People are tired of passively consuming content on social media. They crave real conversations with real people. – Quincy Ememandu.

What is a crypto community?

Lately, I have dedicated significant time to imagine a universal definition of a community comprising all crypto assets.

This task is challenging, particularly given the diverse nature of Web3, such as cryptocurrency, metaverse, DAO(decentralized autonomous organizations), gaming, NFT, and smart contract platforms.

Definition

Community is characterized by a sense of ownership, where individuals feel a part of something larger than themselves and have skin in the game. 

The nature of individual involvement may be partially for financial or non-financial benefits such as reputation.

If you delve into the concept of community in Web3, you will identify three significant community drivers.

• Users – those who use Web3 products because of their use cases. 
• Developers – those who create, maintain or contribute to Web3 projects
• Traders/investors – those who purchase cryptocurrency to profit from its volatility.

Due to the permissionless nature of Web3, these drivers will always form their respective communities.

Therefore, regardless of the type of product being developed, it should be feasible to classify stakeholders into one or more of these drivers.

Difference between an audience and a community

An audience can be referred to as one person speaking to many people. Instagram, YouTube, and Twitter are examples of audience-based platforms. 

When you make an Instagram post, people comment and react to your post. When you post a video on YouTube, people watch it and comment. Those who ask questions drop them in the comment section, hoping you respond. 

In comparison, a community is many people interacting with each other.

Discord, Telegram, Slack, and Circle are social media platforms built especially for community management. In a community setting, different people talk to each other and network.

Most times, the moderator’s main job is to ban spammers, ensure civil conversations, and prevent trolls from dropping external links (which a bot can do). 

You can still manage your community in Facebook and LinkedIn groups, but specialized platforms offer better user experience and more features. 

For instance, you can use an NFT to access Discord servers. 

You can also use NFTs to get access to premium servers on Discord. 

Why is a Crypto community critical for Web3 projects?

1. Your community is your marketing weapon.
2. Reduced contentions in protocol forks.
3. Good governance.
4. Protecting members against haters and trolls.
5. Full Attention.
6. Get feedback while building.
7. An intimate private space for your members.

Your Community is Your Marketing Weapon.

Community building is another marketing word. If you get your community building right, you don’t have to do paid ads to get publicity. Instead, your community members will do that for you.

Most Web3 products with great communities have no reason to sponsor a paid ad to create awareness for any newly launched product.

When they launch a new product, it sells out immediately—using Binance as an example. Any launchpad they conduct gets sold out immediately without the issuer and Binance having to do paid advertisement. 

Previous participants know it performs well. Therefore they invite their friends to partake in it.

Reduced Contentions in Protocol Forks

Protocol forks can be detrimental to a Web3 product. However, segregating a community is not as simple as forking a blockchain. Your project can proactively defend against contentious fork by having a loyal community.

Good Governance

Web3 projects, by their very nature, lack a central authority or governing body that controls the network’s operations.

Instead, control is distributed among the network’s users and validators, who collectively decide on its direction and make crucial decisions regarding its governance, upgrades, and maintenance.

Having a vibrant crypto community actively engaged in the network’s operations is essential to ensure that control is in the hands of those who are invested in the network’s success. 

This is particularly important when it comes to decision-making, as community members with a vested interest and who are eligible can vote for changes that are in the best interests of the network as a whole.

Protecting Members Against Haters and Trolls

When unpopular opinions are mentioned, haters and trolls who do not want to understand the topic before commenting often divert meaningful conversations on the timeline. 

Most times, there are community members on your social media timeline learning more about your project. But with these interruptions, their curiosity remains unattended.

With a community, these trolls are sieved out to enable members to have an uninterrupted meaningful conversation. 

Most importantly, your community members have a safe and closed space to speak about their popular and unpopular opinions without being trolled and hated (some would report your account on social media)

Full Attention

When individuals give their complete attention, it enables in-depth conversations and debates about your Web3 project’s initiative, possibilities, and obstacles.

The active engagement in your community and willingness to challenge conventional thinking often leads to a vibrant ecosystem of ideas and innovations that have the potential to make your product more efficient.

Get Feedback While Building

The size and diversity of a community directly impact the pace of innovation.

