Best Practices For Distributing And Promoting Your NFTs To The Right Audience
You think you’re ready to become the next NFT success story? Buckle up, as this will be slightly more frustrating than just paying for Google ads.
If you randomly landed here, take a side road to 🛣
Before we start, you should keep in mind that there are no shortcuts here, in the sense that you can’t sell 1 billion ‘fidget spinners’ just because you paid $1k in TikTok ads lol.
The crypto community doesn’t forgive brute cash grabbers, and you will have a hard time selling any NFT if you’re not truly committed to the scene, and only see this as an opportunity to leverage the ongoing hype. Fear not though, as the same community can transform from a tomato throwing catapult to a loving unicorn that hugs you with its ponytail, given the right vibes.
“Make friends! The space is still young and has some barriers to entry that prevent a lot of people from getting involved. If you are willing to get in the mix with the community there is an abundance of help and support available.” — Rizzle, early NFT pioneer
Also, please analogize the fact that we at RareCandy3D have not sold every single release we put out there, and I don’t think any project does, even the most popular ones, and that’s fair to say at least. This disclaimer basically means that it is not guaranteed that following all the tactics mentioned in this piece will lead straight to your success, yet it will offer you a broader understanding of the scene, its sub-market, and eventually help you stand out from the mass.
In this article, we’re going through some of the most popular and what seems to be natural ways of promotion, but also some interesting pathways we’ve experimented with in the past and eventually stuck to, based on experience and user interactivity, that might not necessarily make sense to someone who has never dealt with NFTs before.
Listings, Listings, Listings
It sounds like a basic and pretty straightforward process that you practically can’t avoid since you’re minting an NFT, but diversified listings is one of the most underrated, yet powerful means of exposure for digital ownership contract creators.
In most cases, especially in the fine art and visual asset scene, digital artists tend to work under exclusive deals with a specific platform of choice. Eg. SuperRare, Foundation, Rarible etc. On its own, that’s not a real deal-breaker for exposure, but, not every collector is on eg. SuperRare, meaning that you literally miss on pockets that would gladly include your piece in ’em, if only they weren’t unaware of the fact you even exist.
Sure, every NFT that’s powered by ERC-721 or ERC-1155 protocols can be also found on OpenSea, and Rarible (in most cases — with tiny exceptions), regardless of the platform of origin of the asset in question, which is undoubtedly good for exposure, especially if you leverage that exact fact. The problem is, OpenSea is literally what the title suggests: A Sea of assets, where it is sometimes hard to spot the exotic single-edition jellyfish that might be lurking in its waters.
Listings are not just about listing your NFTs with different platforms, but also being in the firm position to actively leverage these unique relationships with each one of the platforms in a standalone way.
It’s never going to be enough, just being listed on OpenSea in addition to your main platform of choice. Instead, try to get in touch with the OpenSea team (which is super cool and down to earth) and discuss potential joint efforts in promoting your work. In parallel, try to experiment with auctions, bundle sales, discounts, referrals etc. to enhance the activity under your contract.
Now, one of the most important aspects of diversified listings would be to actually own your NFT contract. In a nutshell, if you mint an NFT via Rarible’s native contract, you will be able to sell it on Rarible, and it will appear on OpenSea (you still should open a proper store-front to avoid looking like a random contract from a random guy with no info), but you will get a hard time listing this contract anywhere outside.
Owning your own contract means that you have created it by yourself without relying upon third-party minting factories. Some platforms, like Mintbase, offer native contract creation that you can actually own and pimp according to your branding.
Furthermore, and besides the aesthetic part, owning your NFT contract means that you can import it in third-party marketplaces that allow for external contracts like OpenSea, Rarible, Cargo, Mintable, and more.
What does that mean? In essence, it means that you can mint an NFT and use all these different platforms as distribution channels, instead of minting the same thing under their in-house contracts. You both avoid duplicate releases under different NFT contracts, and you are also in a position to expose the same asset (token ID) via different communication channels. So if for example, someone buys your NFT on Rarible, the asset will be marked as sold in all other platforms as well, considering it’s practically the exact asset, just shown in a plethora of public marketplaces.
Crypto Twitter (Yes!)
Do you remember Twitter? The one that basically became Crypto Twitter in 2018, before ending up to NFT Twitter in 2021. That’s right. This is not an exaggeration.
