There were more than 852 ICOs in early 2018, and ICO community management strategies have gotten even more crucial since then. These 852 ICOs attracted over $5B worth of financing. Despite the tremendous growth in this sector, it’s also getting overcrowded. As such, new projects are bound to face challenges when offering their tokens to prospective buyers.
Initial Coin Offering (ICO) projects rely on blockchain-based DeFi (decentralized finance) programs. In order for these crypto projects to prosper, they need backing from an active and dependable crypto investor community. As such, developing a community for your project is a key ingredient for success.
We’ve put together a guide with robust techniques that you can leverage for community management. They’ll help you develop a community for your crypto project.
Developing a crypto community: A step-by-step guide
What’s a crypto community?
Regardless of the size, a crypto community refers to a social group of people who have a shared interest in blockchain or cryptocurrencies. Similarly, ICO communities also comprise audiences who share a common interest in an upcoming ICO.
Popularizing a project requires the creation of hype or a buzz around it. To accomplish this, you must target the relevant audience. This is where social media platforms make powerful additions to your marketing campaign. You’ll find that almost all crypto enthusiasts are active on one or several social media platforms. If you need to build a community, platforms like Twitter, Instagram, and LinkedIn can be helpful.
Another important aspect when it comes to community management is being active on these platforms. Once you build a community for your project, the members will be looking forward to updates.
In addition, some will have questions, suggestions, and feedback that you need to respond to promptly. That’s not all – there are community members who will be expecting insightful content related to your project. Therefore, whether your community is based on Twitter, Facebook, Reddit, or Discord, you must ensure you’re an active member.
Posting insightful content on niche-specific platforms is helpful. If you’ve identified your audiences are on specific platforms e.g. LinkedIn, Medium, or Reddit, invest in content marketing in these spaces. You should develop and post relevant content that relates to your project.
Ensure the content you produce is educational but, it’s even more crucial that this content is engaging. It should educate your audience and let them know what your project entails.
If you’re looking for an effective strategy, then start with identifying crypto groups on various platforms. A great place to start this search is social media platforms. Once you identify them, then share informative content about your project with them. This is also a great place to post your whitepaper for investors to read. It’s also one way to expand your marketing campaigns and reach more audiences.
Community building tips to implement
1. Management of the ICO community on Telegram
Telegram rank high among the best social media platforms for crypto marketing. With a massive number of active users, it’s the best place to build a community for your project. You can also use Telegram if you want to create a crypto group with active participants.
The platform supports open-ended conversations, making communication between members easier. It also enhances your rate of interaction with investors while allowing the sieving of trolls from the group.
As one of the favorite social platforms in the crypto space, Telegram comes with amazing perks. But before we get to that, this app is among the top picks when it comes to messaging. This is because Telegram has one of the simplest interfaces that makes it user-friendly. Therefore, as a starter, you can easily master your way around this app in the shortest time possible.
Furthermore, you get quality feedback from community members, especially from experienced audiences. As a result, your project can develop trust and credibility. As a community manager on Telegram, you have to welcome new users. You’re also responsible for the collection of new ideas after members contribute their views regarding the project. Additionally, as a Telegram community admin, you must have great PR skills, especially for unifying the community.
2. Influencer outreach
If you want to develop brand awareness and build a potential following, then working with influencers is a relevant and wise choice. By posting or discussing your project on their platforms, they can evoke interest among their followers and leave them wanting to learn more. As a result, organic traffic will begin flowing to your site.
Influencers do a great job of promoting products and services and they can help promote your ICO to a relevant audience. Speaking of relevant audiences, you also need relevant influencers to help promote your project. Therefore, don’t just pick any influencer. Before you sign off on working with a particular influencer, make sure their audience aligns with your target audience.
It goes without saying that you need to focus on crypto influencers. That’s because their following comprises crypto enthusiasts. In other words, they’ll be promoting your product to the right audiences. Thanks to their massive following, your ICO project will receive great traffic.
3. Running regular polls
Maintaining a close relationship with the members of your community is essential to your project. It allows you to not only interact with them directly but also understand their perspective of your project.
By conducting, you can learn more about their distastes and preferences. This is also a good way to introduce community participation in decision-making.
Polls also help with fostering trust among your team. Hosting AMA (Ask Me Anything) events allows for one on one interaction through questions and answers. It also allows you to engage the community regarding your project offering. Through polls and AMA sessions, members of the community can also get clarification on various issues concerning your project.
4. Email marketing
Email marketing still reigns among the top campaign strategies and that’s because of the many benefits it brings on board. Since email addresses are critical nowadays, many people have them. If you employ email marketing strategically, your project will grow exponentially.
