Promoting Your NFT: Shilling tips for new creators
Are you new to more than just the Orderinbox platform? Is the Creator Economy something that has you as confused as you are excited? If you joined us here on the Orderinbox blog to learn about just what it takes to turn your digital creation into an NFT — and what to do with it afterwards — you’re in the right place.
Orderinbox is not a clique. We are not a space for trendy artists to rub elbows and shut out newcomers. Nope, we are here for everyone. And that means welcoming creators who are only now getting their feet wet in the waters of technology.
And the Creator Economy has room for everyone. So, before you decide that the Metaverse is too complicated or that NFTs just aren’t for you, keep reading to learn about how you can get involved, on your own terms.
1. Start by Getting Social
Very few new and/or small creator businesses will be able to gain attention without social media. To do so, you would need a well-crafted website and an understanding of online marketing. Which, despite being a solid option, is neither cost-effective nor quick to implement. So, we suggest that new creators promote their NFTs by starting or adapting social media profiles like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, YouTube, and others. Social media can be an accessible option for building an audience and sharing your creations.
If you’re new to social media too, you’re still in good shape. That’s the beauty of the Creator Economy. You can start small. You can grow a little or a lot. Whichever platforms appeal to you, we recommend sticking to the channels you know, two or three at the most to start, focusing on content and interaction (comment and make friends!) before branching out to multiple profiles.
If you use Twitter every day and you’re still trying to figure out what TikTok actually is, you already know where to start and what to avoid. If you spend most of your time on Instagram and Facebook is wearing on your nerves, you may find it challenging to engage properly on both, despite Meta facilitating simultaneous sharing. (Hint: The Web3 community spends most of their social hours on Twitter and Instagram anyway.)
While social media can be extremely effective, it also has limitations and liabilities. A simple algorithm change can leave you scrambling to restore your visibility. And while we always recommend professionalism, sometimes an honest mistake on a social media platform — be it a text-based comment or an image someone finds objectionable — and your profile could be either suspended or banned. Maintaining an electronic mailing list via Mailchimp, MailerLite, or any other free email marketing service can allow you to stay in touch if another channel is cut off.
Building a mailing list is also a great option for maintaining a more personal relationship with your audience. You have the freedom to send longer form updates, photos of your recent work, products you have for sale, and so on. You’ll find it easier to grow a mailing list if you start off with a promotion, contest, or some other incentive to get prospective fans/readers/collectors/customers signed up. And offering exclusive content or giveaways on a regular basis is a nice way to keep that growth going, as well as rewarding loyal subscribers who stay with you in the long run.
Mailing lists are also a great way to work with other creators to cross-promote your work. As you develop relationships with fellow NFT creators, you can share their wins and content alongside or alternating with your own. Newsletter swapping can be a great companion to social media relationships.
3. Blog About Your Work
Whether you love to talk about your process and sources of inspiration or not, it’s another very effective way of engaging with an audience. You might want to talk about why you created a particular piece, what inspires you in general, some of the software or techniques you use in your work, or possibly even challenges you had to overcome in order to be able to create.
Be sure to use your mailing list to build excitement about every new NFT, possibly offering your subscribers sneak peeks and a heads-up as to exactly when new content will drop. Those types of mailings can reinforce the novelty and rarity of your work.
Blogging will come easily to some creators and it will be a hair-pulling struggle for others. Remember that you can populate a blog with all kinds of topics, and include posts with more images than text. Either way, making time to update it regularly, inviting engagement and promoting the posts externally has potential to pay off in the long run.
And like a mailing list, your blog can be a home for content from your network. Interview a fellow artist. Give a signal boost to their next content drop. Or review someone whose work you love and draw inspiration from. In the case of your blog, particularly if it’s a domain you personally own, it’s critical to be sure you have permission when sharing third-party work. As you develop your network of fellow creators, you’ll get a sense of who is open to cross-promotion and who isn’t.