This is evident with Bitcoin and Ethereum, which have benefited significantly from community contributions in the past year, particularly in areas such as scalability and privacy. 

When you build a product, you need non-team members to test it and give you feedback. A diverse community attracts various criticism to your test.

Why should people want to be part of your community?

1. Networking.
2. Information.
3. Support.

Networking

Being part of your community should provide members access to a network of people who can offer support, advice, and resources to help each other achieve their objectives.

Networking within your community should lead members to new personal and professional growth opportunities. For example, community involvement can provide access to job opportunities, partnerships, mentorship, and project collaboration.

Information

People join your community to access information early and unadulterated. 

In today’s world, information is power, and members are always looking for ways to gain knowledge and stay up-to-date with the latest trends and developments in their areas of interest. 

Therefore, your communities can offer valuable information, insights, and resources within the Web3 space to benefit individuals seeking to learn and grow.

By providing relevant, accurate, and timely information, members stay informed and make informed decisions.

Support

Support can be a fundamental reason for members to join your community because you give them a sense of belonging and connection with others who share similar experiences and challenges.

Your community should offer emotional, mental, and practical assistance to its members, which can be highly beneficial personally and professionally.

How to Build Your Community

Build your community where your members are

Start by building your community within the social media platform where community members are more active. 

Linkedin groups are the most important social media for medical professionals. 

Facebook is the most important social media for community building for digital marketers. 

Discord and Telegram are the most important social media for Web3 enthusiasts and developers.

Let’s talk about Discord and Telegram.

Set up your Discord community

First, you must set up your Discord account. Understanding Discord can be complicated, but it is worth it. 

Create and share quality content

Consistently creating content on your discord server is not the reason you created the server.

It is better to make a few important announcements and do milestone evaluations to get constructive feedback from your community than create content that isn’t beneficial to your community members. 

Communities provide the environment for your community members to network. If you need to create content consistently, it should be on Twitter to educate and attract more community members.

Add new admins and moderators for community management

Effectively moderating your community can be difficult. The fact remains that community management is time-intensive, especially when you have to answer a particular question 50 times a day.

As a founder or developer with other better things to do with your time, it is better to outsource your community management to a community manager to free up your time. 

Community managers go to the length of establishing personal relationships with community members. 

Outsourcing to admins and moderators doesn’t stop you from interacting in your community. Conducting a community call weekly or every two weeks is advisable so your members can feel your presence and remain confident.

Alternatively, you can elect leaders or Moderators based on people who have been selflessly contributing to your community since you started. This set of people answers almost every question they see in the group.

They don’t answer only if they are not in the group. 

This can reduce the stress of hiring a new moderator. You could hire them because you have experienced their social proof.

Understandably, you need moderators at the beginning of your project to handle your community. 

However, at the start, you only need a few moderators. As your community grows, you can add more moderators using the abovementioned method.

Create Multiple Communities (languages)

The Web3 space is filled with people of different languages. To avoid leaving apart some community members due to the language barrier, you could create communities for them. And hire a moderator that speaks their language. 

This makes every community member feel inclusive, feeling they have a skin in the game. It is these little things that turn followers into loyal community members.

Begin and respond to conversations

As I mentioned earlier, as a founder, you will only have time to engage sometimes in your community. The least you can do is respond to conversations in your leisure time.

Do you know how it feels to receive a like or comment from someone you respect? 

That’s how your community members feel when you comment and answer their questions. They feel honoured. 

In addition, you could begin conversations and stay until it has ended. 

Set the tone/rules

How do you feel when you join a community to inquire?

Then a random person who isn’t a moderator replies to you, saying, “the answer to this question is on the pinned post. Maybe you’re too lazy to read a simple instruction.” 

Telegram groups pin several pinned posts. As someone needing a fast response, asking such a question isn’t lazy but saves time. 

There are situations when insults begin to fly around in the middle of a debate in the group. 

This environment doesn’t encourage community members to express their opinion freely as it could lead to insult when people have an opposite opinion towards a topic. 

However, the solution is setting the tone from the onset. In the welcome message, you should write the rules of conduct in the community. 

You should also back up these rules with a temporary ban from the community if anyone disobeys. 

A respectful, reasonable, and law-abiding community attracts and retains quality members.

