In the hype-crazy world of 21st Century crowd funding, a world dominated by the likes of Thunderclap and Salvador Briggman, one where all kinds of companies have sprung up purporting to be willing tweet you and tout you and share you to thousands or to millions - for a price, hither came the Squatch.
Don't know squat about crowd funding? What you need is a squatch.
Or, more specifically, what your crowd funding project needs is squatch. Squatch, within the context of crowd funding, is that which makes your project bigger and better. Squatch is the good stuff!
It might be a video. It might take the form of photographs or art. Heck, it may be something as simple as proof-reading the text on your project page. No two crowd funding projects are created equal, and neither are their potential audiences the same. Consequently, their reach may not be the same, and in fact, they may not have any actual reach, at all. There's an awful lot of newbies trying their hand at crowd funding all sorts of different projects, these days.
And every last one of them want to be successful in being funded!
You see, the world is a really big place. How big? Big enough to fund YOUR project, that's how big!
Now, with every crowd funding promotion company out there stomping around and leaving their tracks all over the place, I know what you're asking - does the world really need anyone else out there trying to lay down new tracks on top of tracks that are already tracks on tracks? Isn't the world of crowd funding confusing, enough, already?
What was needed, it seemed to me, was for somebody to butt in, for somebody to find a better way, for somebody to perhaps leave less tracks in more places - but, hopefully, bigger tracks in less places. Something with more meat on the bones. Something with a tad more impact. A squatch!
As soon as they hit the launch button on their crowd funding project, BAM!! The parade of solicitations to help you - for a price - begins. They feel inundated. They are confused. They spend good money on what turn out, in many instances, to be schemes that benefit others, rather than their own Kickstarter. Their crowd funding world, not to mention what may be their FIRST and ONLY time taking the crowd funding plunge, turns out to be a sour experience.
But, it wasn't simply the encounters that project creators had which served as the Genesis moment for the Squatch Kick in crowd funding concept. No, there was also something more at play, here, and that something was the interest that I had - that I felt - when I looked at Kickstarter projects, while browsing.
Someone had to pay at least some of these folks their due. Surely, many of these crowd funding projects warranted somebody saying something about that which they had wrought. I certainly couldn't back them all with pledges. Hell, it would cost a fortune - a king's ransom - to back as many projects as deserved to be backed. I had no access to Scrooge McDuck's money bin. So, there had to be a better way. I believed that there was.
So, I set about trying to put that thought into action - of trying to demonstrate that it was possible to make a meaningful difference. Not to every last crowd funding project creator, as there wouldn't be enough time in the world or in my life to accomplish that. Rather, I would focus my attention upon individual projects, rather than upon every last project that came down the crowd funding pike.
Now, granted, that would mean that some projects, many even, would get left out. But, for those that I did take opportunity to interact with, could I make a meaningful difference, in some small, yet tangible way - in some way that didn't entail a lot of money, or perhaps, in some way that involved no money, at all?
It has been said that the pen is mightier than the sword. So, could I just write something - lots of different little somethings - and in the process, use that simple thing to give project creators something that they could share with the world, if they wanted to? Project creators for crowd funding projects need people to talk about their projects. They need people talking and sharing. They need dialogue. After all, what they need is a crowd, if they are to crowd fund.
The crowd doesn't have to exist in a single spot, and neither does the dialogue about their project - but both crowds and dialogue are necessary ingredients to spreading the word, in getting the word out, in attracting even more people and more pledges.
One of the struggles that many new to the crowd funding scene face is the challenge that networking with other people presents to them. It's called social media, for a reason. It's social - as in social interactions involving other people.
How do you get other people interested in YOUR crowd funding project? Where do you even start, especially if you haven't a clue as to what to do? I mean, how does someone who has no basic, fundamental grasp of such terminology of the modern 21st Century vernacular get from the crowd funding here (the very beginning of their crowd funding campaign) to there (meeting their project's funding goal)?
Part of the social element that factors prominently in the crowd funding equation is that any crowd funding project can use help. Virtually every project NEEDS help. Crowd funding is easier, thus, if you've got help, rather than if you go it alone
Yet, how does someone like myself, someone who has made no real effort to attain a social media presence or following, even hope to make a meaningful difference, a difference of substance, in the crowd funding campaigns of others? Can it even be done, in fact?
By wielding the pen that is mightier than the sword, and by taking a few moments out to sit down and write something.
Something. Anything. But, an anything with some substance to it, a something with some thought put into it. It doesn't have to be a novel, but neither does it have to be merely a tweet.
But, is it making any difference?
I'll leave that to others to decide.
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