updates. Like me on Facebook! http://on.fb.me/slQvpI and follow me on Twitter @youngandurban

More Twitter stuff on Facebook. If anyone knows how to make my twitter feed my landing page for my Facebook page, please let me know, that'd be great, thanks.

Devising a way to analyze my randomized photo blog. I'm basically counting up how many pictures I took throughout the month and then categorizing them; inside, outside, with friends, in transit, physical exertion, etc. This will help me to "calculate" how I am spending my time and thus what is important to me. Is this how I want to be spending my days as a freshly new 25 year old? Less working and more playing outside maybe.

Watching the Bruins lose horribly in a crappy game instead of watching game 6 of the baseball world series. I don't know how we messed that one up, I guess we were just over-stoked for the hockey season. The baseball game was apparently unreal, walk-off homerun in the 13th inning, bummed I missed it.

Enjoying some Knob Creek Kentucky Straight Burbon Whiskey while coming up with a good excel sheet to analyze the content of my photo blog.

I’ll find out in a week or so whether or not my solution of adding dry paper scraps to my compost will help to dry it out a bit. Also, I’m going some time over the next few days going through my month’s pictures and plugging info into the excel spreadsheet that I made; am I inside/outside, with/without friends, being physically/intellectually stimulated, etc. I’m interested to see how it turns out. I’m excited for Halloween weekend, lots of time with good people, hopefully a few adventures, and most importantly it’ll be the first weekend in a longggg time that I haven’t been in NH hiking. So I’m looking forward to hanging out in Boston for once instead of being out in the woods every weekend (although I much prefer the latter).