What is the Right Type of Community for Your Blockchain Brand?

One of blockchain’s most disruptive features is decentralization. The promise of increasing peer-to-peer interactions has revolutionized the way many industries handle processes and interactions with customers. But how to strike the right level of engagement in your user network? In this article, we will cover different types of Brand Communities and suggest strategies for blockchain companies to strike community equilibrium.

Brand Community Types

As Fournier & Lee argue in their Harvard Business Review article Getting brand communities right (2009), there are three types of user communities a brand can create in any industry: pools, hubs, and webs.

Pools are communities for those who get together through shared values or goals. For example, all the subscribers in a newsletter that sends out regular updates on blockchain news and trends, or the members in a blockchain-themed LinkedIn group. This community type is usually the one brand managers have been instructed to create, and although it connects users to the brand, it falls short when it comes to fostering strong interpersonal relationships. Blockchain brands should focus on enabling human connections as a way to avoid dropouts. This is where hubs and webs come in to strengthen and expand the community, as Fournier & Lee suggest.

Hubs’ members come together through their admiration of an individual. In the blockchain community, for example, Vitalik Buterin, the co-founder of Ethereum, and Don Tapscott, CEO of the Blockchain Research Institute, have thousands of followers on Twitter who share an enthusiasm over their posts and retweets. On YouTube, David Hay and Dr. Julian Hosp are other examples of blockchain influencers that engage large communities. Although hubs are very useful to inform enthusiasts in a pool (e.g., crypto traders), these communities often break apart if the central figure is no longer present, or admired. An alternative to strengthen hub-based connections is to cultivate peer-to-peer support through webs.

Web affiliations are the strongest type of brand communities as they are designed for and based on one-to-one connections. Webs are the most stable form of community because the people in them are bound by many and varied relationships. Typical examples are social networks like Facebook or Telegram. When it comes to blockchain brands, Forums are usually a good strategy to start a web, as they incentivize peer-to-peer responses in a shared environment. Some examples are the Bitcoin Forum, and Stack Exchange Questions. Member interactions through Q&As, however, are only the first step towards a strong web. Blockchain brands must foster peer-to-peer connections across multiple channels.

Building Online Communities that Work

Brand efforts to engineer a web community may end with the naive hope that members will connect through the “suggestion box” format of Forums, or on the comment session of posts and videos. These mechanisms, as we have suggested, are only effective when aligned with an overarching community-building strategy.

As online-based businesses, most blockchain brands prioritize — often exclusively — online community-building efforts. Brand managers focus on acquiring followers, subscribers, and group members, which are not necessarily the best metrics, and end up not knowing how to engage them.

Blockgeeks’s Community services, one of the highest-ranking solutions on Google, allows blockchain brands to reach a large pool of blockchain enthusiasts (see screenshot below) but only through mechanisms like push notifications, news releases, and online courses. It may be a strong strategy to generate awareness in a pool, but the customer brands probably will not reap the benefits of a strong community (e.g., customer loyalty, and its positive impacts on a company’s revenue line).

Blockgeeks’s Community Numbers

If you already have such a large pool of followers, you may be wondering why contributions are so scarce and mostly about sharing one’s opinion. One way to move forward with your community asset is by mapping your existing member base into three categories, as defined by Millington (2018):

• Skills/experience: Significant contributions to blockchain brands often require technical background or knowledge of the industry dynamics. Once you identify members with unique skills or experiences in blockchain niches, invite (and reward) them to write a product review or industry report based on a template, for example.
• Motivation: Motivated members are valuable assets as they proactively engage and drive engagement in the community. They are often the ones who post or comment the most, create deviant (or different) posts, or share their unique observations. You can ask them to highlight or vote on the kind of content or material they would love to see in the community — they often have insightful tips and references.
• Time: This is a reminder to track and engage those who spend more time on your community platform or site. These members often have high motivation as well and would be delighted to take on volunteer or leadership roles within the community (e.g., hosting interviews, welcoming members, and moderating areas of the site).

Above all, it is important to highlight the people behind the nodes in your network. Other activities you may develop with the help of members in the above categories are

• Webinars — to position your brand as an expert and share resources,
• Lives — to go over common questions and get members to interact with the team,
• Online and Offline events — to strengthen one-to-one connections and increase brand satisfaction.

It is a complex challenge to create an engaging brand community, but as usual, you can count on BlockTrain’s blockchain-centric business intelligence to navigate options and implement a comprehensive strategy that covers community growth hacks, media and event logistics, and go-to-market campaigns. Contact us at info@blocktrainmedia.com, or schedule a call with our BD Manager, for more information.

References

• Fournier, S., & Lee, L. (2009). Getting brand communities right. *Harvard Business Review, 87, *4, 105–111. Retrieved from https://ccl.on.worldcat.org/oclc/424228651
• Millington, R. (2018). The best types of community engagement from your active members. Retrieved from https://www.feverbee.com/active-members/

Author: Victoria Gomes, BlockTrain’s Business Strategy Manager

BlockTrain is a Global Blockchain Investment & Branding Advisory. BlockTrain’s services offer early-stage blockchain projects full support through fundraising, listing on top trading platforms, and branding globally via an extensive network of PR partners. BlockTrain’s competitive advantages extend to hosting global blockchain conferences and covering the industry’s latest trends and solutions through elaborated news and video interviews. Contact us at info@blocktrainmedia.com, or schedule a call with our BD Manager.

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