Many early-stage crypto projects don’t know they need PR. But most understand the benefits of a strong social media following, and if there’s one Holy Grail when it comes to social media coverage in the Web3 space, it’s Crypto Twitter. For nascent crypto projects, growing the number of Twitter followers is essential to build that much-needed credibility and stand out amid the noise of the crypto space.
Because of the nature of the crypto market - decentralized, with company employees often scattered across the globe, and sometimes even hiding behind avatars - a strong social media following is even more important than it would be for a more traditional business. And Crypto Twitter is certainly a good place to start building up this audience.
So how should a crypto startup go about gaining more followers on Twitter? Is it simply the case of posting tweets multiple times a day? Should you be paying for followers to get your numbers up? Should you spend thousands to promote your account in order to gain visibility? Or perhaps working with crypto influencers is the answer?
Indeed, some of these strategies can help you get more followers and build the credibility of your project. For example, many crypto businesses work closely with influencers to promote their offering, and get strong results. But if you're a crypto startup considering such a strategy, one look at an influencer's price list and you'll see the problem: cost. Influencers, while often effective, also tend to be an expensive addition to a digital marketing strategy. And for many early-stage projects, the cost can be prohibitive. So what's the answer if your marketing budget is constrained?
One of the biggest mistakes nascent projects make is assuming that more new followers automatically equals more success. This leads to the erroneous belief that simply buying followers can solve the problem. However, to truly grow your Twitter audience, you need to determine the type of followers you want to attract and create a strategy to attract the types of followers that will turn into loyal community members. That’s where an experienced Web3 PR agency can really add value – after all, social media is part of PR, especially in the crypto space.
Once you engage an agency, they can help you devise this strategy and create the content you need to attract the right eyes to your project. Determining your target audience is the first and, arguably, most important step in your journey to grow your Twitter followers. Collecting information about your audience demographics, including their interests, language, gender and location, can really help you create a more targeted Twitter marketing strategy.
If you haven't got this figured out, you may as well be throwing random content at the wall to see what sticks. Once you've pinpointed the audience you want to attract, however, you'll be able to target your tweets to reach your target. You'll also be able to talor your keywords to the topics your chosen demographic may be interested in and include these keywords in your tweets.
However, it’s not the follower numbers that really matter. Rather, it’s the engagement rate you should be looking at to ascertain how successful your strategy really is. The engagement rate is essentially the number of times a viewer has engaged with your tweet, whether in an organic fashion or via a promotion. Engagements include a retweet, a reply, or a URL click, for example.
This metric will show you how well-received your content is and allow you to tailor it to your target audience. So what's a good engagement rate? Typically, anything above 0.5% is considered good. Conversely, an engagement rate under 0.5% indicates there is still work to be done. Indeed, it's better to have a smaller following of incredibly engaged Twitter users than a ton of Twitter followers who ignore everything you put out.
Once you have determined your target audience, it's time to put together a strategy to start hitting these engagement metrics. However, it's worth noting that this part is time-consuming. This is where an experienced PR and digital marketing agency can really add value. Working closely with your project, digital marketing gurus can help you understand what types of followers you want to attract, which social media platforms to target for the best results, and - crucially - how to implement this into reality.
There are several golden rules in social media community building. Perhaps the most important of these rules is consistency. Yes, in answer to our previous question above, you should be posting tweets multiple times every day to maintain visibility and show that your project is active and successful.
But posting what exactly? This is the second golden rule of social media marketing: interactive content. You want to be tweeting content that attracts the most engagement, but there is so much other content to compete with on social media that your tweets really must stand out. That means posting daily content that attracts attention and offers compelling insights into your project or area of expertise.
Videos are a good way to achieve this, and this is something a PR agency with experience in digital marketing can help you create. This interacting social media content can help you get more Twitter followers organically and drastically improve your engagement rate.
Another great strategy is teaming up with existing contacts to collaborate on interactive tweets. You could do anything from co-announcements for partnerships to real-time AMAs with your new partners. With the help of a PR agency, your social media strategy could see you reaching out to existing and new partners to create engaging content to attract new members to your community and leverage the existing networks of your partners.
As well as helping you attract new followers by providing exposure to your collaborator's Twitter audience, it would also help forge new relationships with potential future partners and raise your overall credibility in the space. This is another area where a well-connected agency can step in. From finding the perfect collaborators to creating every tweet, an agency's support could be invaluable to take your Twitter profile to the next level.
Once you’ve designed your strategy and planned out some tweets, it’s time to start actually building your community. This is where third-party community-building platforms, like Discord and Zealy, can really help.
These platforms can help you prompt your community members to engage with your social media content, promote community events and initiatives and gather feedback from community members. Platforms like Zealy facilitate that personal touch that’s so crucial for community building, as well as giving you the power to moderate any discussions or enforce community guidelines. In short, this is a tool to oversee your social media strategy to ensure you get the most of out of your efforts.
Before you get to this point, though, there’s a great deal of work to do to ensure your social media strategy targets the right demographic and is designed to achieve the results your business requires. This is where the help of a Web3 PR agency can be invaluable, helping you articulate your message and target the right audience to maximize your results.
Then, with the right strategy in place, you’ll be able to organically grow your Twitter followers over time, without spending additional budget. And, these followers will be far more sticky than the cheap bots you could buy to quickly boost your numbers. Quality is always better than quantity when it comes to PR and communications, and your social media strategy is no exception.