Use Discord and Telegram bots in your community

Some actions within a Discord server are too repetitive for a human to do. Instead of allowing your community managers to waste time on these repetitive tasks, you should delegate them to bots. 

This increases the productivity of the moderator by engaging in meaningful conversations and personal chats. 

Below are useful bots you should activate in your Discord server. Although they have paid services, they are FREE to use if you need more than their FREE version. 

1. Mee6bot: It gives statistics on a Discord server, welcomes new members, keeps track of the activity level of members of the server, and lots more. Learn how to set it up.
2. Pingcord: It is responsible for integrating your discord server with social media channels like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Reddit. It automatically posts whatever is being posted on these various platforms to a dedicated channel on Discord for all members to see. Learn how to set up your account.
3. Dynodiscord: This can be used for reaction role purposes and other functions. Dynobot can be a music bot to create playlists and other music activities on the Discord server. Dyno uses the reaction role to give out roles to any server member that reacts to an emoji set on a dedicated channel. Learn how to set it up.
4. Ticket tool bot: This makes attending to important issues in the Discord community easier. Issues like applying for a job, collaborations, and other vital information. This allows the members to communicate directly with a moderator or community manager. Learn how to set up this tool on your Discord server.
5. Collab land bot: Collab land interacts with your crypto wallets to know if you are a holder of a token or an NFT, depending on the project it is being used for. If you hold the project token or NFT, it gives you a special role. Learn how to set it up.
6. Rethinkable bot: This bot helps you get job openings sent directly to your discord server. But you must get Discord whitelisted with the bot team to set up the bot. 
7. Vulcanauth bot: This bot is for NFT Discord servers that need their members to prove they are holding the community NFT. Members don’t have to click links. They have to paste their wallet address in the bot’s DM and get verified. Setting up an account is straightforward.

Below are helpful Telegram bots you should use for your Telegram community

GIF

Gifs animations are used for sharing content and enhancing the appeal and enjoyment of conversations. They add to the delight of Telegram talks and improve the quality of communication.

Dr. Web

Dr. Web is an essential bot that safeguards your Telegram app against harmful links and messages. Verifying files and URLs in real-time ensures your communications’ safety. Additionally, the bot allows you to forward any suspicious messages for verification. If you manage a group chat, you can also add Dr. Web to help maintain order and security within the group.

Combot

Combot offers a comprehensive suite of features to help manage your group effectively, regardless of size. With its ability to track group statistics, filter spam and offensive content, and engage members with experience points and level systems, Combot is an all-in-one solution. This bot can also automatically remove unwanted messages and their contents. Learn how to set it up.

Rosebot

Rose offers various features such as greeting your users who joined the group newly and protecting users from spammers. You can offer answers to keywords so that when someone asks questions containing the keyword, it will automatically respond to the user without the admin manually responding. Learn how to set up the Rose bot.

Create a channel for customer support

Most times, users may experience issues requiring sending private information. Uploading or sending private information in a public space is unsafe. This is why you should create a channel to solve customer issues privately.

In addition, dropping issues in the public group can easily be drowned amid new chats pushing old ones up. This can easily make the moderator overlook your query. With a separate customer support channel, users get relief and confidence when you give them attention. 

Methods to grow your community quickly

 

One-on-one conversations 

Talking to people one-on-one is a great way to invite people into your community. You do not necessarily have to invite anyone you speak to in the community.

There must be a connection and an iota of interest in your work. The problem is that if you invite anyone you meet without gauging their interest, in the long run, you will have 20,000 members, 2,000 active members.

Here is an example.

When inviting people, it shouldn’t be limited to Web3 natives. Non-web3 natives that are interested can be added to the group. This is an added member from Web2 to Web3. 

You can establish these one-on-one conversations in Web3 conferences, meetups, fireside talks, etc. 

Create awareness

The more people know about your project, the more you grow your community. You must be amidst people your project appeals to but have not heard about you. 

You can create awareness using the following methods. 

