Adolphe Bitard – Téléphone via Wikimedia Commons
Imagine you are nine months pregnant. You’re in the delivery room, legs in stirrups, pushing as hard as you can. You’re in pain. You feel vulnerable and tired.
You look up and a thousand people are in the room with you. They actually spent their own money to be in here. In fact, their cash helped pay for the room. Now they’re watching the most intimate parts of the birthing process and giving you real time feedback of how they think you are doing. (“Just push harder!” “You’re doing great!” “What’s taking so long???”)
You’re thankful, obviously. Eternally grateful. You wouldn’t be in this room if it wasn’t for their generosity. These amazing people gave you the support you needed to help bring your baby into the world. If you could, you would give them all a big hug. At the same time… It would be really nice to just get some peace and quiet so you could just focus on popping this kid out.
That’s kind of how it feels to work with Backers when you’re crowdfunding a project.
Design has traditionally been a quiet exercise. A small team of people get together and make something in relative solitude. You go through your iterations, successes and failures in private. Eventually your work is released and then rest of the world gets to weigh in on what you did.
Crowdfunding projects are the opposite of that. Design turns into a performance art. Once you launch your project, everyone (at least it feels like everyone) has an opinion. You are being judged. Your successes and failures are magnified. One moment someone will call you a genius and the next, someone will claim you’re running a Ponzi scheme.
Dealing with this, while simultaneously getting a new-to-the-world product off the ground can be…challenging. This is new stuff for designers to think about: How do you talk about your progress with a big, public audience that has a small, yet personal stake in your success?
In this part of the crowdfunding series, we will talk about how to effectively communicate with Backers.
There are a few key things you will want to think about: Kickstarter’s Methods of Communication, Backer Psychology, Tips on how to communicate effectively, and Dealing with “Special” people.
Kickstarter’s Methods of Communication
There are three ways you and your Backers can communicate with each other on Kickstarter:
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