Blockchain PR: All You Need To Know

Over the last few years, I have written several definitive guides and useful articles related to blockchain PR and marketing. There are many challenges in blockchain PR, but the main point behind each campaign remains the same: how can you get your target audience to hear about your company, understand your idea and values, and take any action (signing up, subscription, etc.) or remember your company in a positive context? The answer is complicated and contains many variables.

But, I can tell you with confidence that an excellent blockchain PR campaign can significantly ameliorate your brand awareness, traffic, domain authority, new members, and more.

This article will discuss the things you need to know when running a blockchain PR campaign in 2021.

What is Blockchain PR?

Ever since Bitcoin first launched back in 2009, the blockchain ecosystem has kept expanding. The Crypto space has been booming with Initial Coin Offering (ICO) becoming a new innovative fundraising method.

In 2018, large tech companies like Facebook, Google, and others, began banning Crypto-related ads.

In a matter of a few days, dozens of companies that based most of their marketing budget and strategy on PPC campaigns needed to find a solution to keep attracting investors.

Public Relations (PR) has been a common marketing channel for ages, but in the blockchain world, a new PR style was needed because of the ban: Blockchain PR.

Blockchain PR is how blockchain companies can inform the crypto community and potential investors about their projects and the potential behind their ideas without using traditional digital marketing channels.

Challenges in Blockchain Public Relations

There are different challenges in the blockchain PR industry than other industries due to the ban by major tech companies, as well as the bad reputation ICOs created for the entire ecosystem.

After many scams, the reputation of ICO as a fundraising method plummeted, impacting the approach of blockchain PR till this day.

The main challenges now are:

• Transparency: People want to know the faces behind the company in which they are about to invest. In 2018, people invested in ICOs who had fake team members. Today, having an active community, participating in community AMAs, and interacting with the community on a daily basis are vital traits of any respected blockchain company.
• Cost: Companies could no longer run ads on Facebook and Google created a high demand for PR coverage by Crypto news sites. This high demand boosted the price of Blockchain Public Relations services.
• Authenticity: Hundred of companies publish articles in these sites very often. It has made the target audience (Crypto enthusiast and investors) naive towards new innovative projects.

Cost of Blockchain PR

When it comes to the budget, PR is usually one of the most expensive parts of the campaign. At GuerrillaBuzz, I’ve worked with clients who have spent $30,000+ per month on their PR campaign.

I’ve also worked with companies who humbly spent $5000 per month for their campaign.

Of course that the larger your budget, the more deliverables you’ll get in your package, but that’s not the key to success.

You can run a great PR campaign with a small budget and still make it effective. A major conflict in your PR campaign will be whether you should spend large amounts of money each month for a dedicated and loud PR campaign, or whether you should aim for a moderate PR campaign that is stable and can run for a long time.

After working with dozens of clients worldwide I think that the best avenue is to have a long PR campaign with a monthly expenditure comfortable for your company.

Before important product releases and announcements, you can increase the expenditure for the month before and after the announcement to maximize reach and exposure.

From my experience, a good blockchain PR campaign will usually start from $5000 per month and can go up to $50,000.

It depends on your company’s overall budget. The most important thing is to aim for a long-term campaign that will last for many months.

Plan your budget with the PR company you choose based on this principle.

Checklist for your PR campaign

Running a PR campaign can be overwhelming. There are many things to do in a short amount of time, and the pressure to keep up with this fast changing environment might make you feel lost. That’s why it’s important to follow certain guidelines to make sure you’re controlling your PR campaign well:

• White Paper: A white paper is a document which outlines the problem you’re looking to solve, as well as your solution and all necessary details about your product, its functioning, and the user’s experience with it.
• https: It might seem obvious, but I’ve seen quite a few blockchain companies who speak about how their tech is changing the world while having an http site. Your target audience expects you to have a safe and secure site, for which you need to use https.
• Reachable Community Manager: There are plenty of service providers who will try to reach you while you run your IEO, or build your DeFi project. Some companies prevent any kind of outreach by not inviting the team to the official Telegram or Slack channel, which in some ways make sense but you should strive to strike the right balance. By having a reachable community manager who can answer offer/partnership requests, you may be able to enter new business relations and expand your company.
• Design: If your web design is bad, your blockchain PR efforts will be wasted as people who visit your site won’t be converted into new investors, followers, or community members. Make sure you’re using a great web host and have an eye-catching webpage. If you don’t have an in-house designer, you can try to use services like Upwork.
  Here’s my way: go to Behance, search for Blockchain, and then use the search filter to show you the most appreciated projects of all time. You can click here to directly access my search.

Content Plan: It’s never too early to come up with a content plan. Starting out with content already on your blog is one of the best moves you can make for the long run. How long? I recommend checking this great resource by moz to better understand content time frames.

A Blog with min. 3 articles: While building your site, you can publish 3 high quality articles that discuss problems within your niche as well as how your approach and technology aim to solve them to improve your target audience’s lives. Having ready-made content is useful in the first few weeks when your site is going live.

Active Social Media Channels: Create and maintain an an active Subreddit, Twitter, Discord, Telegram, and linking accounts.

Company Submission: submit your site to Crunchbase and other similar sites.

Roadmap: By creating an understandable roadmap, your community can measure your company success and understand what are your future plans.

Roadmap example: Source

CopyWriting: A well-written content on your site will help convince your target audience that your service and product is exactly what they need to solve their problem and bring them value.

Links Diversity: Blockchain companies tend to link only to their homepage. That’s because they don’t understand the benefit of creating multiple pages in their site (mostly blog posts) and linking to them. Make sure your blockchain PR agency links to various pages on your site to boost its SEO rating.

“In general, you want to avoid links to the top level pages on a site — pages to which the main navigation menu already has links.The best links — and the most natural links in a content marketing strategy — are deep within the structure of a site.״ source

AMA: Getting into an Ask Me Anything (AMA) post or a podcast is a great step. It might drive some traffic to your site but the main goal is to improve your company’s authority and to increase your brand awareness and credibility.

Content Distribution: Press releases and articles on popular news sites are great, but by promoting the content on different channels, you’ll increase its exposure and maximize its potential. Make sure every article you release gets submitted to several relevant channels.

Longevity: Don’t focus only on 2–3 months of an expensive PR campaign and then stop all your activities. You better aim for a long campaign that run with your company every month. Once your company will grow, your campaign budget should adjust.

Conclusion

In order to conduct effective Blockchain PR, you need to concentrate on three key elements: longevity, reliability, and stability. A PR campaign that is sustainable for your company cost-wise and builds your company and product’s credibility in the Crypto and Blockchain communities will do more for you in the long run than a short-lived, expensive campaign.