So you’ve created a thing. And not just any old thing, but the thing: a crypto product that’s going to shake up the industry, transform DeFi, and unlock new use cases for blockchain users. Your thing is the best thing since Bitcoin, and your cryptocurrency audience is going to love it. There’s just one problem: you don’t have an audience. Yet.
But all that’s going to change now you’re ready to exit stealth mode and share your crypto creation with the world. But where to start? Do you begin banging out press releases and commence a crypto marketing campaign? Contact a crypto influencer? Email crypto news sites begging for coverage? Attempt to build a crypto community, trawling Telegram groups and image boards with a pack of ready-made memes to explain your groundbreaking product and corresponding token?
You could do all those things. But rather than pray and spray, you’ll find the best crypto media results come from targeted volleys. Where you aim that fire depends on your target audience within the crypto market and the internet corners where they hang out.
Thankfully, these are matters you don’t need to spend hours agonizing over: there are professionals who can help with that. A good Web3 PR agency will help to establish you as a thought leader: an expert in your field willing to dispense wisdom on industry developments. From there, it’s a short leap to becoming a talking head whose soundbites, pithy observations, and expert commentary can be relied on to bring clarity to complex issues while shining a spotlight on your project.
Providing commentary on the cryptocurrency market will raise your profile and establish authority within the crypto space. It’s all about visibility at this stage, ensuring your name pops up in all the right places. You don’t need to discuss your project directly: just talk sense and demonstrate deep knowledge of cryptocurrencies, the latest ecosystem trend, and breaking news, even if it's something as banal as the latest token to be listed on Coinbase.
The fastest route to having your crypto project mentioned in the top crypto news websites lies in the arms of a specialist PR agency. There are numerous advantages to outsourcing your comms, not least in freeing you to focus on your core operations: building out your game-changing protocol. But at this early stage, there’s an even greater benefit a good agency will provide: opening doors to media sites covering the entire Web3 ecosystem.
Crypto PR firms cultivate relationships with journalists and media sites and have a handle on which journalists at each outlet will be receptive to specific pitches. Their involvement can make the difference between receiving organic coverage in a Tier 1 publication such as CoinDesk or Cointelegraph and being compelled to purchase sponsored content on a Tier 2 news site.
Initially, don’t expect carte blanche to shamelessly shill your project, no matter how ground-breaking it may be. At this stage, you’re simply trying to establish authority within the cryptocurrency ecosystem; to get your name out there. If you’re developing a liquid staking solution, for example, it follows that commentary on Ethereum ETF applications, network upgrades, restaking protocols, and LSTs are areas ripe for you to add value.
Web3 PR agencies regularly field requests from overworked journalists seeking commentary on all kinds of topics. By making yourself available at short notice to dispense such tidbits, you’ll maximize your chances of becoming the go-to expert for developments that affect your sector, developing your crypto brand in the process.
This type of coverage – building relationships and getting quotes in articles by journalists for free – is what we call “organic” PR. There’s nothing wrong with sponsored content, it should be noted; every Web3 project will pay to be picked up in crypto media at some stage. Particularly so around the time of key announcements such as a crypto exchange listing or a mainnet launch. But it’s unwise to predicate an entire media strategy around the pay-to-play model.
Paying for coverage can make a great deal of noise in a short space of time, and this can be very useful. But make no mistake: it’s obvious when a piece of content is sponsored. What really sets you apart as a thought leader in your niche is being recognized as an expert by the media, and this means commenting on articles on a regular basis. Not only will you get your name out there but you’ll open the door to direct news coverage when your project has major news to share.
However, getting this organic coverage is no mean feat. Journalists’ inboxes are filled to overflowing with PRs from emerging crypto projects praying for coverage. Most of them don’t get opened. That’s why it’s so important to have a competent crypto PR agency on your side, so they can leverage their extensive network of journalists that they have spent years cultivating to help you get your foot in the door.
It’s also important to realize that organic coverage is a momentum gain. So don’t expect to get hundreds of media mentions on day one. It takes time to establish yourself as an expert, but once you’ve done this consistently for several weeks, media pick-ups will follow. After all, it’s far easier for a cryptocurrency marketing agency to arrange coverage when they can preface the pitch with “This is so-and-so of Project X, who’s spoken to you in the past…”
A competent Web3 PR agency can help you determine the main topics you want to comment on, and even what you want to be saying. Your main task is just turning up to the weekly check-in calls to ensure the strategy remains on track. Do this consistently, and regular media coverage will follow.
Where your project goes from here depends on who you’re targeting within the crypto market (enterprises or consumers), and what your key goals are: building awareness, growing the user base, attracting investment, or perhaps something else. If you’re creating an Ethereum SoFi app or hosting a token sale on a cryptocurrency exchange, your PR and communications strategy will be different from, say, a Web3 middleware for existing blockchain technology.
However, the most important thing with a PR strategy is always the first one. Before your Web3 project can start appearing everywhere, it needs to appear somewhere. The first crypto publication you’re featured in can open the door to broader cryptocurrency industry coverage that will get eyeballs on your project. Which is why the first contact is the most precious.
Unless you’re blessed with a vast network of founders, investors, and existing media contacts, you’re unlikely to be able to achieve this without professional help. That’s why it makes sense to find a crypto PR agency that can do the hard work for you. One whose efforts in cultivating relationships with journalists began long before you signed on the line.
