A Tactical Guide to Build a Web3 Ambassador Program
Community is an experience as old as humankind. Derived from the Latin communis, community is the combination of togetherness (or, “con-”) and services (or, “-munis”). Human beings are social beings, and naturally form communities with shared interests, beliefs, resources and identity.
While the concept of building a community is nothing new, it is fundamental in web3. A commitment to openness, decentralization, and borderlessness sits at the heart of the web3 ethos. Building a web3 community is not paying lip service; it is rather at the core of the flywheel of a web3 project’s growth journey, and requires the utmost thoughtfulness and commitment.
At Masa, we have a community of over 130,000 members hailing from more than 40 countries. At the heart of our global community are Masa Ambassadors, Moderators and Community Manager, who are the extended voices of Masa in the ecosystem.
Recently, we launched a refreshed Ambassador Program 2.0, recruiting a new batch of Masa Ambassadors. The response was overwhelmingly: within 3 weeks, we received 1,234 applicants, and eventually welcomed 244 new Masa Ambassadors.
Many projects in web3 may consider building an Ambassador Program, but there are very few tactical guides out there. In the spirit of contributing to public good, we would like to share our recent experience in building a web3 Ambassador Program. While we still have so much to learn at Masa, hopefully this step-by-step guide can be of help to the ecosystem.
Step 1: A Temperature Check on Your Current Community Health
Before we refreshed our Masa Ambassador program, we dived into the current state of our community:
What are the most active channels? How many members per channel? How many weekly visitors, weekly communicators? How is member retention trending?
For Masa, Discord and Telegram are the main community channels, but member growth needed reinvigoration. We also have an emerging community on Twitter that we want to experiment with publishing new content frequently.
What is working? What is not?
The Masa community rallies around product launches, testnet participation and AMAs. We have an active and globally distributed community, and we are blessed to have the best Community Manager (Dilligaf). Our community loves the Masa brand, rallies around our 🌽 memes and puns — fun fact: Masa means 🌽 in Spanish.
We see tremendous potential in having an active Ambassador Program with clear objectives, global reach, active management, and goal-oriented rewards.
We would not be where we are today without the help of an initial core group of 15 Ambassadors (Dilligaf originally joined as an ambassador!). They have been steadily moderating, building bots and creating channels since early 2022. Without their support we could not have launched this next phase.
Step 2: Research Web3 Ambassador Program Best Practices
When we set out to research best practices for web3 ambassador programs, there was little literature (we hope this guide can be a step in the right direction!). So instead, Masa core team put our heads together, and dug into web3 communities we loved.
Based on our research, the best-in-class Ambassador programs share the following commonalities:
- Detailed application process and program landing page
- Onboarding documentation detailing role, responsibilities and token bounties
- Weekly communication cadence via private channels
- Defined special perks and incentives, and being “in the know” of the project’s development
- Growth trajectory and a clear path to advance in the community and organization
- Internal KPIs based on channel growth and brand awareness
Step 3: Launch the Ambassador Program Thoughtfully
It’s go time! A successful launch of an Ambassador Program requires thoughtful designs. Our launch was met with overwhelming enthusiasm and literally broke Hubspot’s API.
Here are the key components of our program launch:
- A clear landing page that details the project’s mission, benefits of becoming an Ambassador, and how the Ambassador Program works.
- A simple application form that reduces friction, only requiring first name, email, Discord username, country, primary language, time commitment, and an open-ended “why” question. Our goal is for the initial application to be streamlined and can be completed within less than 5 minutes.
- A robust tracking system for applications. At Masa, we built an Ambassador application pipeline in Hubspot, and set up a Slack channel for real-time notifications.
- A multi-step application process. Once the initial application was submitted, we followed up with an additional survey to get to know our applications. We collected additional information around applicants’ web3 knowledge, interests, social profiles, and ensured applicants passed sanctions screening for the final selection.
- An active review process. Two Masa core team members were tasked with reviewing more than 1,000+ Ambassador applications. After 3 weeks of rapid-fire work, we welcomed 244 new Ambassadors to Masa!
Step 4: Design a Goal-Oriented Reward Mechanism
Naturally, excitement weans and wanes. We want to design an exciting mechanism that can generate consistent, sustainable and positive momentum in the community, led by Masa Ambassadors.
Masa’s core team structured a tiered-token reward pool, and created token rewards based on direct task completions. Some examples include:
- Amplifying Masa’s social posts and announcements, through sharing the content with their followers. By turning social into an ambassador-activation exercise, we can create algorithmic momentum and trend across platforms.
- Short-form and long-form content creation covering Masa’s recent product launches, use cases, partnerships, and thought pieces around the web3 ecosystem. We want to inspire creativity across written, video, audio content formats.
- Recommend quality developers and web3 projects to build on Masa Soulbound Identity. Contribute to open-source developer projects. The ultimate success of Masa as a web3 identity protocol is predicated on the utility we deliver to the developer ecosystem.
- Content translation. Masa has a global community covering 40 countries, and members have naturally formulated different language-based Discord channels. Content translation can help further extend the reach of the Masa community.
Step 5: Create Playbook to Set New Ambassadors Up for Success
When an Ambassador Program is at-scale and globally distributed, creating a crystal clear playbook for alignment is critical. In the Masa Ambassador Program Playbook, we covered the following content:
- Project Mission
- Ambassador Program Structure
- Ambassador Tasks and Example of Best Practices
- Rewards and Reward Structure
- Monthly Ambassador Meetings
- FAQ and Content Library
- Brand Asset Library
- Onboarding Tasklist
Ambassadors are champions of the project in the ecosystem. It is crucial to equip them with the updated knowledge on the project’s product, traction, roadmap, and key initiatives.
Beyond the monthly meeting and frequent Discord updates, our Community Manager plays a key role as the connective tissue between the core team and our Ambassadors, in sharing feedback and communicating updates.
By working together we can create a fly-wheel of growth, create exponential value for our community, and make close friends along the way. We hope this helps your project in building a vibrant web3 ambassador community.