4. Create a Budget & a Growth Plan
We’ll start this section by saying that you don’t need a large (or any) budget to get started. Most of the suggestions above are low- or no-cost marketing activities. As you get deeper into the NFT world, you’ll encounter a new connotation of the word “shill” as it’s being used in terms of these marketing activities. When you’re getting the word out about your NFT, you’re shilling it. At Orderinbox, we have a dedicated section on our Discord server, Shillify, that provides one more channel for sharing your work.
Although if you start to see engagement and receive positive feedback, it might be worth investing in a little advertising, primarily through your social media channels. This can be as straightforward as boosting a post on Instagram or promoting a Tweet. Or you may create ad-specific content formatted to specs from the channel of your choice, linking specifically to your profile, your latest NFT, your newsletter.
And speaking of your newsletter, be sure to look up the free service threshold for your provider of choice. At what point will your mailing list be too large to contact for free? Will you weed out inactive contacts to stay free? Or do you want to grow at all costs, taking the chance that even a subscriber who hasn’t opened a message in months will come back into the fold? Knowing those answers ahead of time will help you to stay on track when you need to make those decisions.
5. Maintain a Content Schedule
Whether you adhere to a budget or not, communicating with your audience regularly regarding your NFTs, and any other projects or news is really important. Your audience will get a sense of how often they can expect to hear from you. And you’ll keep social algorithms happy. The best way to post regularly is to come up with a schedule, ideally with themes or topics you rotate through. When you know how often you plan to post, you’ll know how many ideas you need to generate for social or email content.
While we’re not saying that you should lower the bar, we do suggest being gentle with yourself in terms of expectations for how often you’ll create slam-dunk posts that go viral. (Spoiler alert: it’s not going to happen very often, at least not in the beginning.) But the potential is there and as you grow your presence, posting regularly, you’ll get a sense of what works and what doesn’t.
It’s also worthwhile to familiarize yourself with strategies for the channel(s) you plan to focus on. If you choose Instagram and Twitter, do some research and reading on specific strategies there. Because it’ll be more than just a matter of getting your hashtags right.
NFT Education
Creative careers are as old as civilization itself, but the concept of purchasing digital content is comparatively brand new. Most of the public is still getting to grips with the basic definition of an NFT. If you’ve minted an animation or a piece of vector art, you’ll be explaining why it’s an NFT to anyone not already in the know within your network.
And your offerings may not fall under the visual art or digital collectible categories, making it even more likely that your audience will have some learning to do about NFTs and Web3 technology. If your NFT is a song, short story, event ticket, etc., you’ll probably end up having additional conversations about why your item has a blockchain token attached to it.
Consider talking about NFTs and related technology on your social profiles, in your email newsletter, on your blog, through ads you purchase, and whatever combination of promotional tools you choose. Don’t think of it as an obligation, think of it as an opportunity. You need something to talk about and the Metaverse or the world of NFTs could be a regular topic you cover. Now is the time to be part of a movement that will change how creative products are made, consumed, and shared.
We have intentionally created a platform that offers visibility to all our users. Our feed is chronological, giving every newly minted NFT a moment in the spotlight. Our social features encourage on-site discussions and connections out to users’ off-site profiles. The result is an experience that helps all users to advance, fostering bonds between creators and collectors as well as excitement around each NFT.
Orderinbox is a growing, thriving community, expanding to include more backgrounds and personalities every day. Engaging with other users can help you learn about the world of NFTs and allow everyone to grow their audiences by cross-promoting.
As a decentralized marketplace, Orderinbox prioritizes our users and the community as a collective in a way few other platforms can. We succeed when you succeed. Ask for help. Or feedback. Or share what you’ve learned and help the next wave of newbies. Orderinbox is just getting started and we think it’s an exciting time to be here.
Join our community on Discord to start connecting today!
Originally published at https://blog.orderinbox.com on March 10, 2022.
