What YOU Can Learn From Jackie Evancho's IndieGoGo Campaign, Pt. 2: Crafting Your Message

Yesterday we introduced you to Jackie Evancho, and explained how this 10-year-old superstar, now dazzling millions with her angelic singing voice on the NBC competitive reality show America's Got Talent, used IndeiGoGo to fund her second album.

 

Yesterday we talked about getting people committed so you can mobilize their support when you need it most. Today we're taking away another lesson from Jackie Evancho's IndieGoGo campaign: using IndieGoGo to craft your message to its most effectiveness.

 

Think of IndieGoGo as your first audience -- a trial run. This is the forum where your project, or cause, is unveiled. In a way, IndieGoGo is like a giant test kitchen: here, you reach out to your potential audience and gauge how they react. Maybe they donate, maybe they don't. And depending on that reaction you can change your message, tweak it, or in some cases, scrap it all together and start again from scratch.

 

When Jackie Evancho got the opportunity to showcase her talent on a reality show, she'd already spent some time in the trenches crafting her message, mastering the precise way to tell her story so it resonated with the most people.

 

IndieGoGo helps you craft your message in a few ways.

 

Giving Yourself a Title: the Elevator Pitch in Disguise

 

As soon as you start your campaign on IndieGoGo you have to give it a title and a tagline.

 

 

 

For some of you, this might have been tricky. What am I called? What do I stand for? And how do I describe what it is that I do in just a few words? Of course we're all familiar with the elevator pitch, but some of us never stop and take the time to write one (even though we're reminded again and again that we should).

 

IndieGoGo stops you before you start. Haven't crafted your elevator pitch yet? You better sit down and think it out. Then proceed with your project title and tagline.

 

Making the Video: Learning How to Speak Directly to Your Audience

 

In Jackie Evancho's case, her talent speaks for itself. There was no need for Jackie or her mom to face the camera and say, "Listen, we've got a girl here with the voice of an angel, and what we're hoping you'll do is --" The Evancho family had already learned through years of experience that the best way to showcase Jackie's talent was to let her voice speak for itself. Therefore their video was simply a video of her performance.

 

Depending on what you're using IndieGoGo to raise money for, and what your particular talents are, you might find that YOUR best video

 

• Features you, speaking directly into the camera for several minutes
• Is a well-edited montage of your best work
• Is a comedic sketch involving several people
• Is a music video
• Is a cartoon
• Features several interviews edited together to tell what a great job you've done

 

Creating this video is yet another step in figuring out how your message most effectively reaches its audience.

 

Getting Social: How to Talk About Your IndieGoGo Project Elsewhere

 

But what good is creating the perfect message on IndieGoGo if it's only visible on IndieGoGo? Your most important work is done when you're bringing people to your project space. And after starting your campaign, you learn how to most effectively steer supporters to the spot where they can donate. Through the use of analytics and good ol' fashioned intuition, by using IndieGoGo you'll soon learn the most effective ways of bringing people in by

 

• Crafting effective Tweets
• Utilizing -- but not overutilizing -- Facebook
• Learning to talk about your campaign in real life, face-to-face
• Blogging about your project

 

Each of these "hits" is yet another space where your IndieGoGo project is teaching you how to talk about yourself in a more effective, persuasive way, so that when it really counts you'll be leagues ahead of everyone else in getting your message heard.

 

Maybe it's a reality show, or maybe it's a board room full of bank executives with the potential to take your project to the global level.

 

What about YOU? Do you feel like IndieGoGo has better prepared you to talk about your project? What lessons have you taken away from the way people have reacted to your message? Did you have to make changes? Let us know in the comments.

 

Next: What YOU Can Learn From Jackie Evancho's IndieGoGo Campaign, Pt. 3: Let Your Talent Do the Talking

Comments

[Naph]

I have learned that I have to seriously appeal tyo the emotions of the people I steer to my site and not appear "fly-by-night" or cavalier. My 2011 video will reflect these changes already made to the written pitch.