You see, a huge chunk of funded projects on Kickstarter attained that success because they did a lot of prep work before they even launched and ran their campaigns. This is evidenced by the massive success creators who return to the platform have after already having funded a project and built a community around them.
And there are undoubtedly exceptions to this, but by-and-large launching and running the Kickstarter campaign wasn’t the beginning, but rather the final stage of most successful projects on the platform. Before that, they worked at length into building a community of like-minded, interested people, which would potentially, not only pledge and become backers once the campaign actually started, but serve as spokespersons and carriers of your product’s message to people that wouldn’t otherwise even heard of it.
Which is precisely why a large percentage of successfully funded Kickstarter projects get funded within the first few days after launch, and why the first 48 hours from launching a campaign are so critical to its success.
You need to build a community for your project way ahead of its actual campaign launch, and to achieve this, social media integration is paramount.
You need to make sure your company has a healthy presence and user interaction on at least the big three (Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter) and start creating buzz utilizing every SEO and marketing technique available.
Start project updates before the launch of the Kickstarter campaign, and use your social media to spread awareness about them.
Set up a Timeline of tasks and objectives leading to the initial launch date, sharing updates and information on significant milestones.
Run sponsored ads, implementing your keywords and SEO for Kickstarter tactics to reach people not already connected with your social media presence.
Set up “events” leading to launch: One-on-One Facebook gatherings to “meet the founders.” AMA’s on Reddit, and live streaming on YouTube, Twitch or G+ are all proven ways to expose your project and greatly help build a community.
Any opportunity to interact with a project’s founders and developers will serve to build little by little an active community of invested, like-minded, passionate individuals that will want to work alongside you to make this project a reality.
Keep in mind these are all things that you will still be doing (and probably will need to double-down on) once your Kickstarter Campaign launches. However, while most people make the mistake of only running these tasks after the campaign launches and end up shouting their message to an empty room, doing so weeks or months in advance guarantees that when the time comes, the right people will be there, eager to listen to your message, and more importantly, spread it.
