i've had 10+ calls this month with S-tier crypto projects looking to build stronger marketing and community flywheels -- putting some of the suggestions publicly here on twitter
10 rules for crypto marketing & community: a systems approach
1) stop posting ads.
if your main twitter constantly talks about your product, you are posting ads. people hate ads. when you open youtube to watch a specific video, you cannot wait to skip the ad that pops up. same with crypto twitter. if you consistently post ads, don't be surprised when people don't like your brand or aren't engaging
2) you are competing with influencers and entertaining content on twitter, not with other protocols.
when most people open CT, they are checking to see what Cobie posted, or what memes are created about the ETH ETF, or whatever the trend is that day -- entertainment they enjoy. you are competing in the same attention economy as these folks, not just against your project's competitors
3) your marketing & community strategy should take a systems approach.
it is much more accurate to view marketing and community through the lens of a complex system with various inputs and outputs rather than one-off segmented areas. there are flows between discord, telegram, twitter, etc that all impact each other. optimizing for good flow between the areas will yield much better results than tackling each one individually. community and marketing are intertwined. if you silo them, both will be less effective. they are a tag team -- make sure the system allows them to make each other stronger
4) invest heavily in community.
if you do not invest heavily in community, do not be surprised if they are not invested in your project. if the community member experience stinks, there are many other crypto communities for them to hang out and be active in. if you do not enjoy spending time in your own community i promise you no one else will either. make the experience awesome
5) post and interact with top community content from your main account and from the founders' accounts.
there are 2 main reasons: 1) their content is very likely better than your own teams' stuff anyway, so marketing becomes a process of curating top community content instead of trying to create top down memes which rarely hit, and 2) it makes the community know you value high quality contributions. how often can a community member create something and have this massive company shout out how good it is? it's a cool feeling and most projects aren't willing to do it. interact with your community publicly
6) association > knowledge.
Red Bull doesn't post a single picture of Red Bull cans on their instagram. it is all cool people doing awesome things with the Red Bull logo slapped on somewhere. they make people like the brand, and then down the line this leads to positive effects for their company. if their instagram was just posting about Red Bull's formula vs. competitors they would have been dead a long time ago. lead with great associations and let people learn about the product on their own once they want to
7) do not blindly copy and paste someone else's strategy.
a good marketing & community strategy is built from first principles using the product stage, vertical, target audience, current reputation, etc as inputs. what is the correct strategy for someone else's project is very likely not the exact right strategy for your project. you can take inspiration from other approaches that you like, but highly recommend building your own system from scratch
8) quality > quantity.
automated questing is not a good strategy. using platforms where people claim rewards for "follow, like, RT" may seem like a cheap way to boost engagement, but it completely dilutes real people who would organically engage, and also looks like trash when you have 7.2k likes, 7.2k RTs, and 10k views. do not sacrifice real people who will be in your community for months or years just to get bot engagement -- you will never create sustainable flywheels this way
9) do things that don't scale.
early on you are lucky if you have 5-20 people that care about your community at all. make sure you are showing gratitude and appreciate for anything and everything they do that make the community stronger. don't worry about how that won't work if your community grows to 50,000 people -- if the team isn't having 1:1 interactions with these folks, you'll never get there anyway
10) a community is made up of REAL people with REAL lives that have other things to do.
can't believe i have to add this one but it comes up often. your community is not some number on a sheet that shows traction -- they are as real as you, the person reading this. create your system for them and heavily degrade any "bot" type interactions since it dilutes the quality of experience for your real members. having 100 real people who care about the community and your project puts you above 99% of other crypto projects. treat your fellow community members with respect if you hope to have any amount of respect in their minds
----
marketing & community are more accurately described and understood through a systems approach. it is much more of a task of creativity and engineering than simply twitter game. they are important things to get right and shouldn't be left up to chance. anyways, if this gets less than 100 likes i'll probably never talk about this again but if it does well maybe will post more stuff like this moving forward. ty
10 rules for crypto marketing & community: a systems approach
1) stop posting ads.
if your main twitter constantly talks about your product, you are posting ads. people hate ads. when you open youtube to watch a specific video, you cannot wait to skip the ad that pops up. same with crypto twitter. if you consistently post ads, don't be surprised when people don't like your brand or aren't engaging
2) you are competing with influencers and entertaining content on twitter, not with other protocols.
when most people open CT, they are checking to see what Cobie posted, or what memes are created about the ETH ETF, or whatever the trend is that day -- entertainment they enjoy. you are competing in the same attention economy as these folks, not just against your project's competitors
3) your marketing & community strategy should take a systems approach.
it is much more accurate to view marketing and community through the lens of a complex system with various inputs and outputs rather than one-off segmented areas. there are flows between discord, telegram, twitter, etc that all impact each other. optimizing for good flow between the areas will yield much better results than tackling each one individually. community and marketing are intertwined. if you silo them, both will be less effective. they are a tag team -- make sure the system allows them to make each other stronger
4) invest heavily in community.
if you do not invest heavily in community, do not be surprised if they are not invested in your project. if the community member experience stinks, there are many other crypto communities for them to hang out and be active in. if you do not enjoy spending time in your own community i promise you no one else will either. make the experience awesome
5) post and interact with top community content from your main account and from the founders' accounts.
there are 2 main reasons: 1) their content is very likely better than your own teams' stuff anyway, so marketing becomes a process of curating top community content instead of trying to create top down memes which rarely hit, and 2) it makes the community know you value high quality contributions. how often can a community member create something and have this massive company shout out how good it is? it's a cool feeling and most projects aren't willing to do it. interact with your community publicly
6) association > knowledge.
Red Bull doesn't post a single picture of Red Bull cans on their instagram. it is all cool people doing awesome things with the Red Bull logo slapped on somewhere. they make people like the brand, and then down the line this leads to positive effects for their company. if their instagram was just posting about Red Bull's formula vs. competitors they would have been dead a long time ago. lead with great associations and let people learn about the product on their own once they want to
7) do not blindly copy and paste someone else's strategy.
a good marketing & community strategy is built from first principles using the product stage, vertical, target audience, current reputation, etc as inputs. what is the correct strategy for someone else's project is very likely not the exact right strategy for your project. you can take inspiration from other approaches that you like, but highly recommend building your own system from scratch
8) quality > quantity.
automated questing is not a good strategy. using platforms where people claim rewards for "follow, like, RT" may seem like a cheap way to boost engagement, but it completely dilutes real people who would organically engage, and also looks like trash when you have 7.2k likes, 7.2k RTs, and 10k views. do not sacrifice real people who will be in your community for months or years just to get bot engagement -- you will never create sustainable flywheels this way
9) do things that don't scale.
early on you are lucky if you have 5-20 people that care about your community at all. make sure you are showing gratitude and appreciate for anything and everything they do that make the community stronger. don't worry about how that won't work if your community grows to 50,000 people -- if the team isn't having 1:1 interactions with these folks, you'll never get there anyway
10) a community is made up of REAL people with REAL lives that have other things to do.
can't believe i have to add this one but it comes up often. your community is not some number on a sheet that shows traction -- they are as real as you, the person reading this. create your system for them and heavily degrade any "bot" type interactions since it dilutes the quality of experience for your real members. having 100 real people who care about the community and your project puts you above 99% of other crypto projects. treat your fellow community members with respect if you hope to have any amount of respect in their minds
----
marketing & community are more accurately described and understood through a systems approach. it is much more of a task of creativity and engineering than simply twitter game. they are important things to get right and shouldn't be left up to chance. anyways, if this gets less than 100 likes i'll probably never talk about this again but if it does well maybe will post more stuff like this moving forward. ty
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