If you decide to be an influencer or a campaigner for Eastbridge's Crowdfunding Campaign, here are a few suggestions that we hope you can commit to for maximum impact. The success of crowdfunding depends on its reach. If it can reach enough people and find support from them, then the project succeeds. Reach can only be done one way - by telling people about this project. In our time, there's nothing more capable of rapid and widespread communication than the social media. Most of us have FB or Twitter accounts. Let's make use of these to spread the news about this campaign. But since posts in FB easily get lost in the flood of other posts, lets update our post regularly by posting a simple "Up" comment to it so that it will refresh its position and activity level in the page. The comment will also notify your friends about the post once more in their newsfeed.

Here are more tips and facts gathered from research on successful crowdfunding campaigns in the past. The list includes only those that are relevant to our campaign and below it are tips on how we can use this information to our advantage.

Use of video raises four times more than those which don't

We have prepared a video material for this campaign using a professional video creator and two voice over artists. To maximize the impact of our campaign, all the articles in our campaign page carry the video. Thus, we encourage you to link only the articles or the video itself for better results.

Campaign period is usually from 30-40 days

We decided to run our campaign for a period of 45 days because we don't have full-time people to attend to possible kinks along the way. But unlike other crowdfunding campaigns which rely on third party hosts, we host our own on the school's website and we can shorten this anytime.

The project is trying to solve an actual problem with specific beneficiary and with clear outline of the solution.

We are aware that there are many families here in our town who send their children to high schools in other cities because of lack of school which can provide the standard that they're looking for. We cannot allow things to stay this way forever. Our town is growing and we already need this if we have to level up as a municipality or someday as a city. Keeping the family together is already challenging as it is.

Aim for conversions (actual donors) instead of merely traffic (clicks and likes)

When we target people in this campaign, let's put priority on those who are potential donors. But we shouldn't take for granted those who aren't because we never know whether they may have connections to potential donors as well. The best way to approach this is to make a chat group of several categories:

• • those whom you know has the capacity to donate
  • those whom you can convince because you have either influence or authority over them
  • those who has following and equally influential

Once we have our list or chat group, we tailor fit our message to each group depending on their capacity

Post regularly on social media (at least four times during the campaign period)

Social media is a very powerful tool in spreading any information around. A single post can easily be seen worldwide with the right people sharing them. Let's leverage every connection we have, which may include:

• • FB page, FB group and Chats, whether personal or corporate (you may ask permission to post in your corporate page)
  • Vlogs
  • Membership in organization (Alumni, Rotary, etc.)

The best time to post on social media according to research is around 9 A.M. and between 4-6 P.M.

Not shy about asking people to take action

Results cannot come unless we encourage others to do the same. No one can decide better as to how each of our contacts has to be approached. But if we do, bear in mind that we want them to take action as much as possible.

Is clear on the people behind the project and can show their track record and competence

We have included in the main Crowdfunding page the links to the people behind this project - their qualifications, track record and everything else that can help assure possible donors that their contributions are in good hands and what this project intend to do will be pursued with utmost passion to its completion.

Early contributors are important to the campaign's success

One characteristic of successful crowdfunding campaigns is that there is early interest in the project. This means that donors came early and the support from the start is already significant. Many people are reluctant to be the first in anything. But sizable number of early supporters easily attract more people to support. Thus, we propose that if you are a possible donor, please donate right at the early stage of the project. You can always add more donations as the funds become available to you but your early support can help draw significant interest.

(Photo credit: caylent)