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Building Community for Cryptoassets

by Ben TossellSeptember 6th, 2017

Too Long; Didn't Read

<em>Some thoughts on Crypto-Community with recommendations.</em>

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featured image - Building Community for Cryptoassets

Some thoughts on Crypto-Community with recommendations.

Recently, I spent a sunny British afternoon reading the (somewhat lengthy) Whitepaper from OutlierVentures.io:

Community Token Economies_Download a free white paper on Community Token Economies by Outlier Ventures. The white paper reviews the current state…_outlierventures.io

Given my background in building the community at Product Hunt for the past two years, I found it intriguing to look at the state of Cryptoassets and how community development is crucial in the Crypto-ecosystem.

Yet, there seems to be many different approaches taken by teams when putting together their whitepapers, companies, websites and ICOs.

TLDR: Community building takes times, commitment, patience, consideration and focus. Do your research & put in the time.

I’ve spent some time using the valuation frameworks of others* to put together mini-reports of links and resources for Cryptoassets in order to allow others conduct research easily. Sign up for early access.

An example of the kind of resource I’m putting together for different Cryptoassets

There have been a number of community aspects that stand out to me which teams can look at in order to help build their initial community of enthusiasts, develop their existing community and expand their community to a wider audience.

There are two ways to look at this. Ultimately, both need to be considered.

How can this team create and develop the inner-community
How does the outside world view this team, company, cryptoasset

Create and develop the inner-community

There are a number of platforms where many Cryptoassets have a presence.

Slack — Often official Slack groups are opened by the teams to communicate updates andshare feedback/ideas with users. It also allows users to talk to each other directly. Slack communities can be hard to maintain, keep active and relevant. Some teams have stopped using Slack because of phising attacks.

Telegram — Some official and unofficial groups. Mobile-based chat for teams and users to communicate.

Reddit — A way for the community to share relevant links & resources under a certain tag (e.g. /r/ethereum). It could be worth the official team becoming active and responsive in their respective threads.

GitHub — Developers can view the code, contributions, progress, people and more. Lets users dig into the technical side of the project and share thoughts/improvements/bugs.

Twitter — A way for a team to communicate updates, share news, start and jump into discussions. This has a low barrier, lots of tech-focused people are on Twitter and all links to other platfoms can easily be shared here.

Facebook — There are many Crypto groups on Facebook. It may be worth seeing if any are relevant to become active and contribute to.

Linkedin — Often just to set up a company profile, list jobs and employees.

AngelList — Another platform to show a company profile, jobs and employees. But also includes investment information, news and updates.

YouTube — Used as a way to show off the product, and upload talks from the team.

Bitcointalk — Similar forum set up for the community to share and discuss links, resources and ideas. Become active and responsive in the respective threads.

Medium — You’re using it right now, so you know! Teams can use Medium for short or long form pieces about the technology, company, landscape and team.

Discourse — Another forum site but teams can start one easily for their community to share and discuss links, resources and ideas in a private (or not), dedicated forum.

Trello — Teams can share their roadmap with their community via Trello boards (or similar)

Pick your platforms. Having a presence on everything mentioned above (and others not mentioned) spreads you, your team and your community too thin. You’ve got a Cryptoasset to execute too, remember!

Different platforms are useful for different things. Consider what communication you prefer and can do well — Are weekly YouTube videos useful & interesting for you & your community? Does your community respond better to Medium posts? Do they want to have a forum to communicate with each other and create documentation? There are a lot of things to consider and ask yourselves, don’t just set up all the profiles and hope they will blossom. What are you looking to get out of it? Are you looking for vibrant discussions, AMAs and feedback? These kinds of questions can help point you to the right platforms to focus on.

How is this Cryptoasset and its community viewed externally?

If individuals, companies, organisations etc are viewing your team, company and product from the outside, what will they see?

Many people may be interested in what you are working on but have not been a part of your inner-community from the beginning. They could turn out to be product evangelists, advisors, customers, investors and therefore, part of your future community.

The platforms mentioned above can (and often do) serve the needs of the wider community as well as the inner-community. Those on the outside may also follow Tweets, Medium posts, dip into Slack groups etc. But with crypto teams creating a presence on several platforms, the space becomes increasing crowded to follow — especially if you are interested in more than a few cryptoassets.

(This is also a reason why I’m putting together mini-reports so people can be efficient in their own research. Mentioned above — sign up early)

As well as the platforms above, also pay attention to these sites to get a feel for how the external community may perceive you:

Alexa, Google Trends, Cointerminal, Santiment, Quandl, Cindicator, Coinfund, ICOalert, Smith + Crown, Bitcoin Magazine, CoinDesk, Token Market, CryptoCompare, Token Data, CoinTelegraph, Token Economy, The Control, CoinGecko, Crypto Insider, Crunchbase (this list could go on!)