How to Grow and Maintain a Strong Crypto Community
By Nick Saponaro
After being a prominent member of several slacks during my crypto adventure, I’ve noticed and picked up a few very useful things along the way that I want to make sure we use for our growing community of fans and contributors here at The Divi Project.
Every successful project is backed up by a strong and motivated community. And if the community is not attended to like a herd of sheep, madness will erupt in the blink of an eye. The key to keep a happy and positive community is to make sure they know they’re appreciated and to make them feel special. There are a lot of ways of achieving this, but more on that later.
If the community is treated well, they will be the best and cheapest publicity your project can have. They will also come up with ideas you never thought of. Some will even do work. They’ll help code, do testing, and write articles.
They will protect your community against FUD and other type of attacks. They will even put your brand on different promotional items and help you spread the good word. And if you’re really doing a good job, they’ll start getting tattoos of your logo! All they really need is a little bit of attention and incentive.
The backbone of the community, besides the users themselves, are the community managers. They need to run the different channels like a well-oiled machine 24/7 without exception. Especially around important dates like the ICO launch and such. Different personalities are very important among the managers so you cover a big spectrum of the community’s own characteristics. It’s like how TV shows work. You will enjoy what you’re watching more if you can relate to the characters on the screen.
Names and Colors
People naturally want to belong to tribes (religions, street gangs, political parties and so on.) Some of the most effective aspects that they have in common are colors and symbols.
A glowing example of this is the Stratis community. Old Stratis supporters are members of the Stratis army and most of them have a blue avatar to represent the Stratis colors.
They to this day stick together and commit to investments together. Even after it dropped from 460k to 46k they still hold and carry on supporting faithfully. I know this because I’m a part of the army. But really any Stratis enthusiast can call themselves a member.
I’m also a part of the metal tribe. Naming the community in this way tightens the group and it catches on very fast.
Making the community members feel special is simple. It can be as easy as having the CEO enter the telegram and give a comment a thumbs up. Here is a list of suggestions that’s pretty simple to execute.
Custom avatars. Pay a designer to give 20 members free avatars with the same colors of the project. The rest of the users will crave these.
Get a tipbot — Comments and efforts can be directly rewarded. Angry FUDsters can become nice pussycats if they get a tip. Members can pay the community designer for their Divi avatar for example. It creates an economy within the community.
Schwag — T-shirts -fidget spinners .. stickers .. Anything you can put your logo on really.. Give it away to early investors and important community members.
Competitions — For example, we want to make a tutorial video and we will be accepting community suggestions. Suggestions used in the end product gets X amount of Divi and so on.
Treat members as equal — You never know what connections somebody has. The community is an asset as important as the tech behind the project.
Gamify the community — Give the members a ladder to climb.. Different tiers attached to efforts and time spent in the slacks/telegrams. Have locked channels for different tiers.
Meetups — arranged by the community. I have myself travelled to NYC to meet fellow investors and the CEO for Metal. Now I’m hooked for life.
Rapid Response — 24/7 Someone from the team is around to represent us and engage with fans.
Full Team Engagement — All team members should at least post occasionally or comment. No ghosts.
Scheduled Q&A Sessions — Weekly one-hour “Ask Me Anything” with various tech members, the CEO, CTO, etc so the community gets to engage with everyone.
Video Mentions — People who contribute a lot could be mentioned by name in our videos to thank them.
A happy and supportive community isn’t just good business, it’s really essential for the long term survival of any cryptocurrency. Since cryptos aren’t backed by gold or governments, their value derives mainly from the community that supports it. If enough people like it, buy it, hold it, and say good things about it, the value will hold or rise. Furthermore, cryptos aren’t just about money. For most of us in this space, our coin projects are our life, and having a happy and supportive community makes the whole adventure more fun for everyone.
