However, after I learned the fundamentals of marketing, I was able to determine which content is good and which isn't. When I began in the blockchain world three years ago, I couldn't find any high-quality content related to marketing.
Blockchain marketing is different from traditional marketing in the sense that it involves many different marketing channels, and there is insane time pressure. The KPIs are not the same as the ones startups use.
According to Josh from Solid Metrics, "One of the biggest differences never before mentioned in blockchain marketing rules is the extreme due diligence required, especially if your project is planning to do influencer marketing. For traditional influencer marketing, you would only need to look at their social media metrics and referrals and call it a day. That's not the same for crypto because many crypto Twitter influencers are anonymous by nature and you'll need a deep understanding of how to use Twitter Advanced Search (checking past promotions) and Dune Analytics (checking past on-chain records to double-check if there's any involvement in scams) to determine if you're truly working with legitimate influencers or not—plus, there's no refund or legal protection on your side."
The market was new and didn't have enough time to attract expert marketers or, for new marketers to develop the right strategies. I saw this as an opportunity and decided to focus on developing creative marketing strategies in the crypto space.
In this article, I will share some insights I've learned over the years from working with more than 70 different blockchain companies.
When Defining Your Target Audience, Check Where They Are Over The Internet
You’ve worked hard on a blog/medium article and spent a few hours on research and writing. Then you’ve published and shared it on your social media channels, but the article didn’t get any traffic?
Sadly, that's what happens to most of the companies out there. Besides their team, no-one reads the content.
Most of the content created doesn’t receive any engagement. BuzzSumo found that the median shares of articles has fallen from 8 in 2015 to just 4 in 2017. This means that people share less content than before.
Why?
There's so much content everywhere we look. So much content that we have become indifferent towards it.
How Can You Be Unique?
From the start, you need to work on building your brand into a solid community. It doesn’t happen overnight and will take some work. However, by creating highly valuable content for your target audience, understanding where those people actually 'hang out' on the internet, and pushing content there, you can increase the chance that someone will actually read, share and remember your brand.
Do it over and over again for a few months and you turn into an authority brand within your niche.
Marketing Is a Never Ending Story
“It takes 20 years to build a reputation and five minutes to ruin it. If you think about that, you'll do things differently.” - Warren Buffet
Have you ever had high expectations from a company (TV/Phone provider for example), and after you sign up you were disappointed with their service & support?
According to LiveScience: “We remember the bad times better than the good because our emotions influence how we process memories."
Why am I mentioning this?
In the blockchain world, there are many companies that have disappeared right after the fundraising ended. Even if they continue to develop the product, they completely stopped with their community and brand maintenance. It causes their followers to feel confused and betrayed.
After your ICO/IEO/STO has ended you're still committed to providing your investors and community highly valuable content. That's where your brand will be measured.
Keep The Power In Your Site
Over the years I have had the opportunity to work with dozens of blockchain companies.
Most of them follow the same strategy when it comes to content. They spend most of their marketing budget on PR and content for Medium.
When it comes to content you always need to ask yourself “What do I want to get from this piece of content?” Usually, the answer is traffic. If you get featured in an article in a well-known publication and 500 people read the article, how many people will actually get into your site?
The answer is: not enough.
If 5% of the article readers click on the anchor link that leads to your site, consider yourself lucky.
So what should you do?
Create and maintain a high-quality blog on your site. It might sound obvious but most of the projects are still using Medium instead of a blog on their own domain.
There are benefits to using Medium such as getting indexed fast thanks to Medium’s Domain Authority and Medium users being able to find your articles while surfing Medium. However, the problem with Medium is the low traffic you will get to your actual site from the article.
Well, that's the goal of any website out there. They want to keep the user on their platform as much as possible.
I recommend using Medium and getting articles across different relevant publications. However, you should keep in mind that when it comes to traffic the best way to generate it is by creating and distributing high quality content.
A mixture of great blog articles, PR, Medium, and social media is the key to becoming an authority brand in your niche
Yuval Halevi is a traveler turned entrepreneur and blockchain marketing freak. He is the founder of Guerrilla Buzz and StartupStash. Follow the author on Twitter @Yuval_Halevi
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