With the right email marketing strategy, your project will reach a massive number of potential investors fast. Email marketing also presents you with a platform for sharing your whitepaper with prospective investors. Serious investors will read this document and give your project a chance.
Email marketing has other great benefits. For instance, it allows for close engagement with your target audiences. It allows you to reach customers instantly and allows you to communicate with them directly. Last but not least, email marketing accommodates various media. Thus, you can share your marketing content in video, image, text, or audio form.
5. Airdrop program
Airdrops are a form of incentive or reward to community members. However, for them to access these free tokens, they must contribute to your brand or company. Oftentimes, the contribution is helping with brand awareness through marketing. In this case, building ICO awareness is one way they can contribute.
This technique is effective in spreading awareness of your project to potential investors. And the community members who participate have a chance to get rewarded through this program. Also noteworthy, the reward is also offered to potential clients who are willing to be part of your project community.
As a result, airdrops are an effective strategy for getting prospects onboard quickly. Conducting airdrop campaigns will also grab the attention of those who want to benefit from free tokens. Most importantly, though, it’s the fastest way of creating a buzz for your project. Current token holders also have an opportunity to double/triple their investment.
6) Bounty programs
A bounty is a reward that businesses offer to people after they complete a certain task. You can use this technique to build awareness for your ICO project. The bounty will be like an incentive for community members to promote your project. Those who successfully aid in the development of a community for your project will receive rewards.
With bounty programs, you not only benefit from project advocates, but you also get guardians who help protect your project. You can also rest assured that they will report anything that undermines the project including bugs and trolls.
Furthermore, they’ll also contribute to your project through recommendations and positive criticism. You see, when someone spends more time interacting with your project, they may spot some hidden flaws that need fixing. When they report such flaws, they can also enjoy the bounty, while the project structure improves
7. Referral programs
If you’re targeting result-oriented strategies, referral programs is one of them. It’s easier to implement this in your project and garner the results you’re targeting. If you deploy this technique well in the community, you’ll attract potential investors and crypto enthusiasts.
The impact of a referral program has a ripple effect. The audience you acquire through referral programs also ends up being an advocate for your ICO project. If this goes on successfully, you’ll reach a massive number of crypto fans.
Referral programs primarily rely on the word of mouth as the means to spread the word about your project. If your project captures the attention of many crypto community members, you will find your reach growing organically. Many audiences in the crypto space will be happy to share news about your project with their friends and families.
This evangelic strategy will foster more conversions, enabling your project to get a boost in the marketplace. However, for referral programs to work well, you’ll need to provide rewards or incentives. This will be motivation for community members. The rewards could be free tokens or coins from your project. Alternatively, it could be a better ranking. It all depends on what your community finds to be more interesting.
Furthermore, this system of rewards is both captivating and engaging to community members. It makes them feel like part of your project. As such, they will feel motivated to spread the word about it. The outcome is a win-win situation, they get rewards, and you get a community to support the project.
8. Outsourcing community admin
When you’re just starting out, running every aspect of your ICO project can be a challenging task. It’s even more daunting if you’re responsible for other community development tasks besides building your project. Therefore, if you’re stuck and don’t know the next step to take, reach out for help. A PR with specific experience in crypto PR will assist you. They’ll not only develop the relevant community but also help you to manage it.
When launching ICO projects, time is always scarce. As such, you’re left to handle many tasks within a limited time frame. In this situation, outsourcing the necessary help is a wise step to take. This solution provides you with access to experts who have all the time to market your product. By leveraging their skills and expertise, they’ll also develop a community to back your project through active engagement.
Therefore, outsourcing is often the best method of managing an ICO community. The best part is that an established crypto agency already has the resources to build and manage the community. As a result, there’s no time wastage and the growth of the community will be faster.
It’s always important to outsource an agency with an established crypto community. They should also have many members in their community. That’s because a large community will quickly create hype for your project in the crypto space. As a result, you’ll get more investors.
Outsourcing community administration is time-saving. It brings in results faster and helps your project gain traction in the crypto marketplace. It also allows you to tap into an existing crypto community instead of targeting them randomly on various platforms.
Conclusion
Like any other fundraising model, the ICO model has faced a few setbacks. Even so, it remains one of the top methods you can use for crowdfunding your ICO blockchain projects. However, to leverage this method for fundraising with maximum results, it’s important to have a community. That’s where the above strategies will come in handy.
The guide above should help you develop a supportive community that can actively contribute to your ICO project.