Twitter is a microblogging platform where you get to see thoughts, ideas, news, debates, polls, and research staff, as well as links to third-party media in a fast-food fashion.
I see Twitter as a light version of Reddit, where edge stuff is discussed before you read it on Reuters. :) Cryptocurrencies like BTC and ETH were always hyped on Twitter, but this year, a particular subdomain of the Ethereum ecosystem is trending 24/7 on a worldwide scale: #NFTs.
Literally, 99% of my feed is covered by stuff like “Drop your NFTs below, I will spend x amount of ETH on the ones I like”, or stuff like “x famous person who has nothing to do with DLTs, is suddenly issuing an NFT :)” I mean from Elon Musk to Paris Hilton, they’re all down the rabbit hole nowadays.
If you’re just starting with nifties, there is a good chance you’re not a casual Twitter user, mostly relying upon Instagram, and messenger apps for comms. This should change as of now.
I can’t really explain in a sentence why Twitter is so crypto-friendly and why it is considered a must for any DLT-related venture to have a Twitter presence nowadays, but I can assure you, you’ll not regret it.
Max Osiris’ laconic reply when we asked him what would be the ideal starting point for newcomers who want to promote their NFTs was: “Tweetatst!!!!!”
One could argue that Instagram is as important as Twitter, especially when considering Facebook’s daughter platform is tailored for visual content (which makes up 99% of all NFTs atm), but… I’ve noticed that Instagram folks make up an extremely wide/generic audience that might have heard about NFTs thanks to influencers they are following, but don’t expect them to be the ones buying your fancy nifties. That’s not only because they’re not crypto-natives (unlike Twitter heralds), but also because Instagram doesn’t allow for direct links in posts, meaning that you’d expect Instagram navigators to do their own research, change between tabs and apps, before typing your name in a search bar. (unlikely to happen in most cases).
Traditional Media Outlets
This is a tough one, as you can’t expect Bloomberg writing about your NFTs, except if it’s not trash-art made in Microsoft paint, but actually, a novel use-case that disrupts some of the old well-established industries. Eg. fashion wearables as phygitals, audio NFTs, etc.
Try to communicate your concept release as a new form of media in an already established market environment, while avoiding using terms like blockchain, crypto, and NFTs. Eg. “Where Are New Fashion Trends Born During The Covid-19 Era” — It has nothing to do with crypto or NFTs, yet you can shill your fashion NFTs indirectly while talking about the shift of trends in the specific industry.
Paying traditional media to shamelessly shill your NFTs, will only rank your credibility down, instead of helping out. Hence, make sure there’s a story to tell and that is worth listing on a major outlet, before even considering engaging with one.
Again, while most folks would go for super basic crypto-friendly outlets like CNBC, Bloomberg etc, I’d rather target industry-specific outlets that could reflect on our specific release. Promoting a musical NFT? Try Pitchfork, FACT Magazine, and Rolling Stone, instead of CNBC. Not only will it reach a tailored audience that most likely will appreciate your work, but it also shows that you actually do your own homework and didn’t just pay CNBC $2k for a mention.
Cent and Other Web3 Media
If you don’t know what cent is: I’d call it a Twitter x Medium, where everyone is familiar with crypto, like literally. Cent is one of the early NFT-community mediums that have supported artists and projects, cooperative efforts in the domain, and metaverse, and it even rewards its content creators with crypto. Now, how cool is that?
Web3 Media Outlets are not very popular among the masses, but they are basically alternatives to every social media you’re using, only crypto-native. I am not diving into detail into this as it should be pretty self-explanatory, but here are a couple of low hanging fruits for you to start absorbing what’s up: Peepeth (Twitter-like platform), 3BOX (0x ID platform).
THE Metaverse
Oooof. Where do you even start with this one?
What we refer to as the metaverse is essentially a virtual domain that is accessible in a 3d fashion, meaning that you’re not browsing it in your typical google chrome page manner, but rather navigate it with an avatar perspective, similar to open-world RPG games.
Sure, you’d say VRChat is a metaverse, and as a matter of fact, it is, but when we’re talking about THE Metaverse, we mean web3 compatible metaverses where you actually log in with your 0x wallet/ID and not with your Steam account.
There are many compelling reasons as to why would you do that, but most importantly, anything you see in the web3 Metaverse from parcels/land pieces to wearables, to decorations, and exhibited art, is most likely an NFT, and you can instantly buy it off the wall while in-game.
