Planting seeds of change: 7 tips on how to build a vibrant blockchain community
Few would argue that blockchain is a transformational technology, and yet to fully realise its potential, blockchain needs to be widely adopted. With less than 1% of the world’s population owing cryptocurrency, such adoption seems to be a long way off. Nothing facilitates technology adoption better than building online and offline communities, and this has been at the heart of Planet Blockchain efforts for nearly 14 months. Within this space of time, starting from Dubai in the UAE, we organically grew our community from scratch to have some 7,000 local and international members across media channels. If you are passionate about the blockchain technology and want to plant seeds of change, you may find these tips on community building helpful.
1 - Start a Meetup group
If no blockchain community exists in your town or city, it’s time to start your own…or someone else will!
This is how Planet Blockchain started. Two of the co-founders were looking for a meetup group on blockchain and cryptocurrencies in Dubai. There was none, so they took the lead. All of us, about a dozen at that time, have very fond memories of our first meetup on a warm April day in 2017 in a local downtown café. We were so excited – and so loud – discussing cryptocurrencies that we received quite a few disapproving looks from the public.
The Meetup platform is the largest network of local groups in the world, with more than 300,000 groups of like-minded people getting together and over 35 million members. Meetups are one of the easiest ways to find other people who share a common interest or cause. They offer automatic email reminders, RSVP functionality and post-event follow up and feedback. Eventbrite is another option, but is best suited for one-off, ticketed events.
2 - Do not expect to make money from your community
We don’t treat community building as a profit making exercise, it’s only good for growing your membership numbers. As long as you’re breaking even and covering contingencies and operating expenses, such as paying for hosting on the Meetup platform, you’re doing well. When you become part of the local and global blockchain ecosystem, there will be plentiful opportunities to make money elsewhere. Most people are aware of the recent bans on cryptocurrency advertising by dominant tech companies (Facebook, Google and Twitter), which means that start-ups are unable to give visibility and credibility to their projects. We at Planet Blockchain believe that in future alternative networks such as meetup groups will become even more important for ICO project development and user validation.
3 - Offer exceptional value during the event
Informal networking is very valuable and the primary reason why people attend meetups, but in our experience the best events are structured and offer educational content. It is a good idea to have regular updates on how the blockchain space develops. Aim to have a diverse mix of speakers and topics – ICO pitches, service providers, developers, cybersecurity experts, projects reviews and corporates implementing blockchain. At all times, check the speakers’ credentials.
To get the community excited, we ask ICO projects to donate tokens for a lucky draw, and most of them do! Voting on a project, running a fun online quiz, as well as organising a panel where the presenters offer their views on current issues and take questions from the audience all add up to a memorable experience for the community. Try to change the meetup routine from time to time.
While it may not be the primary reason why you run meetups, inviting potential investors could add significant value to ICO projects. We are proud to be associated with several high-profile start-ups that found private investors through our events.
Finally, what a better way to facilitate networking than choosing a nice venue close to public transport with tasty snacks and decent coffee!
4 - Promote your meetup – before and after the event
Humans are visual creatures, responding to and processing visual data better than anything else. Our advice is to create colourful promotional flyers with confirmed presenters and their companies’ logos for posting on multiple social media channels (Telegram, WhatsApp, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter). Consider boosting posts to various business groups (e.g., business councils).
We always film short (1 min.) videos with our presenters at the event venue which can be subsequently shared across media channels to maximise reach. Occasionally we shoot longer interviews with entrepreneurs and founders of interesting projects. We also give our presenters the opportunity to post an article with a concise overview of their project or service on our website. And we take a lot of photos during the event!
5 - Get busy on your social media channels
Face-to-face networking and learning are more effective when supplemented with online experiences, particularly if you want to attract international members. Your community members are likely to have diverse interests, so consider creating several sub-groups on Telegram and WhatsApp dedicated to specific topics – General, Trading, Mining, ICO analysis, etc. The first few months will be a lot of hard work for you as group administrators: you will need to sign in members, post relevant content to maintain their interest and weed out bots, scams and inappropriate content. Commitment, consistency and patience are key here. The good news is that it gets better with time and with user numbers. As members get to know and trust each other, they start to actively contribute engaging content, so the groups eventually become self-sustaining.
Nevertheless, it is important to re-ignite the members’ interest from time to time – by, for example, having short surveys run as contests or administering token airdrops on behalf of ICO projects. The latter worked particularly well for us.
6 - Consider partnerships and sponsors
As you become more established within the local and global ecosystem, there will be no dearth of other organisations willing to collaborate with you and use your community and media channels to promote their projects. With roadshows gaining popularity as a major promotional vehicle for ICOs, projects may be attracted to your community to showcase their solutions, raise awareness, ensure token adoption and tap into investor pools.
7 - Create a website
Finally, you may also want to launch your own website in addition to the meetup platform. The website can be used as yet another channel to promote events as well as for listing of ICO projects and vendors, posting information on past and future events and publishing original articles (e.g., on projects).
Now… watch your community grow!