From tiny waves to Tsunami — Building Online Communities p.1
Despite the wild hype and financial inflow that the crypto landscape enjoyed over the last few years, there exists a critical aspect of the industry worth improving — crypto community management. A frequently underestimated force, yet, one that can monstrously drive a well-built platform in the right direction by aiding in tasks ranging from crowdfunding to the formulation of a recognizable brand image.
Just a few years ago, online communication generally didn’t have much influence on the everyday lives of people. However, that is changing fast. Socializing is a part of human nature, as is being a part of something significant, having hobbies or activities, learning. Underlying all of this is a critically important aspect of human nature, which is the ability to share ideas, acquire knowledge, and discuss subjects naturally, by interacting with other people.
Diving into more detail the Ethereum progress case can be seen as one that demonstrates the importance of building a healthy community, as well as a reason to work with others on spreading influence. Both the project team and interested individuals had reason to aid Ethereum’s progress and garner attention, which in turn, led to some serious growth.
Serious issues can arise from the inability of a highly-functional platform to optimize, organize, and manage a community force. Unfortunately, Cindicator faced this issue, and its success went into the far future.
To be able to guide any community, it is necessary to know the most common types of all online communities:
1. Brand Communities
Usually formed to directly communicate with a project audience, acquire feedback, and provide coverage to interested followers. Brand communities thrive in environments producing quality content, attracting abundant subscribers, and those that become increasingly more efficient.
2. Educational Communities
Such communities relate to optimized and concrete information to aid individuals who are interested in a particular subject of a project. Educational communities act as an excellent base for connecting online with other users and constructive discussions of pertinent topics. Typically, an open and chatty moderator/admin who enjoys replying to comments and has a knack for unique content fits well in an educational community.
3. Entertainment Communities
Entertainment communities place their focus on the simple pleasures in life (mostly), like memes, jokes, videos that make you lol, etc. While typically dismissed by many as “something that’s simply there”, individuals composing such communities can frequently be the most avid supporters and protectors of a project as well as its community.
4. Collective Intelligence Communities
The definition of a seriously organized community capable of cooperating with the goal of influencing a project’s outcome and positioning. Here, a group of individuals discuss a subject while making decisions based on one another opinions, expertise, and acquired knowledge. In turn, project developers collect the outcomes of such discussions and for the most part, create open and helpful statistics for others to rely on.
There’s a great example of such a community on GitHub, Social Coding. These individuals even have thematic T-shirts sporting a “Fork You” slogan, designating that they specialize in Blockchain forking.
A community is an essential component of every product and project, especially in the rapidly growing crypto world. Token sale processes were created to aid project teams in crowdfunding financial aid with the end goal of improving existing real-world industries with Blockchain implementations.
Common community management misconceptions:
1. Participants do not need specific details
Wrong. If a person is not providing direct communication, correct information or trying to shirk — it is just a matter of time before community manager and his team are going to be left as the only community members, even if the project is a next level innovation.
2. Participants are only interested in discussing specific topics
Wrong. There is no need to set unnecessary boundaries for users — let them speak about whatever they find relevant. It sets a needed amount of comfort inside chats and helps to improve trust.
3. Participants will get behind any content
Wrong. Before the projects team chose, its style relying on its positioning, set specific rubrics, hire authors to create quality content. Word is a sword.
Marketing managers must admit that not everyone is ready to follow them on five different social media’s for updates.
If Marketing team want to grow its product or brand, they need to change the way in which the community engages. We see this as a serious issue, a lack of a common attitude towards community management can become a serious obstacle towards the development of the entire crypto landscape.
