Since early 2017, the number of cryptocurrency projects has increased remarkably. Despite the rapid growth of new Initial Coin Offerings (ICOs), the total value of investments in these projects have fallen since December, a time when the total investment value exceeded US $1.5 billion.
What is ICO
ICOs offer cryptocurrency projects fast and low cost alternative methods for obtaining the public funds required to develop new technologies and/or start or expand their companies.
However, as the success of an ICO is inherently dependent on public contribution. It is important that project teams carefully consider how, and through what channels, they market their services.
Statistics from Bitcoin.com reveal that all too often ICO and cryptocurrency projects neglect to formulate a community engagement strategy, which can directly impact the performance of ICOs, pre and post-crowdfunding rounds. In the same way that conventional businesses achieve strategic advantages, by clearly accentuating value propositions to new and prospective customers.
Cryptocurrency projects that produce effective marketing campaigns aimed at cultivating brand ambassadors and engaging communities, will likely perform better in the long run.
Why Is Community Engagement Important?
Only 54% of all cryptocurrencies and ICOs from 2017, are still operational. Almost every second cryptocurrency project last year failed. A trend which tends to reflect, either the drawbacks of the decentralised nature of such projects, or the lack of a clear community engagement strategy.
Being able to effectively engage a community requires choosing the right marketing strategy, particularly managing the various platforms on which you are likely to communicate the developments of the project.
For digital currencies, commonly used social media platforms and communication tools include:
- Telegram,
- Discord,
- Bitcointalk,
- Twitter,
- Reddit.
The right level of resource commitment for the engagement strategy is also an important consideration. A return on investment should not be sought immediately, as an upfront cost is generally required to create the community and generate interest in the project.
Community engagement should form an integral part of a new cryptocurrency’s go-to-market plan for the following reasons:
5 Tips To Help You Engagement Community
Delivering information to the participants of your project can be complex and time-consuming. Our 5-successful community engagement strategy tips, are here to help.
1. Quickly respond to comments and questions by internally assigning a community success manager
It is important to promptly respond to questions and provide regular updates about the project.
Much like any other business, promptness and timely responses can help to reduce customer frustrations about a particular problem or issue. Because communities can be large, simple questions can oftentimes be answered by other users.
However, our research shows that having community success managers, who are responsible for responding to requests & questions, managing content, and making sure that participants are closely aligned with the goals and objectives of the project, is a major key to growing a digital community and having a successful project.
2. Be transparent
Quality over quantity. As prudential supervision of ICO and cryptocurrency markets intensifies, primarily to ensure that projects are not breaching Anti Money Laundering (AML) laws, successful community engagement strategies will ensure that project updates are frequent, though not misleading.
Public information must fully comply with the relevant regulatory requirements that apply to cryptocurrencies and ICOs.
3. Engage your community
Digital token projects can engage their communities through campaigns such as bounties, competitions, celebrity involvement, and other unique and engaging marketing content.
Utilising the services of an external digital marketing agency, may help to reduce the financial and administrative costs often associated with developing these campaigns internally.
Bounties are useful reward mechanisms that facilitate network participation and help to improve the security of Blockchain applications. Commonly, fiat or digital currencies are awarded to participants who identify security loopholes.
Attracting well-known advisors, investors, celebrities, or partnering with the right marketing content agency can also help engage new and existing investors with your project.
4. Manage forum content
Once an engagement strategy has been chosen, the project team should manage the content produced by the community.
There are two main points that need to be emphasised here: firstly, managing content can reduce security vulnerabilities. Secondly, monitoring community discussions ensures that the underlying values and details of the project are not obscured by community participants.
Security vulnerabilities and inefficiencies can exist on messaging services like Slack, posing risks to the project and its participants. In 2014, more than $490,000 was siphoned from the Enigma community due to the channel being compromised by scammers.
More recently, projects like Streamr, Aragon, and OmiseGo have also made the move away from slack arguing that its recent update, which allows multiple users to have the same username, can have damaging impacts for the community, particularly when malicious users pose as founders or project leaders.
Messaging services like Slack and Telegram, enable communities to freely contribute in group discussions. Therefore project teams need to ensure that information about its values and developments are correct.
Managing forum content can reduce and isolate issues that arise from the transmission of misinformation.
5. Choose the right communication tools
There are a number of low-cost and easy-to-use messenger services available to cryptocurrency projects.
Whilst services such as Telegram, a private cloud-based messenger technology, has been identified as a commonly used tool for broadcasting updates and facilitating public discussion for cryptocurrency communities, we also recommend Signal, Twitter, and Discord.
A report from Crypto briefing has identified that promising ICOs can often be determined by the existence of an active Telegram channel, though not without some apparent issues that mostly result from participants having to self-police their own content.
The right messenger service(s), coupled with an effective internal content management procedure should ensure that information is transmitted cheaply and securely.
Created by Cyberius, a digital marketing company who specializes in online community management and crowdfunding.
If you’re interested in building a digital community to help grow your startup or existing company, consider contacting us at: zaneta@cyberius.com.
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