Crowdfunding: To what extend are social media important in the success of a crowdfunding campaign?

The purpose of this thesis is to examine the importance of using social media when promoting a crowdfunding campaign. The literature about crowdfunding and the literature about social media linked to crowdfunding has been studied. Social media are presented as important elements in the literature. The empirical part is a research based on qualitative to understand why fundraisers promote their crowdfunding campaign and certain way and a quantitative analysis to complete the analysis. Semi-structured interview conducted with 11 fundraisers were conducted and the publicly available data of 170 crowdfunding projects on Ulule was collected and four hypotheses were tested. Facebook and Instagram are the most used social media by fundraisers by Instagram and LinkedIn were the most relevant social media to use to reach the funding objective. A visual communication is also seen as more effective than text. In conclusion, it was seen that the importance of social media is relative and it is not necessary for a fundraiser to be present on multiple social media to successfully promote a crowdfunding campaign online.