Your copy needs to sell. To anyone.
You might be the kind of person who graduated MIT and knows their way around a sentence. Or English might be your second language.
Mayb u jst prfr 2 tlk lyk dis.
The point is, your backers might not always want to read your description. In fact, most of the time, they will skim read it.
So with that in mind, here are the 10 golden rules of writing great crowdfunding copy.
1. Speak directly to your backer
Pretend you’re writing directly to a person. Who is your backer?
Write your entire description as if you are writing to one person. People don’t “crowd around the Internet”, they consume things as individuals. So talk to them like that.
Just concentrate on convincing that one person to back your project.
2. Use headings
Headings make things easier to skim read.
Start with the What? Why? How? Who? And where? Questions.
WHAT is your project?
HOW can people help, or get their hands on your product?
WHY should people want to help, or own the product?
WHAT will the money be used for?
WHO on Earth are you?
Make it easy for people to find the information they really want.
3. One idea per sentence
If you mix up all your ideas into one sentence then it makes it really hard to follow after a while because it just keeps going on and on and on and by now I’m guessing you’re going a little cross-eyed.
But if you split up your ideas, people get the gist a lot faster. It means their eyes can skim. It helps draw them down the page.
4. Never write a sentence with more than 20 words
This is a literacy thing. The more words a sentence has, the harder it is to read.
Think about it. When you learned to read, you started with three or four word sentences:
“The cat is black”
“The cow moos”
Now you’re older and you’re better at reading, you may be able to read longer sentences. But that doesn’t mean the principle can’t work in your favour.
Think about it. Are your backers more likely to read a magazine (7-10 words per sentence), or an academic journal article (18+ words per sentence)?
Heck – which are YOU more likely to read?
5. Use infographics
Some parts of your description naturally lend themselves to a visual demonstration.
Like a pie graph of where the money goes, a project timeline, or a photo calling out the features of your product.
If you can show, you should show.
Check out these projects who used infographics really well for some examples.
100 More Years of Analogue Film
Jelly God
6. Animated GIF is #1
Want your audience to REALLY understand a core concept?
Can you use a video? Can you show it in under 5 seconds?
Use a GIF instead.
It’s quicker to understand, doesn’t rely on your audience pressing ‘play’, and slows their scrolling as they move down the page.
Want to see what I mean? Here’s a couple of campaigns that used animated GIFs to their advantage.
HookUp Clip
ReFold Portable Standing Desk
Here’s a great resource for learning how to make them.
7. Use colour
In fact, use a colour scheme.
Use Adobe Kuler to come up with a colour palette.
Put together some page headings in PicMonkey.
1. Start with a custom canvas – 600 pixels wide by 150 pixels high.
2. Use the textures, colours and fonts to create a style for your headings.
3. Save each heading, and upload them into your description.
Here are a couple of campaigns that have used page headings, banners and a colour scheme to tie their descriptions together.
Synek
ARKYD Space Telescope
8. White space
Line breaks are your best friend. Try to avoid more than 2 lines together.
Large blocks of text will send a subconscious signal to your reader. They’ll make a snap decision: that is a lot of text, and I can’t be bothered to read it.
Break up your text. It will help draw your backer down the page, even if they are only skimming.
9. Always proof-read your work at least twice.
There are two things you absolutely must do:
1. Read it out loud yourself
2. Get someone else to read it.
For extra points, you can attack The Curse of Knowledge by asking a Facebook friend to look over it and answer some questions about what they understood.
10. Always remember: this is marketing
In essence, you need to sell your idea, cause or product to a bunch of people.
You need to get them to put their money on the line, so consider exactly what your pitch will be, and who you are pitching it to. The pitch to 20-something males may be different than the pitch to mums of toddlers.
Test your ideas out. Soft launch to some key people if you can.
You can always change your description while the campaign is live. And you should.
Clarify things, post updates, and respond positively to feedback.
And remember: you need to convince people that your idea is as awesome as you think it is. This is about sales and marketing, not free money.
