How to Build a Crowdfunding Community on Social Media Before Your Launch | Ep. 4

They should bet on quantity rather than quality because here is more important thing is trust that they should build during their journey. As I said, they should document this journey and post it as consistent as they can. You are watching the Creator Chronicles. Hi, I'm Artur Papikian and this is where we break down the silent mistakes that are happening through the different stages of a crowdfunding campaign. Most of the brands create a lot of content, yet they struggle. Why? Because they do not have the right audience. And to dive deeper into this, today we have Albert with us, social media and creative strategist. Albert, based on your experience, what does community building in crowdfunding look like? Because in a lot of cases, it's taking much, much longer period to drive campaigns, create a lot of assets. engage them to build the community because in crowdfunding timing is limited but you need to have your community who are basically your supporters so i will start this with highlighting the importance of organic social media because its role is huge and it's like a foundational ecosystem of our society. The consumer's attention always on social media and the brands that are doing it great, they are living on social media and crowdfunding isn't an exception. So, unfortunately, I witnessed the fact that some of the crowdfunding campaigners are missing this opportunity and it's like leaving the money on the table and my advice will be here is that they should leverage this opportunity and start early on to create a community to start building their community on social media using different platforms and support their crowdfunding campaign from the start to the end. and why this is so important because organic social media can bring up to 10 percent of overall funding throughout the crowdfunding campaign stimulating the purchasing intent and you actually can spend very less money on this even without budget and you can gain that leverage just using and showing up and using social media And besides these benefits that you can gain for your crowdfunding campaign, social media also can bring many other benefits, such as it can bring your brand visibility, product awareness, right? And it can lower your customer acquisition cost. and you can actually use social media like a customer support channel and you can gain the feedback and customer opinion to build your product and make it even better and better and actually if crowdfunding campaigners are serious about their brand and they're playing a long-term game social media can be that asset that they can build at the starting point when they launch their crowdfunding campaign and then it it will bring more benefit when they start brand building after the crowdfunding right and uh actually i don't understand why they don't use this channel uh more frequently and more intensively to leverage the benefits of organic social media i think it's not that hard they just need to start they should treat organic social media like a starting point of their marketing and they should document their journey their founder's journey and post it every day on social media they can do like videos actually that work better and they can say for instance hey this is me day one of starting my peanut butter brand or hey folks this is me starting my building actually building my new smart glasses This actually works and they can be authentic and they can show the behind the scenes and there is nothing to hide. They can show up and they should keep it consistent, ideally posting videos every day and they will be amazed by seeing many followers coming soon and following their pages, engaging, sharing their opinions. from your last point like keeping the postings every day a lot has changed in social media recently and even the big brands who have been posting quite consistently are seeing the drop downs of their usual arcs that they were having so as a professional how do you think this is going to affect to the people who are just starting a new business as well as setting up their social media for the first time should they really keep on posting every day and keep this as the biggest and most important point in their strategy So, of course, keeping it consistent is crucial and quantity is a winning strategy. But if you are growing your brand, the quality is also important and becoming important. But for crowdfunding campaigners, actually, because they are starting their journey, they should bet on quantity rather than quality. Here is more important thing is trust that they should build during their journey. As I said, they should document this journey and post it as consistent as they can. But I understand the frustration. They might keep it consistent, not every day, but at least a couple of times every week. yeah and here their goal is building the trust because in crowdfunding actually crowdfunding is about the trust and you create this trust with transparency and showing credibility and to do this you you need to show up every day you should speak about your product you should show the behind the scenes you should use third-party opinions like influencers pr to also involve their credibility in your social media in order to gain the trust of your followers. And how is trust and credibility turning your community into backers? Actually, trust and credibility isn't enough to turn your followers into backers. Actually, they come to follow you to see how this product solves their pain points, their problems. The number one factor is that they should see how this product is solving their problems. And trust and credibility, of course, increasing the probability of turning them into backers from following. That's why founders should keep their content consistent and using both narratives and messaging how this product can solve their problems and also keeping it transparent and with credibility, of course, to gain the trust of these followers. Regarding social media marketing being a part of the omnichannel marketing strategy. How is it collaborating with the other promotional channels to bring the maximum outcome for the campaign? Yeah, sure. In order to gain better effectiveness here and better results, these all channels should be tied together and work together collaboratively. And here I can mention a couple of use cases that crowdfunding campaigners can use. first of all influencer marketing should work in terms of collaborative posts because they can use their handles social media handles to drive traffic to the main social media pages which have more content on your product yeah and people who will see better content more information about the product and can see this credibility and transparency that they have on this product they will they might decide to go and back your crowdfunding project What concerns to advertising, they can use well-worked organic visuals like posts, videos that gained many engagement, many views. They can use this to boost and leverage as well. Another use case is PR mentions because it's a great opportunity to visualize those mentions PR media articles and put it on social media, maybe in format of static image and you can gain credibility for this. Also, as I mentioned, social media works as a support and sales channel. Of course, you should engage with your followers. in DMs and answer their questions in comments and this is very important because this is also speaking about the trust and transparency if you're ghosting them not replying them it decreases the trust and people won't follow you and won't buy actually yeah and last question is regarding the understanding of timing for the right strategy. To have a successful launch as well as successful ongoing process of the crowdfunding till the end. What is the optimal time to start packing your activities and getting ready? Yeah, it's a great question because nowadays I can witness that many crowdfunding campaigners are starting very late actually and here they should be preparing very early on like six months before the launch because they should think ahead and start building their community and warming up their communities before launching the project. yeah and social media actually it's a long-term game and organic social media is a perfect middle funnel channel for them even after the crowdfunding they should use it keep it and if they're serious about long term they will use this asset to build their brands yeah i totally agree with you and share your opinion that like after crowdfunding social media plays crucial role if they want to build for example a big e-commerce brand and as a tradition we have last question from our previous guest which is regarding ai how ai is impacting in your job how are you using it and what do you see as an opportunity in it Of course, we treat this tool as a companion and we use it every day. In our journey for social media activities, we work with different AI agents. to generate text to generate images to generate videos and we can clearly see the benefits of this because it's quick it's getting better better every day and one important thing i want to mention is that you shouldn't bet on it in terms of content, I would say, because right now what we can see, people can notice this AI generated visuals and decrease their trust towards this brand, towards this content. And as I said, the trust is the biggest leverage here in crowdfunding. You shouldn't overuse it, I would say. So what would your question be for our next guest? Yeah. So to me, it's interesting to see what crowdfunding product they will launch if they were in a place of founder and why. Yeah, it's a pretty hard one, actually. So to sum up our conversation, give one advice that will be applicable. to all of our founders you know some of the crowdfunding partners when working with crowdfunding agencies they siloed themselves and they think they are done and washing their hands and they don't do anything they think that this third-party agency will do everything for them. Of course, at some point, it's right. But I will advise them to be involved as much as they can. They need to be the cornerstone of this campaign. Because in a social media context, I would say the most working... tactic is founder-led content and as a founder and creator of a product they should show up and be in the content every day be in the loop with the team that they're working with and use this leverage to increase the opportunity of success thank you very much for a very insightful conversation this was all for today so if you have any kind of questions for albert regarding social media or creative make sure to leave your questions in the comment section also make sure to hit the like button and subscribe stay tuned

