Secrets on how NOT to build a web3 audience, plus insights from web3 builders.

Picture a motivated web3 founder, stacking building blocks on top of each other, one at a time. In the end, he has a magnificent edifice built but uh-oh, there was something wrong.

A closer look and he sees that he built this structure with the wrong material. Its foundations aren’t strong enough to withstand the contrary winds, its walls aren’t tightly held together and its butterfly roof is ready to fly.

Imagine all that time and money wasted on building such a beautiful feeble structure. Yeah, right, quite the waste, but that’s how many web3 founders are when they decide to build a community from scratch.

Let me explain what I mean by building from scratch.

You see, building a web3 community from scratch is gathering those you think are your target audience one after the other through various mediums.

Where things fall apart for many web3 brands is that after gathering folks from different mediums into their community and having quite a large number, they soon discover that a huge percentage of those numbers aren’t their ideal audience.

They built with the wrong material (audience) when they could have tapped into an already existing one and saved themselves the time, stunted growth (massive followers on Twitter and a few numbers in the discord), low engagements, and less than 50% conversion rate during mint.

The web3 space is filled with communities built on shared interests, so instead of trying to gather your ideal audience from different places, you can easily tap into communities they are congregated in and by so doing, you’ll be building with the right material (audience)

In an interview with Josh, a seasoned builder in the web3 space, he revealed these 5 important strategies to build a community by tapping into an already existing one.

Build on Twitter first
Leverage influencer marketing
Collaborate with alpha callers
Get featured in newsletters
Get funding

Let’s explore them, shall we?
Great!

Build on Twitter First

Twitter(X)is one of the most popular social platforms for web3 activities, amongst others like Discord, telegram, Reddit and Instagram.

What makes Twitter (X) stand out from the rest when building an audience is that the Twitter algorithm helps you connect to people of shared interest super fast, that way the brand creates massive awareness before building a community on Discord.

Do you remember that the plan is to tap into an existing audience and not build a new one from scratch? Great

Here is how you can do that on Twitter; When you start your brand, there will be other existing brands in the same industry as yours that are already established and have built several followers.

Create a list of those brands, follow them and engage a lot on their posts, sooner or later they will notice your brand and also engage one way or the other with your brand

This tells the algorithm that there is a connection between you two, so when you post content, the algorithm will show that content to the audience of those brands

And guess what… drum roll

The followers of those brands are also your ideal audience because they exist in the same industry as yours and have already shown interest in a similar/complementary product.

Leverage Influencer Marketing

No matter the sub-niche, niche, or industry you are building in, there will always be folks who have built a large following in the field and have a high brand authority and credibility that makes people follow them.

We call them influencers.

Influencer marketing is simply reaching out to these guys for a form of collaboration or direct advertisement to tap into the massive audience they’ve built.

While you would need to pay for some, you could always do a form of collaboration that offers value to both parties.

The beautiful thing about influencer marketing is that when their audience sees some hype about your brand from these influencers, they instantly get interested in your project.

Influencer marketing is one the effective method of advertising in the web3 space — Josh

Collaborate With Alpha Callers

Private alpha callers are working with closed communities, while some do public work.

Whatever the case, alpha callers are a kind of data analyst in the web3 space, they analyze certain projects and recommend them because they have high potential to succeed and scale based on their analysis.

So yeah, they are highly sought after and people pay rapt attention to their analysis.

You can easily gain credibility by collaborating with these alpha callers to analyze your project and explain what you are building to the public.

Get Featured In Newsletters

In my interview with Josh, he explained how many web3 brands have newsletters that go out to their community from time to time.

Getting featured on newsletters like this, especially from brands within your industry will build the way your brand is perceived and will get more people talking about it.

The content could be a review of some of your utilities, an interview, or a general overview of the brand… the possibilities are endless.

Get Funding

I listed this last to double down on its importance. Without funding, everything listed above cannot be carried out to its full potential.

So in hierarchy, this is the first step. With adequate funds, a brand can hire quality team members, and make quality connections, marketing materials, advertisements and collaborations.

During the interview, Josh revealed how the project he got affiliated with already predicted that they would not sell out so they planned to buy back into the collection.

The truth is, even if they successfully pull that off, what about the volume, the floor price and the perception of the brand after the mint? They’ll all come tumbling down like a pile of rocks.

It’s quite sad that they were focused on the after-mint funds to fix their current dire problem when getting adequate funding should have been the first thing on their list.

Perhaps the next article should be on how brands secure funding before launch… perhaps :)

C’mon, let’s wrap this up

RECAP

Tap into a community already filled with your target audience instead of trying to grow it from scratch
Look out for influencers building in the same industry as yours and collaborate with them.
Ensure to secure funding before exploring strategies to grow your community
You don’t need to do the hard work of looking for your ideal audience one after the other with social ads when you can find where they are congregated
Well-tailored collaborations help you get your ideal audience, better engagement and revenue

cheers from my screen to yours!