As someone who is going to launch a crowdfunding campaign, you most likely have a lot on your plate. You have to figure out how to get leads to build up your audience, you have to get your crowdfunding page ready, you have to make sure your product development is going according to plan, you have to figure out the best way to get products shipped out to backers… and so much more.
The last thing you probably want to think about is social media and posting something to Twitter, Facebook and Instagram every single day. In this case, automating your social media can be a huge time saver. In fact, by failing to automate social media marketing, you’re wasting a lot of your valuable time getting sucked into the black hole of social media.
Imagine, instead of social media being a time sink, it could drive traffic and new leads to your site while you slept. Imagine, if 90% of your social media efforts were automated, what else could you accomplish for your crowdfunding campaign? What else would you be able to get done?
For me the answer is: a lot.
Last I took inventory, I was spending upwards of 30 hours per week creating images to post, drafting tweets, scheduling posts for the next week, thinking of new creative ideas of things to post – on top of everything else I do to help project creators launch on crowdfunding and run my own business.
Just as I was about to tear my hair out, I found MeetEdgar.
What Does MeetEdgar Do?
In short, MeetEdgar is an automatic social media scheduling tool (and sanity-saver). But it does much more than that. What makes this tool stand out from others, is that it allows you to build a library of content, which then circulates based upon a set schedule.
Most tools out there like Hootsuite, Sprout Social, or Buffer don’t allow you to build an entire library of all of your content that can be pulled and used at any time. The key with MeetEdgar is that this library of stored social media updates can be a huge time saver. You just build that content library once, and MeetEdgar does the rest in posting all of your content for you. It’s the equivalent of always being on social media, without actually having to log in and post everything yourself all the time.
As someone looking to dive into launching your product on crowdfunding, time is your most valuable asset and boy oh boy does this tool save you time. If you’re also on a shoestring budget, MeetEdgar also saves you from hiring someone specifically for social media management.
Which Accounts Can You Use With MeetEdgar?
MeetEdgar doesn’t work with every social media network out there, but it does work with the big ones you have to care about for your crowdfunding launch on Indiegogo or Kickstarter: Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.
To launch a project on crowdfunding you want to be present on Facebook and Instagram since they are the two best platforms for “product discovery” out there. This is especially true if you’re running advertising for your lead generation and audience-building efforts.
Twitter is also a key platform to be “seen” on since that is the main channel journalists, bloggers, and writers in multiple industries use to stay relevant with what’s going on; they’re most likely to organically discover a project via this channel and getting seen is a huge step for you as a crowdfunding creator.
This tool will help grow your accounts and make them a valuable addition to your crowdfunding launch, all without added time.
What Types of Content Should I Post?
Before you dig deeper into MeetEdgar, you need to create the best strategy for your own project. For a crowdfunding launch, what you want to do is get people excited about your product, get people to know about you and your team and get people to understand how this product can make their life better in some way (the benefits of the product).
This translates into a few types of things you can post on on social media for crowdfunding launches:
- Quotes that relate to what you’re launching
- Product shots on white background
- Shots of your product in use (lifestyle images)
- Behind-the-scenes photos of you and your team and the creation process
- CTA photos on what they can do next to support you and your launch
And since social media is very visual by nature, your visual content library will make or break the success of your social media campaigns. People simply won’t share or engage with images that don’t hook them.
Remember, you will need to have captivating text along with a CTA in combination with your images to drive action. You should look at your social media posts as a cohesive piece. An image that draws people in, text that furthers the goal of the image, and a CTA to direct action.
1. Where to Find These Images?
The first place to look for images is the content that you’re creating for your project. For a crowdfunding campaign, you will need a whole slew of images to even launch your project. If you’re launching on Kickstarter, they also have more strict image guidelines for your project, including that they all need to be real images rather than product renderings. The images should all be high-quality and showcase your product in the best light.
Beyond that, you might want to get some “general” pictures to add to your feed that matches with some additional informative caption about your project. Finding high-quality images can be tough. Check out some of the free libraries below to begin your search.
Browsing the sites above should give you a solid stack of photos to choose from. Best of all, they’re all high quality, royalty free, and free to use as you wish.
2. Tools to Create Beautiful Images
Once you have collected high-quality images you’re going to populate your library with, it’s time to dress those images up with engaging text. The following is my most recommended tool to help you easily create stunning images.
- Canva: great tool for beginners that comes equipped with a stock photo library
- Penji: an online team will create unlimited graphics for you for a flat monthly fee
- Placeit: this will place your app or website inside stock photos of computers, iPhones, etc.
- Social Image Resizer Tool: this tool will resize your images to the correct dimensions for each chosen social media platform
If you don’t want to do all of this searching and customization yourself, reach out to me and I can connect you with a network of graphic designers who specialize in creating templates for crowdfunding projects.
How to Set Up MeetEdgar
Once you build your library, it’s time to start configuring your MeetEdgar account.
First, you’ll need to sign up. To do so, click on this link and click ‘I want Edgar!’.
Then you’ll need to sign up for an account. The tool will run you $49/month with a 30-day money-back guarantee, or you can save money by signing up for annual billing.
1. Adding Social Media Accounts
On this screen you’ll see the social media accounts you can connect with MeetEdgar. To add your accounts, just click on the type of account you want to connect.
Go through the access authorization for each of the platforms as instructed on MeetEdgar. If you’re having trouble connecting any of the accounts, be sure to reach out to their customer service team. I had trouble connecting my Twitter account, sent in an email to customer service and got a response back within 24 hours on what to do that completely fixed the problem.
2. Adding Content
To get started, just click on the ‘Add New Content’ button in the upper right-hand corner. This will bring you to a similar screen as the one below.
