Boost Your Next Crowdfunding Campaign, Book Launch, or Message By Using the Free Online Tool: Thunderclap
(Post Updated: January 11, 2019)
*Please note, both programs are no longer available. Thunderclap recently joined Headtalker in closing in July of 2018 because it couldn’t keep up with new posting and privacy rules on Facebook. So you are welcome to keep reading, but please keep in mind these two social media tools are no longer currently active. Thanks!
The social media landscape is a rather fickle beast. Just because you have something to say doesn’t mean that anyone is going to hear it, particularly when everyone is shouting and flitting from one shiny object to the next.
This is a review of two ONE very useful free online tool, Thunderclap.
[*Headtalker, also mentioned in this post was another platform I used to use that recently was bought by Newswire. Newswire is cool in its own way but for a different reason, if you have a lot of followers on social media you can get paid to post content. Check it out.]
Crowdsharing platforms like Thunderclap (and formerly Headtalker) help amplify your social media messages by allowing you to get friends, family, and complete strangers to share your messages all at once to produce a much larger social media impact than you’d get alone.
I have successfully used these tools for launching three books and one crowdfunding project as well as supported a number of campaigns to help further worthy crowdfunding causes and other creative projects. Here I will talk about the pros and cons of Thunderclap based on my own direct experience using them starting in 2015 right up until 2017.
I’ll also share some best-practices tips that will help make YOUR first campaign using these tools run more smoothly.
Get started with Thunderclap:
Thunderclap was the first tool I tried back in September of 2015 and I found it to be a fabulous way to magnify the impact of social media announcements.
If you are launching a new crowdfunding campaign, website, blog, eBook, course, or whatever… what you do is you set up a page at their site. You then tell all your contacts about the proposed launch of your project. You then need to get a minimum of 100 people to support your project by letting Thunderclap post your message to their Facebook, Twitter, and/or Tumblr accounts on a predetermined day and time all at once which then greatly magnifies your social media reach. It’s completely free for your friends and contacts to support your projects and it only costs them a few seconds of their time.
Here is my completed campaign that helped me launch my first book, Crowdfunding Confidential: Raise Money For You and Your Cause.
Some Pros of Thunderclap:
- It’s easy and intuitive to set up your project.
- It was the very first crowdspeaking platform, is well respected, and has top companies, organizations, and even former US President Obama’s White House staff used it successfully to launch campaigns.
- This platform doesn’t distort your images. The site functions well and the campaigns tend to look much nicer than Headtalker campaigns.
- There are dedicated Thunderclap Facebook groups and communities where you can find additional clicks and support.
- If you think you are not going to make your supporter goal but have many supporters already, you can upgrade from free to one of their premium plans to ensure your message still goes out.
- It works! My message (when I launched my first crowdfunding book in 2015) went out to over 300K people and I had roughly 500 downloads of my free eBook happen on the same day, which in turn helped my book rank on Amazon AND help a lot of people with their crowdfunding campaigns.
Some Cons of Thunderclap:
- The minimum amount of supporters you need for completing your campaign to get your message shared is 100 which means you need to give yourself enough time to get started properly.
- You do not get a handful of automatic supporters and over 500,000 in social media reach like you used to get with Headtalker so it can be a tad harder to start off well.
- Thunderclap campaigns on average tend to get a smaller social media reach. (300,000 on Thunderclap vs. 1.5 million on Headtalker for example.) That said, the quality of social media reach is much more important than quantity. If top influencers and your best contacts and fans help you spread the word, you will find that to be much more valuable than reaching a larger number of random people (or worse, robots, fake accounts, and spammers.)
- Just because you got your message out there, doesn’t automatically mean your project will get lots of sales or donations. Still, it’s better than trying to announce something new all by yourself!
So What Was the Deal With Headtalker?
I had heard good things about Headtalker, namely that it was a bit more flexible and forgiving than Thunderclap, allowing you to set your minimum supporters number to just 25. For the sake of trying it out, I set up my first Headtalker campaign in 2016 to help launch my second book, Free At Last: Live, Love, & Work Abroad as a 21st Century Global Citizen.
My campaign reached 100% support and my message went out to over 1 million people across Facebook, Twitter, Linked In, and Tumblr on March 22.
See my completed campaign here on Headtalker.
Here’s a recent campaign from 2017 that helped launch my new book. Thanks to this campaign, my message about my book Free At Last: Live, Love, Work Abroad. Find Jobs and Build Your Career From Anywhere went out to over 1.5 million people on May 15, 2017. Not too shabby!
And here’s the same book’s recent Thunderclap campaign.
So, before I go, here are a few tips so YOU can launch a more effective first Thunderclap campaign:
Some Extra Crowdsharing Tips for Smart Cookies (That’s You.)
- Make sure you use a good Headline Analyzer tool so your campaign title will generate interest and spark curiosity for people to click and learn more. (Here’s a blog post to help you get started.)
- Make sure you use relevant hashtags to help others discover your project. For example, use #travel #kindle #ebooks etc for a message about a new eBook on Amazon that is related to travel.
- Pay attention to the DAY and TIME your message will be shared. Is your main target audience in the USA? Aim then for 8PM EST (New York) for best results. (*That’s also supposedly Amazon’s peak shopping hour too…) Go for a Tuesday, Wednesday, or Thursday over a weekend day. They tend to get more social media eyeballs than on a Sunday or on a holiday Monday for example.
- Don’t underestimate the power of a good image. Grab attention with your headline as well as your high-quality image. People tend to like to click more on images of people and faces. Strong positive or negative emotions reflected in your title or image tends to generate more interest than neutral emotions. Find FREE images you can use for your campaign here.
If you would like an easy, fun, and clear step by step guide to creating, launching, and completing successful crowdspeaking campaigns yourself, I also have a new course that will have you up and running in under 1 hour. Get Headtalker & Thunderclap: Boost Your Social Media Reach Free here for a special discount.
That’s all for now. Do you have any tips or tools to add? If so, please leave them in the comments and help me make this resource even more helpful.
Best wishes and happy social media messaging!
Kristen
