Jobhop Jobhop's blog : What Jobhop Learned From Doing A Kickstarter

Back in December Jobhop achieved it’s set goal on Kickstarter and we were able to celebrate a successful campaign, but what was learned?

One of the main things to pass onto to anybody else who’s considering doing one is making sure you have the stamina!

Of course, some campaigns go viral within a few hours, but they are the few, most campaigns need constant promoting every minute of every day, it’s not for the faint hearted. On Kickstarter, whatever you set the goal at you have to raise, some other crowd funding platforms work differently, on those you can opt to take the money even if you don’t raise the full amount, Indigogo is a site that does just that. It sounds good doesn’t it, what you have to take into consideration though is you'll get charged more for administration fees, you'll still have to deliver even if you haven’t raised the amount which could bring different pressures. Jobhop chose the harder route via Kickstarter, to raise all funds for the goal set or get nothing. A couple of reasons for this:

Everything listed in the next development phase of Jobhop couldn’t be achieved with a lesser amount.

Because it was all or nothing, promoting it was full on, which on one hand is knackering but on the other hand when it’s all on or nothing you just keep going.

If Jobhop were to do another crowdfund then it wouldn’t be all or nothing on Kickstarter, it would be on another platform where we wouldn't get anything if the full amount weren't raised. Because we’ve now experienced what a full-on knackering promotion is we feel we could keep it at those levels and not slack, it would, however, take away the worry that all our hard work wouldn't be in vain if we didn’t reach our goal.

We would, however, set everything out in blocks, for example:

Block 1 If Jobhop raised £5,000 this is what we would do with the money
Block 2 If Jobhop raised £10,000 this is what we would do with the money
Block 3 If Jobhop raised £15,000 this is what we would do with the money
Block 4 If Jobhop raised £20,000 this is what we would do with the money

A couple of other things that would have to be done differently is educating our market.

A mistake made was it was assumed that everyone knew what crowdfunding was and who Kickstarter was, what a big mistake!

So many people had never heard about crowdfunding or Kickstarter and even though we love educating people, it ate into valuable time. We should’ve started a good three months before just explaining what a crowdfund was and why we believed it was a good move for Jobhop. Another reason Kickstarter was chosen was because we thought everyone had heard of it, but that wasn’t so and many people were worried that the site wasn’t a secure one. We had to do a lot of explaining on how to use Kickstarter and give people peace of mind that the site wouldn’t just run off with their money.

We also used a service who were supposed to tweet employers and people who had backed similar campaigns to ours on Kickstarter, they were useless! I won't shame them in this blog because they may have helped others, but I doubt it very much.

They were unprofessional, they went missing for days, none of their tweets were targeted, they didn’t engage with anyone and I’ve seen better reports done by a five-year-old! You live and learn though!

This is what we done:

Jobhop is well connected but a few months before the Kickstarter campaign we started to get even more connected. When the time came to let everyone know about the crowdfund we messaged everyone, absolutely everyone!

Messages went to everyone on:

Linkedin
Facebook
Slack
Whatsapp
Google+
Twitter
email

Here’s a tip, if you decide to do the same make sure you message everyone on Facebook first because they will probably block you from messaging, you could be blocked for a day or two before you can start messaging again. There was a back up in place if we weren’t able to message everyone on Facebook and that was to use Green inbox, this is a service that can message all your Facebook connections without getting blocked. Luckily we never needed that service; we were able to message everyone within the 30 day campaign.

We then sent regular messages to all the relevant groups on Facebook, Linkedin and Google+ and joined in all the right chats on Twitter.

Lots of visuals were used promoting the Kickstarter and when they were posted to Twitter up to 10 people per visual were tagged which increased our reach. The same was done on Instagram using the exact tagging tactic.

Tweets were going out every 45 mins, 24 hrs a day for 30 days which all linked back to blog posts on Jobhop talking about the Kickstarter, each blog post had a call to action which encouraged the reader to go and pledge for a reward.

Periscope was used to talk about the journey of the Kickstarter campaign as well as Blab where interviews were given; viewers could ask questions as a prospective backer or as someone who’d like to try crowd funding themselves.

In between all the scheduled posts engagement happened across all of the platforms, answering people’s questions, chit chat about the day, the weather, etc..

The other tactic we tried was a Headtalker; this was really good. We created a catchy advert using my dog Josie; she modeled for us for free!

Make employment human says a german shepherd dog

Headtalker works in a way where people pledge to share your message and once you hit your pledge goal the message is shared by everyone is burst, causing a hive of activity on what ever social media platform you choose, ours was Twitter.

As well as on the online marketing lots of offline marketing was also done, radio interviews, speaking events, coverage in newspapers, etc... It was non-stop for 30 days.

The closest example of what it was like would be non-stop promotion of a film or having to endure a presidential campaign; seriously it was that tough!

The first few days were busy because we had our ambassadors who were waiting to be immediately part of the campaign, but then there was a lull where people who said they would back it but didn’t understand the emergency. It's only natural, people never have the same urgency as you, they have so much more going on in their lives, you can’t blame them when they don’t see the importance like you do. So many people said that they would make sure they backed the project once they had five minutes to spare. Because most of our contacts are busy business people we had expected this. As time started to tick by, Jobhop probably became quite annoying, we were literally in people’s faces, nagging and begging! That is the worst bit you turn into someone who is completely tunnel visioned, who nags non-stop!

Well, it all paid off as everyone came together towards the end for a massive final push and we reached our goal!

Would we do it again? Probably not but never say never!

What we loved about it most was how our tribe pulled together, they were amazing! They went into overdrive at the end, tweeting, shouting, sharing, nagging and all because they too believe that employment needs to be a lot better. Mums contacted us to tell us how badly their sons and daughters were treated at interviews, people told us about their awful experiences as a candidate and we had companies contact us to say they were behind us, that they too believed employment should be better.

Now, what’s the plan?

Jobhop has now got a new developer in the team who’s currently working on a few bits before getting on with building the communities to make the whole mission come alive ... To make employment human!

So keep watching this space and expect quite a few changes on Jobhop.co.uk over the next few months.

Jobhop Roll of Honour

Below are just some of the supporters who were part of the Jobhop Kickstarter campaign

Please connect with them and go and visit their sites and profiles, they're great people!

In no particular order:

Norfolk Veg Box

Tim Fuell from Jibba Jabba

Rob Whitwood from Inspired-Change

Michelle Ackroyd

Kris Gamble from Customised

Deanna Auker

Jan Roberts from Inspire Norfolk