Then all you have to do is enter your post content, upload an image by clicking the camera icon, set the schedule settings, and choose the profiles you wish to schedule the content for.
Hopefully, your social media posts are more than just a wall of text. MeetEdgar gives you the option of uploading everything from still images, to GIFs to videos. Just click on the right type of content you’re looking to upload and voila.
As an advanced step, be sure to click “Add Variation” so that you can extend the use and life of your one piece of content even more. Adding 3 different variations, for example, can mean that your one piece of content can be used 3 different times even before MeetEgar goes back to recycle that first variation again. This advanced step is incredibly helpful for you as a creator since you’ll be able to use and automate content for months as you work towards your launch!
MeetEdgar does support preview links for some of your connected accounts so be sure to make use of that to ensure that you like the look of your posts.
Once you’re done, click ‘Save to Library’ and MeetEdgar will store your post in its content library.
3. Using Categories for Post Types
On the Categories page you can create different categories where you’ll save all your various social media updates across different platforms.
When you’re just getting started with MeetEdgar, you’ll notice they provide you with a list of sample categories to get you started. Feel free to change those as needed.
Creating different categories will help you to avoid posting the same kind of social media update time and time again.
To add a new category, just click on the ‘Add New Category’ button. When creating a new category, you’ll notice a checkbox titled ‘Included when selecting random content to post’. If you want this category to be included when using the Shuffle Content option, then check it. If not, leave it unchecked.
It’s a good idea to create categories based upon the types of content you’ll be posting and that you have for your own project. For an upcoming launch, a few examples of categories you might create are:
- Your own blog content about your project and product
- Other people’s content that is related to the industry that your project is in
- Information that you’re launching soon on crowdfunding and where people can leave their email to be notified of the launch and get the best deal
- Inspirational images
- Questions to your audience. This ranges from what they are most excited for this launch to what types of colors they’re interested in receiving the product in.
- Behind-the-scenes photos of your team working on the creation of the project. This can even be early-stage prototypes, beta tests that you’ve run, or even images from the production facilities that you’ve been in talks with
- Team images and headshots so that people in your audience actually know who the people behind the project are
- Anything else that your audience would be interested in!
When you open each category, you’ll see all the posts you’ve created under that specific category. Here, you also have the opportunity to Shuffle the category. This is a helpful feature if you’ve added multiple social media posts promoting the same article that you don’t want to go out consecutively.
How to Create Schedules
With your posts uploaded, it’s time to start scheduling your content to run on autopilot!
1. Setting Up a Category Schedule
The Schedule is where you’ll build your social media posting schedule. If you click on the ‘All Accounts’ tab, you can either see your calendar for every social media network, or choose to view a single network from the list.
The cool thing with MeetEdgar is that it also gives you some recommendations of when to best post your content. You can either follow their recommendations or click “Add Timeslot” to manually select the day of the week you wish to post. Then choose the time and category of the post. Finally, select the social media networks you want it to post on from the left-hand menu.
MeetEdgar will favor newly uploaded content, instead of content that’s been sitting in your library a long time. Your older content won’t be cycled through until the latest uploads in a specific category are finished.
2. Managing Your Queue
The Queue is your overarching look at what social media posts are scheduled, and for what network, for the next two weeks. As you look at your queue, you’ll notice the category of the post, the time, the date, and the social network for each post.
This will allow you to see your social media future, edit any posts, or even delete the post from your queue. You can even skip certain posts and have the next post in the queue post instead of the one in the designated time slot.
3. What Kind of Schedules to Create
Now, you’re probably wondering, how often should I post on social media? What kind of schedules should I create?
For crowdfunding campaigns, you want to think about how to best holistically educate your audience about your project and upcoming launch and also driving them to action (leave their email with you on your landing page). With this in mind, sprinkle the week with content about the benefits of your product, who you and your teammates are, what you’re looking to build and then drop a mention that people can sign up for more information for your launch via your landing page.
How to Manage Your Progress
You might be thinking: ok, so I have this all set up, but how do I know if any of this is working or not?
Well good news! The cool thing about MeetEdgar is that you can also track how your links are doing across your social media platform.
The tool seamlessly links up with Bit.ly, which is a free link-tracking service that does all the work for you and counts your clicks, shares and engagement. However, you can still track the success of your social media posts via Bit.ly.
To use this feature, you’ll need to create an account at Bit.ly. By making sure that the URL shortener on MeetEdgar is always set to your Bit.ly account, you’ll be able to easily track each and every link you’re using in MeetEdgar inside your Bit.ly account.
Who Should Use MeetEdgar?
To be completely honest, anyone who is looking to have a social media presence (yes, I also use MeetEdgar to manage my social media presence!). More specifically, you as someone who is looking to run your own crowdfunding campaign.
Why?
There are so many things to juggle and keep in mind as a creator – you’re thinking about how to get the best script to your video team, you’re thinking about pricing rewards, you’re thinking about how to manage logistics and fulfilment of your rewards at the end of the campaign… this is really just the tip of the iceberg of all the things you have to do and get ready for your launch.
Using a platform like MeetEdgar let’s you plan your social media presence ahead of time and automate that work. This frees up your time to manage the other parts of launching a crowdfunding campaign that you need to take care of.
Take back your time today and give MeetEdgar a try.
If you’re interested in other useful tools to use for your crowdfunding campaign then check out the rest of the recommended (read: battle-tested!) tools in the Crowdfunding Toolkit.
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We’re here to help you crush your crowdfunding campaign and fund your dream. Our team has helped creators successfully launch and raise over $13 million on Kickstarter and Indiegogo. We’re so excited to help you on this journey to launch!