Metaverses are super important for NFT-natives, and if you don’t have a presence in at least one popular web3 metaverse, you could never compete with the big league (basically projects that are already in the metaverse as an extension of their NFT exposure).
The largest crypto, and especially NFT-communities were born inside THE metaverse, and even those that haven’t so, are now part of it. There will be a dedicated article for THE Metaverse, that shall be linked here when published. Until then, take a look at some of the most important web3 Metaverses out there (sorry if I didn’t mention your favorite one, these are just the ones I have personally used and experienced):
Mouth-To-Mouth or DM-to-DM 🗣
A traditional means of promotion that will never let you down. Tailor your messages to the right audience and try being personal instead of copy-pasting soulless sentences. Never shill before you’re positive the person you’re trying to shill to is at least interested. If you start a message that contains a link — there are practically 0 chances that you even get a reply.
Mouth-to-mouth, or what can be also described as dm-to-dm pr practices on the internet, can enhance your reputation as easily and as fast as they could kill it, based on how you handle it, therefore such practices should be considered as a thin-line that you should never over-abuse.
Private mailing lists, Twitter DMs, Discord DMs, etc. are all fine, as long as you are confident your audience is not going to find your message inappropriate if not offensive, or even worse block you. I personally block like 10 ppl/day on Discord just because they have 0 shame and God shall strike them down!
Be concise, to the point, and always ask first. Maybe they don’t wanna hear about it now, or ever lol. You can’t just spray your hyperlink material whenever you get the chance to cntrl+V.
DMs is something you will eventually come across whether you want it or not, if you’re in the space for some time, considering industry folks are super friendly, curious, transparent, and they’d expect the same from you, being part of the broader ecosystem.
DMs can lead to new friendships, partnerships, collaborative efforts, and obviously new buyers if handled with finesse rather than desperation.
What To Avoid ⚠
Note, I am not saying you can’t use the following practices, just sharing my personal experiences that could be used as a reference.
LinkedIn — Generally, you can post business, and/or tokenomics related stuff, but don’t expect LinkedIn people to buy your NFTs, similar to Insta peeps, meaning that you can use it as an update medium for your community and followers, but not as a lead to new collectors.
Shilling — No matter where never shill without asking/being 100% sure the audience would like to see it! The above should have taught that to you already ❤ It is of course ok to shill for example an audio NFT release in an audio NFT related discord channel, while the discussion is about new audio NFT releases. You can always explain your hyperlink, instead of plain cntrl+V to enhance the chances of clicks. If you do the latter in a random discord server, where people are discussing scalability issues, I’d personally ask the admin to ban you for life :)
Paid promotion — at least avoid it at the start, trust me, it doesn’t work. I mean it can bring up some numbers in terms of exposure, but won’t raise your sales confidence by a bit. You should have the community on your side before paying for ads, because if the community learns about you through a spammy ad instead of eg. a Cryptovoxels event, not only they won’t appreciate what you do, but most likely they will never click anything related to you. We’ve all been there. Take eToro’s YT ads as an example. Do you have eToro? that’s what I thought.
Conclusion
In general, you don’t want a lot of random folks to know you’re into NFTs while being unable to navigate the scene in order to actually purchase one of them, but you really want a small group of web3 pockets that are just waiting for the right piece to compliment their collection.
Finally, be a true NFT enthusiast, try to experiment with novel use-cases, meet with people who might be working on a similar concept as yours, participate in web3 events and public threads/convos. If you expect to sell NFTs by just tweeting about them, we can only wish you the best of luck with it ^^
“Study crypto/DeFi and whatever blockchain development come, they will apply to your art sales. Uploading your work and waiting for a bid is merely one of the millions of ways to generate income from your art in this space” — ROBNESS, crypto-art pioneer, controversy god!
About RareCandy3D
Did you enjoy this article? Feel free to browse our RC3-Academy catalog at:
https://medium.com/rc3-academy
RareCandy3D is a virtual publishing house of scarce NFT originals as well as a distribution channel for traditional indie artists, brands, record labels, and products that want to tap into the $2T crypto market without tackling the learning curve that sustains the gap between the two commerce fields.
We are committed to pleasing your audiovisual and emotional sensors since 2020.
