In the industry of Online Marketing, specifically Social Media Marketing & Content Marketing. These “buzz words” are constantly thrown around; Analyze, Measure, Repeat.  Well the longer I have been involved in Online Marketing on a professional basis, the more I learn that these words are words you end up living by.

A recent circumstance, involving  my ” Personal Brand” & a fundraiser provided a good example for this analyzing & measuring. Not to mention the need to act quickly.

I pressed released a fundraiser with a goal to raise money to get my wife & kids back to Greece. I felt strongly enough that if people are doubling their fundraiser amounts simply by asking for money to go see their boyfriend across the country, then giving my kids & wife the opportunity to visit their ageing grandparents would be simple. I pulled an all night-er to do it to. Perhaps that was my first mistake. Don’t get me wrong, a ton of thinking & planning went into it & then quickly put together in a night.


After pouring over it’s analytics pretty much the entire day & measuring the response, click through and page views. I had to  decide quickly to pull the fundraiser & take it back to the drawing board. It was the least ideal thing for me to do. My evidence & thought process was backed further after collaborating with some seasoned colleagues of mine that have a vast amount of experience with raising money.

It was evident that a different approach would need to be taken. I included a huge amount of perks for donating but their would have to be more then this. From the beginning I knew that any donations & support that would go towards this cause/trip would be from direct social or personal relationships.  Any revoked response beyond direct connections at most would come from first & second degree relationships. Quite frankly, my network is growing but is not at the capacity yet. Point being, if I had planned to raise money fairly quickly & not be left out to dry I would have to pull the fundraiser & regroup.

We all know that http://kickstarter.com is the standard when it comes to crowd fundraising. I went with http://gofundme.com/ , even though I hated the title of the site. Ill mention that Kickstarter was eliminated as a fundraising option related to their rules & guidelines of creative projects only. That means that a “Trip” could not be Kickstarted. Upon further research I noticed that there is a galore of people fundraising for trips BUT with a twist. The twist is Photo Journalism. This makes total sense. Not only would this hold intrinsic value to direct personal relationships but also cater to a larger crowd.

So to come to a conclusion as I am still running on little sleep. The fundraiser to reunite my family & I with our family in Greece has been sent to the drawing boards with plans to turn this trip into a full blown journalism & photo journalism trip. Greece presents a prime geographical location for photo journalism & with its recent political chaos presents a number of other opportunities. So look forward to a creative & fresh fundraiser on kickstarter. Ill make sure its lucrative, you guys will love it.

Published by Ronnie K

Full Time Family Man. DNR Medic by day, Digital Marketer by night. Bitcoin Adopter, Governor @ H2oSocial . Technology Junkie. Survivalist, Jack of All Trades, Master of Many. Fear the Beard.

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