Community management at its core is simply about building relationships. Traditionally speaking, it’s the relationship between a brand and their customers; how conversations are had, queries managed, and the brand-customer relationship improved.
However, when you throw crypto into the mix, with investors who are planning to or have already put in their hard-earned money into a project, things become different. These investors tend to be much more demanding, they want to be heard, and they believe their feedback should influence the direction of the project.
Facing such a crowd, it’s important to build crypto communities from the beginning. Ground-floor access at the start of crypto projects gives early community members a unique sense of pride, since the first 100 or 1,000 to see the potential of the project and watch its growth.
With the active management and nurturing of these early members, they will form the foundation of the community acting as seasoned hands to guide new members, and act as guardians to fight against unsubstantiated FUD. This main core subsequently becomes an effective acquisition tool, evangelizing your project, and referring people in their inner circles, which results in more awareness for the project.
Once the core of the community has been established, effective community management means engaging with new members, since marketing and awareness of the project increases with the goal to ultimately retain their interest in the project.
As marketing efforts increase, an influx of new members will occur, and it’s important to have a plan in place for crisis management. FUD tends to spread like wildfire, and like any crisis, it needs to be dealt with quickly.
Project teams, as well as moderators, must be prepared to attend to negative comments. Swift, appropriate actions on beating back FUD (not just simply banning or muting “complainers”), when properly applied, can become a means of creating brand advocates.
While traditional online community management does seem pretty similar to crypto community management, the expectations and demands from a crypto-centric one are much higher. There’s an urgency to monitoring each phase of the community’s growth and have the flexibility to adapt and change strategies when needed.
Based in Singapore, Fabian is the Director of Community for BlockGroup.
