KickstarterForum.org

[SeekingSublet]

Hey everyone!

My name is Katie and I'm the writer, director, producer and co-creator of the new comedy web series SEEKING SUBLET, about two roommates in search of the perfect third roommate in New York City. (ie. Think you've had bad roommates? Tune in!)

So far, in addition to casting and writing several episode of the show, we've self-financed filming 4 episodes, as well as teaser materials and a photo shoot, and we're now in the last week (ONLY 4 DAYS LEFT!!!!) of our Kickstarter campaign to raise the rest of the funds we need to finish Season One.

Check out our Kickstarter page here: http://kck.st/1l8VjjJ

And our website here (which also includes all our social media links): http://www.seekingsublet.com

As you'll see, in addition to our main Kickstarter video that intros the series and features us talking about the show, we've also posted 15 additional teaser videos (and 2 backer exclusive videos) during our campaign so far, with more to come in our final 4 days, to help promote the campaign and get people excited about the show. So far the videos have gotten especially great responses -- every one getting over 4,000 views in the first day just on Facebook alone, and adding a lot of followers to our various social media sites, etc.

However, we still have a ways to go if we're going to reach our 20k goal in the next 4 days as currently we are only just past 10k. So we're open to any and all suggestions of how to do that! Things that we're planning/trying to do in these last 4 days include:

-Sending out lots of personal emails
-Regular posts across all our social media with new content (a new creative teaser video a day, article links about the series, etc.)
-GoogleAd for our Kickstarter page the last 6 days of the campaign
-Daily updates to our backers
-Trying to get more press to feature the series (so far Script Magazine, Spidvid, Digital Chick TV and a comedy podcast have interviewed or written about the series, which you can find links to on our website under the News tab)
-Personal videos the last 4 days to backers and friends
-Reaching out to as any larger possible donors or people who's shown interest already in the series, just want to see the finished season first

Would love to hear any thoughts you have! Especially if you have advice on how to get sources to cover our 15 video teasers more,, as I feel that is a real standout of our campaign and seem to be what people are responding to the most, along with the roommate concept.

We are also going to have social media parties most evenings until the campaign ends on Friday at midnight (so technically 11:59pm this Thursday), starting tonight (Sunday). With as many of our cast and crew joining in as possible in person or online to hopefully get them especially involved with our campaign these last few days, and therefore their followers, as well as just have more hands to help all in one place.

In addition to things mentioned above that we'll be doing, we're also thinking of doing the following at these social media parties:

-Doing Twitter q&a's
-Doing online live chat q&a, were we can also potentially improv together for people
-Doing special requests for donations together, that we can then post online afterwards

Has anyone else done social media parties before? Any tips for how to best engage with people during them to get the best results? Or if there are any especially good sites, Twitter folks, etc. to interact with to publicize them and our campaign before and when they're happening?

Any advice or help would be amazing! And I really hope you will check out our campaign!!

Thanks so very much,
Katie

[sbriggman]

Having subletted in NYC, I totally empathize with this haha. You could try doing a viral type of post like "22 roommates you will ____." The kind of post that people will make on Buzzfeed and link it to your campaign and have the post be composed of examples from your teaser. Better yet, if you could do a guest post for an established entertainment blog with that kind of content, it would likely have a better chance to go viral.

Have you posted on Reddit yet?

I think you have a bunch of good ideas. Definitely think the producer tier could be a good way to get there in such a short time.

[SeekingSublet]

Thanks so much, Salvador! Glad you understand our roommate and sublet pain. Pretty much every New Yorker does we find

Funny enough we just made a Buzzfeed list last night, that we polished this morning and are about to put out into the world called the Top 20 Worst Roomates Imaginable. So hopefully that helps! Any ideas on how to get further traffic drawn to that other than sharing and encouraging others to do so?

Also if you have any ideas of what you think would be especially helpful in making it get retweeted and posted about on Twitter specifically, I'm all ears! As Facebook we have a strong following on, and active Twitter, but Twitter we're still trying to figure out the best ways to draw interest to the campaign specifically.

Finally, we haven't posted on Reddit yet because we thought it might make more sense once we had the actual episodes for the series complete down the road (and my whole creative team uses Reddit the least in general right now as we don't fully get it I think, lol). But we are totally open to doing that! Any ideas of what would be best to post there to get attention?

Thanks so, so much! We are over 12k now so really hoping we can still hit 20k by end of night this Thursday.

All the best,
Katie

[acka3a5]

I understand your twitter pain. Instagram seems to be a much easier way of getting followers using simply correct hashtags whereas twitter I'm having trouble getting anyone to respond.

[sbriggman]

It takes a while to build up a sizable twitter following from scratch (Think in terms of months). It gets easier the larger your following gets. Engagement from twitter also varies on your following and the following of the people who retweet you. I think it's best to tweet out articles written about your campaign if you get any press and mix that with self-promotion and other forms of content relevant to your audience (quotes, interesting articles, etc).

[SeekingSublet]

Thanks so much for the advice guys!

Today is the LAST DAY of our Kickstarter campaign so any sharing and backing you can do is very much appreciated: http://kck.st/1l8VjjJ

Thanks so much,
Katie

[sbriggman]

Congrats on the successful campaign!!!!!!!!!!

Just gave you the "Kickstarter success badge" Be sure to stay in touch and I invite you to share any tips, advice, resources, or thoughts for other creators in a new thread (maybe a good way to promote your web series when it goes live).

[SeekingSublet]

Thanks so much!

Awesome to see that Kickstarter Success Badge next to our name!!

At the moment totally exhausted from basically not sleeping for the last week of our campaign, but will definitely keep in touch and continue to share advice in the future.

Thanks again for all your suggestions everyone and I look forward to remaining a part of this community!

Cheers,
Katie

[moctar]

Congratulations! you have a nice project and fully funded. Keep going.

[dlewis1212]

When I first started researching crowdfunding campaigns, this was one of the first ones I came across. I am so glad it was fully funded. The story is very inspiring!