Getting Help With Self Promotion: Using Patreon to Your Advantage

You’ve carefully crafted your Patreon page, promoted your launch day, and done a soft launch to your friends and family to get some tips already in the jar and make sure everything comes across the way you hoped. Now it’s time to officially launch your page! Here are some tips for launch day and the first few weeks of your campaign to make sure you get your momentum going from the beginning:

Launch day!

Just before you start promoting:

 

Make sure you have more than one goal.

Patreon pages with more than one goal category typically do better than those with just one.

Make sure you have more than two reward tiers.

Similarly, pages with more than two reward tiers also do better.

Make sure you have one patron only post.

Even if you don’t have any patrons yet (though you should probably have at least one or two after your soft launch), make sure there’s a patron only post ready and waiting to entice potential patrons.

Get familiar with the creator dashboard.

Now that you’re up and running, make sure you understand how to track your progress.

Use the patron manager.

This is where you’ll get a birds eye view of your patronage, so make sure you’re on top of it.

Double check your payout preferences.

Pretty soon you’ll be getting supported by your patrons, so be sure your payout info is set up the way you want it.

Switch your patreon banner on all social media.

Hopefully you built the anticipation to your launch with social media banners announcing your launch day. Now’s the time to upload your new banners celebrating your successful launch and advertising your new, up and running Patreon page.

Start promoting!

Start posting your pre-planned posts on all of your social media accounts. Be sure to consider in advance the peak times of day to promote to your audience. If you need to, set up an automatic social media tool to post for you. Link to your Patreon in every social media profile, and set up automatic links to your Patreon for every YouTube post. Add a link to your Patreon to your email signature, make sure it’s on your business card, and embed a Patreon button on your website.

Ask your friends to spread the word.

There are lots of ways your friends can help you. Even if they can’t become your patrons, they can definitely help spread the word about your new Patreon page.

Ask other Patreon creators to share your launch.

Hopefully you joined a creators group during your pre-launch, so now’s the time to call upon the friendships you’ve made and ask your fellow creators to help promote you.

Send out an email to your subscribers.

If you’ve got an email list, send out the email announcing your launch!

Host a live stream.

The planning for this is best done during the pre-launch, so now’s the time to reap the benefits. Host a live stream on Launch day to welcome your friends to your new Patreon page. Encourage them to follow you even if they don’t become your patrons.

Host a real life launch party.

Celebrate in real life with your friends! The bigger and more exciting this feels to your friends, the more excited they’ll be for you and the more they’ll rave about it to others. Plus, you did a lot of work, so you deserve a celebration. Take a moment to relish it because there’s plenty more work to come.

Get press!

Contact blogs that are related to your work and see if they’d be willing to do a story about your page. A lot of people use this technique with great success.

Create more than three free posts during the first month.

Keeping your followers and patrons engaged is a big part of building your Patreon community so make sure you’re posting plenty of free posts and updates about your projects. Communicate with your supporters as much as possible without spamming them or constantly promoting yourself. Be genuine.

Send messages.

Send messages to people when they become your Patrons to thank them! Staying engaged and personal with your supporters is what Patreon is all about.

Poll your patrons for reward ideas.

A great idea for free content that also helps you is to start a poll on Patreon to find out what kinds of rewards excite your patrons.

Give progress peaks for your upcoming projects.

Another great way to stay engaged between releases is to update your fans with progress about your upcoming projects. This kind of insider knowledge is part of what makes it exciting to support artists.

Submit to get featured.

When your page is looking good and you’re being super active and engaged, submit your page to be featured on Patreon Discovery so people outside of your community can find you.

Manage your expectations and stick with it.

Especially if you’re coming to Patreon without an established fan-base, the going can seem really slow at first. If you’re growth is slow, just keep at it. Keep engaging, keep promoting, and don’t give up. Then see where you’re at in a year.

 

Guest Post by Allie Mazon