Community building remains one of the most effective marketing strategies that can be employed by any business, especially SMEs and startups. Particularly, we have witnessed the rise of community building in the crypto ecosystem, typically made of startups and early-stage crypto projects.
While that is impressive to watch, community building is likewise instrumental to the growth of these crypto projects and the digital asset ecosystem (DAE) at large. Notably, community building helps boost mainstream adoption and build trust among project stakeholders, including end-users.
Building a community in the cryptosphere helps foster connection amongst a project’s early adopters while providing a mutual space for experiencing, sharing, and collaboration.
However, as valuable as a community forum may be for marketing, promotion and the camaraderie, it can also lead to a project’s downfall if poorly managed.
To prevent this from happening, below are 12 community management best practices to keep in mind when building a crypto community.
12 Community Management Best Practices
1. Be Authentic:
In building a community, one of the significant areas of attraction for potential members is the authentic nature of the project and how it is promoted. It’s no secret that authenticity inspires confidence, a perfect recipe for building trust among members and in the project itself. As a result, it is crucial to prioritize authenticity when managing a community of any size or interest.
2. Establish Your Vision and Set Goal and Objectives:
Most communities are built around their unique cultural norms – giving the members a sense of direction and fulfillment. However, in building a community for your brand, you can establish these cultural norms by establishing a community-driven vision and setting goals and objectives.
By putting these in place, your community members not only have a sense of direction but also develop a sense of belongingness, especially when they can find purpose in the community’s vision. More so, they can track their progress and that of the community with each milestone (i.e., achievable goals and objectives).
3. Set Community Rules and Guidelines:
Although a community is typically made up of people with shared values, interests, and beliefs, there is a need to build a safe environment for all members. Notably, aside from the fact that human nature is very unpredictable, people can go rogue when certain decisions are not in their favor.
Hence, to prevent conflict of interest, negative energies, and any form of misbehavior among members, it is necessary as much as essential to establish specific rules and guidelines that ensure standard behavior from all members of the community.
4. Celebrate Milestones (No Matter How Little):
Little and big milestones deserve celebration. The culture of celebrating little wins encourages community members to do more and not underestimate the significance of their little contributions.
Likewise, celebrating little wins more often than big milestones leaves a positive atmosphere while boosting community members’ spirit and momentum.
5. Show Appreciation using Reward Systems:
It is not enough to celebrate milestones; it is also important to show appreciation to well-deserving members who do the extraordinary.
Of course, there are numerous ways to achieve this. One is to establish a reward system whereby members are incentivized when participating in various activities such as promotional campaigns for the brand or utilizing their skills to propagate the community’s vision.
Interestingly, these rewards do not necessarily have to be monetized as many would expect. Instead, rewards can come in different forms, such as honorary mentions, customized merch, exclusive access to new/pre-released products, loyalty cards, movie tickets, and much more that can boost community members’ momentum.
6. Establish a Unique Interaction Model for Audience:
Since one of the major reasons for building a community around a brand or project is to get honest feedback, it is, therefore, important to devise a unique and strategic interaction model for your audience.
Some of the most popular ways to achieve this are to hold Q & A/ AMA sessions, regular Livestream, and Live Events, among other organized events where people can openly contribute to the discussion. Another popular approach is to adopt an open chat-based communication model such as the likes of Discord, Telegram, and so on.
7. Maintain Consistent Brand Voice:
Another important thing to keep in mind when building a community is to keep a consistent brand voice across all communication materials. Doing this will help define the brand’s unique persona but also help to seamlessly build relationships with the audience since they will find it easy to associate themselves with the brand and its beliefs.
8. Use Customized Content Template/Design:
Similar to maintaining a consistent brand voice, a customized template or design for communication materials is equally important. Aside from creating an identity for the brand, it makes it easy for community members to verify and differentiate between authentic and counterfeit easily.
9. Facilitate Networking Opportunities:
One of the most valuable perks of being a part of a community is unrestricted access to opportunities. As such, a community must do well enough to facilitate and promote networking opportunities for its members. When this happens, community members have more reasons to stay on board besides being a part of a brand, knowing well that it is a win-win situation.
10. Curate Your Feedback and Reviews (Periodically):
The importance of customers’ feedback and reviews cannot be overemphasized as they play a vital role in product development. Likewise, from a community-building perspective, paying attention to the members’ needs is equally essential.
Specifically, this enables the community host to periodically curate and review positive or negative feedback. In addition, feedback further assists the community host in proffering actionable solutions, especially if it affects a product/project’s overall performance.
11. Check and Vet Your Community Regularly:
The importance of vetting a community cannot be overemphasized, especially for those that adopt a chat-based interaction model.
While we can presume that most people within a community are there for a good course, others may have ulterior motives, including spreading misinformation, scamming the community members, or attempting to hijack the community activities, as the case may be.
To prevent these from happening, a community guard or host must take proactive measures to ensure that the community’s sanity remains undisrupted.
12. Explore New Ways to Keep Your Audience Constantly Engaged:
Finally, as a community manager or builder, it is important to keep your audience abreast with emerging trends and explore new methods to keep them constantly engaged. Why is this important? You may ask.
When people get used to a monotonous approach to doing things, they tend to become bored and eventually lose interest. While this could happen during community building, it is necessary to introduce members to new and exciting trends that keep them constantly engaged.
