For most crypto projects, their communities aren’t really communities at all.
Just taking a look at some of the project Telegram groups out there, you’ll find it’s more of a “help desk” with interactions based only on one core topic: the price of the token.
The problem with such communities is that no effort has been made to develop relationships between the projects’ team and its community, or amongst community members themselves.
An experienced community management team will always be on-hand 24/7 to engage with the community; and, when the conversation dies down, be able to nurture new dialogues. This could be in the form of sharing the latest trends in the cryptosphere; or, should there not be any restrictions, a very seasoned community manager on duty would share their thoughts on the price movements of Bitcoin, which would invariably affect all altcoins.
Nonetheless, the general rule on refraining from price talk of the project token by “admins” still applies.
As the community grows and evolves, there might come a time to start smaller communities which branch off from the main Telegram group. After all, when a community becomes too big and unwieldy, not all participants are after the same information. Some subgroups which have seen success include price/trade investing group, developers/API tech group, and language-specific groups (i.e Korean, Chinese groups).
If you’ve gotten your basics right and have a truly engaging community with smaller speciality groups that are just as engaging, what would be next for you?
It really depends on where you see your project going and if you wish to change the way you interact with your community. As you grow from a startup to a larger front, you might want to shift any queries on the project to a professionally managed “help desk” (e.g. zendesk).
As for Telegram, it will eventually evolve to a point where it would be time to appoint community ambassadors. Under the supervision of your community managers, these ambassadors will become the pillars of the community, starting conversations, distributing vital content and rallying members to defend against FUD.
Based in Singapore, Fabian is the Director of Community for BlockGroup.
