Crowdfunding Guide. 1: Building a Community

Crowdfunding guide. Find out how we raised thousands of dollars using crowdfunding platforms. You can fund your films by building a supporting community.

In 2013, I set out to raise £15,000 using crowdfunding Kickstarter.com, to fund distribution of my micro-budget feature. I had no idea how to run a successful campaign. I had about about 600 followers on Twitter, none of whom seemed to be too bothered about my work.

During the long campaign, I learned many things, which were useful not only for crowdfunding but for online marketing of my work too. Since then, I have been involved in over 20 campaigns, using Kickstarter and IndieGoGo. I’ve only failed to reach the target in 2 of those campaigns.

Here’s what I learned

There have been some spectacular successes on crowdfunding platforms in the last few years, but there have also been some mighty failures. Campaigns with huge PR budgets and star cast behind them have stalled at 50% without the understanding of how to motivate your backers to get more backers. I’ve seen people with large followings on Twitter and Facebook fall well short.

That’s because, in my opinion, many people often don’t “get” how crowdfunding works.

They’re often under the impression simply putting their project on Kickstarter and pressing the launch button will result in hundreds of pledges. That’s because they see other successful campaigns, but they don’t see what’s going on behind the scenes.

They probably imagine the platform promotes your work to thousands of people (they rarely do that). They probably imagine as soon as random strangers see how awesome their film project sounds, they’ll reach for their credit card (that rarely happens).

I’m guessing you’re not one of those people, or you wouldn’t be reading this introduction. I’m guessing you decided you need to know more before you get your campaign up and running. Well done, because that’s your first step to a successful campaign.

In this post, I’m going to talk about…

Social Media – Building a Community

At the start of production of Third Contact, I’d set up a twitter account for the film and a Facebook ‘fan’ page. Occasionally, I would tweet something or post something to Facebook, without any obvious effect. Nobody seemed to be all that bothered what I was up to.

As I put the campaign together, I knew that social media was a key element to driving traffic to your campaign page. But I had no real idea of how to go about it.

I’d already paid Facebook to promote my fan page to get more likes. I soon learned you need to target those likes to specific countries, or you will by default end up with the ‘cheapest’ likes – for example, it’s a lot less expensive to get a like from someone in India than the USA. Hence, about 3000 of my 5000 likes were in India.

My twitter account had grown slowly to about 600 followers. Only about 10 or so of whom seemed to take any interest. When I worked out people seemed more enthusiastic about making a connection with a human face than a film, I changed it from a business-like Third Contact Movie account to a more personal Simon Horrocks account.

2000 followers you say?

I read that you needed a minimum of 2000 followers if you were to use twitter for crowdfunding. I’m not sure how this figure was calculated. I’m guessing they were guessing. However, it gave me a target to aim at.

How to get more followers? The common strategy for twitter was to follow people and hope they followed you back. I tried various twitter tools before I came across one called tweepi.com and found I could target people more specifically. So, I looked for people who might be interested in a micro-budget, art house movie.

By following people who followed (for example) Sight & Sound magazine, there was a good chance they were into films other than the Hollywood blockbusters.

Then I gave myself plenty of time.

You need time

Sometimes people come to me for help with their campaign. They’ve had a message from a friend like, “Talk to Simon Horrocks, he is an expert at crowdfunding”.

So we meet and usually it turns out they’re trying to run their campaign by investing about 30 minutes a day, working it around their day job and film projects. Then I explain just how many hours I put into my campaigns and they usually look at me in horror.

I knew I was trying to reach a big goal. So I had to make as much space in my life as possible to make this happen.

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Twitter works for me

I decided just to sit and spend the whole day playing with my twitter.

I followed people. People followed back.

Now what?

I said “hi”. They said “hi” back.

Some of them followed the link on my twitter profile to the Third Contact website.

Some tweeted back to me, “wow your trailer looks incredible, how can I see the film??!!”

After doing this for most of the day, I had about 30 new followers. But, more importantly, some new friends who were interested in Third Contact.

Marketing your film to people one person at a time may seem to be a very inefficient, laborious process. Well, it’s true.

But the buzz I got from this reaction was very inspiring. After years of industry disinterest, it was thrilling to get this supportive reaction.

That day I learned the potential power of social media. Specifically Twitter, which allows you to network with anyone. And (more importantly) have conversations with anyone, anywhere in the world.

The film website

Do you find the against the odds ‘making of’ film stories inspiring? I do. And so do many others.

I spent a couple of weeks redesigning the Third Contact website (it no longer exists). I’m no web designer but I did my best, with a little help from software such as Dreamweaver. I kept the design simple but included lots of background story information.

Third Contact was made for £4000, shot on a consumer camcorder, had a dark, unusual story and no name stars. So I realised I had to provide as much ‘making of’ material as I could to get film-lovers excited about the project.

Include a “making of” story

There’s a reason why Hollywood studios and other filmmakers use stories and characters already known to the audience: they need less marketing. Millions of people are familiar with Batman. His story needs little introduction.

But who is Dr David Wright and this new filmmaker, Simon Horrocks? And what’s this Quantum Suicide thing?

On the website, I provided the regular film information – one sentence pitch, poster, brief synopsis and trailer.

But I also included the inspiring story behind the making of the film. I knew this would be key for the crowdfunding campaign. I also knew it had to be a story written in a very personal way, to show I was just a regular guy having a go at something difficult.

I designed the website to carry people through these ideas, page by page. The more time they spent on the website learning about the story in the film, the story behind the film, the ideas and the people involved, the more likely they’d want to get involved.

Don’t distance yourself from your audience

One of the most common mistakes people make when setting up and running a campaign is this – they present themselves in the way they’ve been taught. They want to present a highly professional image to the public.

The problem is “professional” can often appear cold and serious. This is great when you’re approaching banks or business people for funding. But can be the kiss of death to your crowdfunding campaign.

I’ve also had people within the film industry tell me they don’t have time to run their campaign, so they’ll get someone else to do it for them. As if they think they’ve got more important things to do. They see themselves as high-flying film directors who don’t have time to be talking to “ordinary” people on twitter.

These campaigns invariably fail.

Or you’ll notice the tell-tale sign of few (but big) pledges to reach their total. In other words, they have rich friends to back them. Or in the last few hours, with only 50% or less of their target reached, suddenly 1 big pledge will come to the rescue of their Kickstarter campaign because they had a friend ready with the cash to fill the gap (probably the filmmaker’s own money).

Friends are more likely to back you

But I didn’t have enough rich friends to reach £15,000. That’s why – if you don’t have one already – you need to make new friends. What social media gurus like to call the “community”.

And you are just one member of that community. An equal member.

Make sure to treat the members of your community as friends and they will support you.

I never expect the people in our community to support me, but when they do it’s truly wonderful. And I’m thankful for every pledge, retweet, or Facebook share.

Give your community your time and your friendship and they will help you create great projects.

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