Not too long ago, I discovered a tool called Sniply.
Immediately, I was struck by how handy this tool could be for crowdfunding. Sniply has some pretty excellent tutorial information, so I’m not going to show you how to use it. Instead, this blog will show you how to harness Sniply for your crowdfunding promotion.
What is Sniply?
Essentially, Sniply allows you to link back to your own content or campaign from any page on the internet. Check it out:
What’s the advantage for my crowdfunding campaign?
The advantage is mostly within your social media promotion.
“Back me! Back me! Back me!” is boring. And it stops working after a while. Especially on Facebook where the algorithms deprioritise ‘promotional posts’ if you are posting them too often.
The secret to a successful social media strategy for your campaign is three-fold:
- Talk about things that aren’t your crowdfunding campaign as well
- Talk to people, and be helpful
- Get people to talk about you.
Sniply is particularly helpful for points 1 and 2. It allows you to post links to other content – images, articles, and video – while still pointing the viewer at your crowdfunding campaign. It makes the internet work for you, and really maximises your social media efforts.
Yup. Send your backers to an article at the New York Times – and have that article link back to your Indiegogo campaign.
Post a link to your AMA on Reddit – and have that AMA point people back to your campaign.
When you get press, you can harness that coverage and make it really hard to miss the link. The added bonus of a personal message directing people back to your campaign helps to capture attention and form a connection with the viewer as well.
This is a tool that gives you a fantastic way to add new dimensions and post types to your social media marketing – while still harnessing the traffic for your campaign. The ideas are endless.
How much does it cost?
The platform offers four tiers of service, three of which I’d recommend for crowdfunders. For current plan pricing, please refer to the Sniply website.
- Free: Perfect for small personal projects looking for under $10,000. Especially useful for donation or rewards-based crowdfunding.
- Pro: Good for projects raising less than $40,000. Two profiles allows you to post as two entities. For example, I can post as ‘Kat Jenkins’ or ‘Multitude’.
- Start Up: Perfect for teams, and projects looking to really make a splash. Allows multiple team members and profiles. Also gives you wider control over how your snips work.
These accounts can be purchased on a month-to-month agreement, meaning you can have an account running for a month or two while your campaign is live.
I would recommend you budget for two to three months.
Month One is your ‘Warm Up’ period – perhaps using related articles or videos to drive email sign-ups to build your crowd.
Month Two is your campaign. All content you post should drive traffic to your campaign page.
Month Three is the ‘cool down’ period. It allows you to capture the stragglers, build on your momentum, and continue to increase your crowd for later. The ‘cool down period’ is often where campaigns pick up Angel or Venture Capital investment, so it’s worthwhile paying the fee to ensure links are still valid.
Things to know
Sniply doesn’t work for all websites. In creating this post, I discovered it won’t work on a Kickstarter page (probably a good thing as you don’t really want to be driving traffic away from your campaign) or a Google Support page.
That means you will find a lot of websites where Sniply won’t work. But for those it does work with (Sniply estimates it covers 99% of the internet), you could be driving thousands of extra “qualified backers” – people who are interested in who you are and what you do – for very little risk and associated cost.
The Sniply will only show if the page is accessed via the Sniply link – it does not attach it to the page for every visitor to see.
Paid accounts are able to edit what the Sniply looks like, including colours and visual design.
Bottom line
Sniply is a new tool, but it does generate traffic.
It’s ideal for social media strategy, but could also be harnessed in backer updates, and to increase mailing list sign ups. It allows you to post other interesting and/or useful content, while still pointing potential backers to your campaign page.
It’s an affordable promotion tool that can be used for free, or at a low monthly subscription rate.
I’d recommend any crowdfunder use this tool in conjunction with a considered social media strategy. One extra conversion could mean the difference between success and failure, and Sniply helps convert.
