Sep 27, 2021
Who is the best target for your Crypto Project?
How to create a community for a blockchain project
A brief analysis of the potential stakeholders you would want to involve in your blockchain/cryptocurrency project and community. We’ll explore:
- Why do you need a crypto community?
- Who is your crypto community?
- Where should you engage them?
- What initiatives work better in the crypto world?
- Pros and cons of influencers
- How to measure and track community metrics… And adjust
First, the purpose.
Why do you want people in your community?
- You want users of your product
- You want buyers of your product
- You want builders using your product
- You want advocates
- You want to “educate” them
- You want to hire them
- You want suggestions
- …You feel lonely?
Then, the target.
Once you defined why you want to establish or increase your community, it’s time to think about who your community should be composed of.
With few exceptions, a blockchain project will not focus only on one type of segment and there will be a healthy mix of different types of people in your community. The ratio of this mix, instead, is very specific for your project.
Segmentation can happen on different levels: demographic, psychographic, geographic and behavioral; we are going to focus only on the 3 (4) most common behavioral segments.
Pro tip: take these briefs and adapt them to your project, creating very specific persona. A community built for everyone is a community for noone.
Punters
The gamblers. The speculators. Attracted by quick short-term opportunities, flipping NFTs and tokens whenever there is the opportunity.
Why you want them: they bring the hype, they are the shillers. They will go out and harass every single human being on Twitter on how good your token is. Constantly chasing the latest airdrops or the best APYs for farming.
Also, importantly, they will participate in your Token Generation Events (ICO, LBP, minting, …).
They tend bring very positive energy to the project at the beginning, and to be quiet before the TGE (why telling someone else to buy your token if they haven’t bought it yet).
Technologists
The BUIDLers, the ones that understand (or think they understand, like me) your technology, fascinated by the potential of blockchain as a World computer.
They will read your developers’ update even if it is written in technical language and even if doesn’t actually provide any useful update. (Pro Tip: this is actually a great way to measure that part of the community).
Why you want them: they might be a great source of talent for future hiring, as technical ambassadors, or they might decide to build on top of your protocol / integrate with your dapp.
In an early stage, they might help with protocol recommendations, bug reviews, early testnets and writing technical documentation.
Philosophers
In love with the mission and the cause of what you are doing.
Why you want them: they are the HODLers. When things go wrong (and they always do), when the market goes down, they will embrace it and accept it if they felt onboard on your mission.
Of course, even Punters will HODL, but they are more inclined to sell and/or come to your channels and request for a listing on Binance, more marketing activity, more hype, more WEN MOON.
Investors/Institutions.
Why you want them is clear: they bring in the big money.
Why you don’t want them: they expect/want a fully regulated product, and that is not always the best route for a company that wants and needs to innovate fast.
Finally, the mean.
So, we identified why and who. We are left with the toughest part, the how.
How do you engage your community in a crypto project?
- Channels
- Campaigns and initiatives
- Metrics and Feedback
Channels
What are the best touchpoints for engaging people in blockchain projects?
- Website
- Twitter: best for public engagement, discussion, virality. Unavoidable today.
- Telegram: the original crypto-community hub. Home of the Punters. Great ecosystem of bots for moderation.
- Blog: long form content for deep dives. I have seen projects writing long Twitter Threads to substitute this medium.
- Podcast
- Youtube
- Discord: originally designed for gamers who want to communicate during games, now it hosts communities for different types of projects, from DeFi till NFTs. Top functions: moderation bot / verification, connection with Metamask wallets (Collab.Land), threads (on top of channels), audio rooms.
- Reddit: quite US focused (the 5th most popular site in the States). Hard to stand out, but the potential virality benefit is impressive. Less ephemeral than Twitter. Big names hang out there, including Vitalik Buterin.
- (TikTok / Instagram). You could argue most of the success of DogeCoin/Shiba Inu/Memecoins during 2021 (+xxxx%) can be attributed to influencers on TikTok that brought the currency to the mainstream.
- (Facebook/Whatsapp)
- Steemit
- (Bitcointalk): the OG crypto community by definition, where Satoshi Nakamoto announced Bitcoin and plenty of projects announced their vision back in 2017.
- Events / Meetups
Asian Channels
What channels are more effective in Asia for crypto projects?
(deep dive here):
- WeChat (China + Other countries)
- Kakaotalk (South Korea + Other countries)
- Naver
- (Vkontacte) (Russia)
Pro Tips
- Don’t rush. Open the least possible channels. The minimum number to engage your target. Got only developers? Go only for Discord, Twitter as a public face, possibly github but not Telegram nor Reddit.
The more channels you open the more expensive it will be: people, time, mental energy. Closing one is very difficult (actually risk losing part of the community). - Discord is the best semi-private channel at the moment for moderation and content creation (see section “Campaigns and initiatives”). Semi-private means that anyone can access but who is not part of the channel cannot participate, and this creates a sense of intimacy and prestige (“I’m early”), fundamental for early communities. Its issue: only some segments want to use it, and those who don’t will not move there for you.
- Balance expectations and budget (time, effort, money, energy) vs actual results. Measure and adapt soon.
- Use different channels according to what you expect to achieve.
Public conversation? Twitter.
Direct people to the website? Youtube and Reddit…
Check for example the social media sources of the websites of some big exchanges (we can assume they are interested in attracting people to their trading portal):
Ultimately, consequences
The type of person you attract will affect the future of the community, so it’s important to get it right early on because it’s very hard to change at a later stage.
Every individual will bring some kind of value in the short or long term, so it’s critical to treat everyone with respect and make them feel valued and welcomed from day 0. Yes, sounds cheesy but it goes a long way.
Campaigns and initiatives, Influencers, Metrics and Feedback
If you are interested in these areas and other pro tips please ping me on Twitter / Linkedin / Email and I will share more resources with you.