1. Collaborate with other projects to go live on Twitter spaces, Discord, Instagram, Telegram, etc. 
2. Appear on podcast
3. Speak at live events, e.g., Hackathon, blockchain meetups, or conferences in your country or around. 
4. Reach out to Influencers to educate their audience about your project. You can do a Twitter space together. 
5. Be active in the account’s comment section that has your potential audience and provides real value. 
6. Create referral programs for your existing community members. Reward them with your token or FREE access to a premium community or giveaway. 
7. Incentivize your community in the form of is airdrop. Airdrop is a marketing strategy used by Web3 projects to create awareness. When people hear there would be an airdrop, they refer your community to their friends, family, and community. 
8. Make Influencers your community Ambassadors. This reduces the friction of their community members from joining your community. 

Some people want to know about your project when you create this awareness. You must include a call to action always. 

It could be to join your community or follow your Twitter account. Creating awareness without a call to action wastes your effort and time. 

Inbound Marketing

The bigger you get, the more people join your community without you putting any effort into bringing in people. Your real members and fans will do the marketing for you.

This strategy often works when you have given people value and a wonderful experience using your product.

This is a long-term strategy, so you may expect not to get a result quickly. 

Combine all these strategies to grow your community. If your product is in an early stage, inbound marketing would be difficult for you to do because you have yet to give people value and an experience to seek for your product.

Your best bet is one on one conversation and creating awareness.

How to nurture your community

Respond to everyone

Respond to as many people as you can. You don’t have to do it yourself; your community managers should ensure this is done. The primary reason people join communities is to get attention to their problems.

If people are not being attended to in your community, why should they stay longer?

Authentication

Have you noticed that community managers who embrace vulnerability inspire community members to be vulnerable without feeling bad or being blamed for their shortcomings? 

As we consistently announce successes, we should also announce failures because it gives community members a sense of shared experiences and fosters authenticity. 

You could show a behind-the-scenes picture or video of your project. 

Ask your community to vote for your new logo, announcement, branding, etc.

Lastly, go deeper into the conversation when interacting with community members, not just surface-level interaction. 

For example, instead of

“how was your day?”

Ask.

“Tell me about how you spent your day.”

Analyze your results

After building your community or as you are building your community, you should analyze your results every quarter for the following reasons.

1. To evaluate the effectiveness of your strategies.
2. To identify areas for improvement.
3. To track progress.
4. To demonstrate the impact of your effort to stakeholders, funders, partners, and perhaps community members.
5. To use data to inform your decision-making process.

FAQs

What approach would you take to build an NFT community following? 

Building an NFT community is the same as building a crypto community.

However, in an NFT community, there are inner groups that offer more value to the general group. To access these internal groups, you need an NFT to join.

You need a BAYC Bored Ape Yacht Club NFT to join their exclusive club.

How do I become a good crypto community manager?

You have to have this set of skills. It doesn’t have to be inherited, but you should learn them.

1. Understand the crypto industry. 
2. Build strong communication skills.
3. Be people-oriented.
4. Become a keypad extrovert.
5. Learn to build partnerships and collaborations.
6. Learn to be optimistic in the face of trouble.
7. Flexible and adaptable to changing circumstances.
8. Be creative and innovative when engaging the community.

What are the 3 C’s of successful community engagement?

1. Communication: Clear and effective communication is crucial for engaging with your community. 
2. Collaboration: You need to build relationships, foster trust, and identify opportunities for collaboration.
3. Consistency: You need to show up often and deliver on your promises. This makes you reliable and trustworthy before your community members.

What is the most important trait of a successful NFT community? 

The most successful trait in a thriving NFT community is a sense of community ownership and engagement.

In a thriving NFT community, members feel a sense of ownership and investment in the community. They actively engage with each other, participate in community events, and take pride in their contributions to the community’s success.

The community values transparency, authenticity, and inclusivity. Members feel comfortable sharing their opinions and ideas and are encouraged to participate in community decision-making.

How do I keep the NFT community engaged?

1. Create valuable content and resources.
2. Host live events and activities.
3. Encourage community participation in events and activities.
4. Build personal relationships with your community members.
5. Reward and recognize contributions.

What are the roles of a crypto community manager?

1. Engaging with community members.
2. Creating and curating content for the community, such as blog posts, newsletters, videos, or social media posts.
3. Moderating community discussions and activities.
4. Developing and implementing strategies to grow the community and increase engagement.
5. Monitoring and analyzing community engagement and performance metrics.
6. Building relationships with community members, stakeholders, and partners and representing the organization in external events and activities.
7. Collecting and synthesizing feedback and insights from the community.