In the last post (Part 2), I discussed the first theme from my interviews with 8 NFT projects on how to build trust with your NFT community: who you are & your intentions. In this blog (Part 3), I’ll dive into the second theme: be online & active.
This 8 part blog series is based on my Master’s research project. If you haven’t already, read Part 1. It provides the research context and the 8 interview participants.
Regardless of your role, team members should remain online and active in the community throughout the day. In doing so, all 8 participants saw a positive impact on trust with the community, especially the month before and the month after launching their collections.
Twitter vs. Discord and Why You Need Both
Your interactions on Discord & Twitter creates your project’s online presence.
Twitter and Discord are the foundation to an NFT project’s communications. Although other channels exist, these two are common across the majority of NFT projects. Twitter & Discord serve three distinct purposes to build trust with and grow your community.
1. Reach vs. Interactions
Twitter is great for reaching new audiences, while Discord is best for direct interactions and fostering community.
The former community manager of Degen Crypto Club, Con, discusses the difference between the two channels. He states, “Twitter spreads awareness. So if I make a tweet on Twitter, I’m not just talking to like five or ten people. We have 11,000 followers and they retweet it. I’m also on Discord because it’s a more active, more engaging type of communication. The interactions happen almost exclusively on Discord.”
Moreover, these interactions are unfiltered communication from the community, so projects learn directly from the community members.
Max, Co-founder and CMO for Universe.25 says, “With Discord, it’s completely unfiltered, you get it straight: the goods and the bad. It’s very much an awesome way to kind of lead a project.”
Through Twitter, your NFT project gains exposure to the public and attracts people to your community. Discord is like your NFT projects’ community hub where people can engage with the community and the project team as well as be part of the community culture.
Twitter attracts people to your NFT projects and Discord keeps them in your community.
2. Real Time Communication
Discord chats are in real time, but tweets are not.
Sergio states, “In Twitter, you’re limited to tweets, but in Discord, you’re there live and I think that’s where the important thing is that people see you on a day-to-day basis.”
Engaging in Discord creates a sense of active online presence that is key for building trust with your community. Since I conducted the interviews in February 2022, there is one caveat to the real time communication.
3. Twitter Spaces
Twitter Spaces has become an important tool for trust-building.
Spaces were launched in November of 2021, but it has increased in popularity throughout 2022.
Today, every NFT project has either created their own Twitter Spaces or joins established ones consistently.
Compared to Discord chats, which is limited to community members in the Discord server, Twitter Spaces has a network effect. If you join a Twitter Space, all your followers will see it. This means the followers of everyone in your Twitter Space will see it above their timeline.
At the time of the interviews, Twitter Space was a new feature on Twitter, so not many people used it. But now, they are a common way to build trust, engage your community AND attract new members.
In the past few months, tons of NFT projects have created marketing campaigns leveraging Twitter spaces by joining established spaces hosted by influencers and/or hosting their own to increase brand awareness and build trust by educating and answering questions about the project.
The More Someone Sees You, The More They Trust You
Active online presence is key to increase exposure to you and your project.
When community members have repetitive positive exposure to you, your team, and your NFT project, trustworthiness increases over time.
This is called the mere exposure effect.
Humans feel positively about people and things they see more often. For example, think back to when you were in high school. Was there a teacher you walked past everyday, but never took their class? Chances are you trust them more than a teacher you may have never seen.
If you walk by this teacher every single day, you’ll start to feel like you know them and you can trust them.
Online & Active ➡️Increases your exposure ➡️ Increases familiarity with your project ➡️ Increases trust in your project
However, you can’t assume, “bad publicity is still publicity.”
The mere exposure effect can also have negative impacts if people have a negative association to your project. Over time it becomes difficult to change this negative perception.
So, you must increase your exposure and build a positive association with your project.
How?
Put in the Time Online.
In all 8 interviews, the participants shared they were online for most of their waking hours.
Co-founder and lead for marketing, community, and outreach for GOAT Tribe, John states, “I was spending about 16 hours a day for an entire month. I pulled about 500 hours on Discord the first month that I was there.”