Content without the right audience is just noise. Most crowdfunding founders learn this too late - after launch day, when the posts are done but the backers aren't there. Albert breaks down how to build a community that actually converts before a campaign goes live.

Episode 4 features Albert Arshakyan, TCF's Head of Social Media and Creative Strategist, breaking down why audience size without community trust produces nothing and what founders who actually convert their social media into campaign funding do differently.

What this episode covers:

- Why posting volume alone makes the trust problem worse
- What community building in crowdfunding actually looks like vs. what most founders do
- How to document your founder journey in a way that builds trust before a single ad runs
- Why quantity beats quality for crowdfunding founders specifically and when that changes
- What it actually takes to turn a follower into a backer
- How social media connects to your full omnichannel strategy - ads, influencers, and PR
- Why ghosting your DMs and comments is quietly killing your conversion
- When to start building your community before launch and why most founders start too late
- Why AI-generated content is hurting campaign trust right now
- Albert's one piece of advice for every crowdfunding founder

Episode length: ~15 minutes
New episodes every week. Season 1: Crowdfunding Foundations

0:00 Intro - most brands create a lot of content and still struggle
0:15 What community building in crowdfunding actually looks like
0:40 Why organic social media is the foundation most founders ignore
1:45 How organic social media accounts for up to 10% of campaign funding
2:20 Other benefits: brand visibility, lower acquisition cost, and product feedback
3:30 How to start: document the founder journey and post videos consistently
4:10 Has the consistent posting strategy changed and does it still work?
5:25 Quantity vs. quality: what crowdfunding founders should actually prioritize
6:15 Why crowdfunding is fundamentally about trust, not content volume
7:00 What actually turns followers into backers
7:50 How social media fits inside an omnichannel crowdfunding strategy
9:05 Using your best organic content as ad creative
9:20 How to turn PR mentions into social proof on your pages
9:45 Why ghosting your DMs and comments kills campaign conversion
10:35 When to start building your social media community before launch
11:10 Why organic social media is the perfect mid-funnel channel
11:45 How AI is impacting social media strategy for crowdfunding
12:30 Why over-relying on AI-generated content damages campaign trust
13:20 Albert's one piece of advice: founder-led content is the most effective tactic

Host: Arthur Papikyan - Head of Marketing at TCF
🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/in/arthurpapikian/
Guest: Albert Arshakyan - Head of Social Media & Creative Strategist at TCF
🔗 https://www.linkedin.com/in/albertarshakyan/

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