Another example of this dedication from Sergio. He states, “I always stay within Discord and Twitter. I’m always on even when I’m not on. I tried to be as long as I could, so maybe 14 hours a day.”
When you do so, you are able to answer questions, educate people on your project, stop FUD (fear, uncertainty and doubt), and showcase your personality.
Think about it. 99% of NFT projects are led by teams that no one knows. If you are involved in the community, people get to know more about you as a person as opposed to just your identity, your resume or what you plan to do. They learn about your character as a project leader and you show them your personality.
This builds trust.
You Are Part of the Community
Active participation online shows you care about the community and are part of it.
Con says “I think it’s very important that you show them that you are one of them. That you’re also just a guy that believes in this project and that you don’t go ‘I’m better than you’ and ‘I don’t care about you.’”
When you build a community, it isn’t about you it’s about the COMMUNITY. Titles like CEO, CMO, COO, etc. don’t matter in a Discord channel, aside from what you do for the NFT project.
Peppers shares, “While I’m working, when I’m designing, while I’m creating stuff I have discord on my second screen and I’m just constantly monitoring, sending messages, answering questions, just being there for them. I’m part of the community, just like the rest of the people there.”
Active participation online removes any hierarchy between project team and community. When you build a community, it shouldn’t feel transactional. Instead, it should feel like being in an afterschool club.
The opposite is also true. If you’re not active, you build the perception that you don’t care.
The community members will perceive the team as negligent towards the project.
Con explains this best, “If I were offline for two-thirds of the day, people would think that I’m not really that interested.” Con continues, “You putting some messages out just shows that you are still active and are still engaged and people know, ‘All right, they are here, they are spending time on this, so I can still be invested in this.’”
Remaining online and active throughout the day was crucial in building trust when starting your NFT project because you make yourself available to your community.
Make Your Community the Center of Your NFT Project
Talk to Your Community
Talk to your community. Ask for their insights. Your community is also your customer and they provide valuable feedback.
AF explains, “in the general chat, I’m very active in Discord. I’m not one of those creators who just send a message once a day in the announcements channel.” He added, “Get off your high horse, even if you have a super famous project. Go on and talk. It’s a super valuable thing if you talk to your community.”
But, those insights don’t matter if you don’t listen and take action.
Listen and Take Action
When you talk to your community, you must listen for what they want and don’t want.
Derp Birds’ co-founder and marketer, Dave explains, “If the community told us absolutely, we’re not interested in this. If there was a lot of negative pushback on something, we would definitely pivot and try to go in a different direction so it comes down to being engaged with the Community and listening to what they say.”
The community members bought your collection. They won’t hesitate to sell them and leave your community.
Talk to the community. Listen to them. Take action.
If the community doesn’t like the direction of the project, pivot.
Remember the key word is COMMUNITY.
If an individual voices a concern or dislike about the project, but other members of the community disagree, that’s okay. When am individual concerns is brought up by multiple people in the community, then it is time to take action.
By keeping community members’ interest in mind, your team gains credibility as a team and project for listening and taking action.
There is another positive impact to listening.
Listening builds Sense of Belonging
Listening to your community fosters a feeling of belonging.
Listening to the community makes members feel like they are part of the project.
Cris, founder of Goofy Gang explains, “I have to monitor everything and give attention to every member, the best way I can. So this way members feel like they are part of the Community, and that the developer of the project is actually listening to them and [is] engaged.”
When members feel they are listened to, they trust the project team will take into consideration their ideas and are more likely to continue making suggestions and participating in the community. Con stated, “I think it’s important that people know that what they suggest is being looked at, so that the suggestions keep coming.”
Trust in an NFT project is important to sell collections, but creating a sense of belonging amongst community members is one way to sustain your community over a long period of time.
Conclusion
You, your team, and your NFT project must build an active, online presence to build trust with your NFT community.
In this blog, you learned:
- Twitter vs. Discord for building trust
- Why you should be online and active with your NFT community
- How to make your community the center of your NFT project
The next blog (Part 4) will cover theme 3: Engage with the NFT community.