The Community is as Important as the Product itself. But, How to Achieve an Organic Growth?
Overview:
A strong community ensures the long-term and sustainable future of the Product. So, our approach towards building a solid community is essential and defines the Product's future, which depends on the project launch strategy.
But why are the community building and the launch of a project are the crucial stages that should be carefully prepared? Let's dig into it.
The Current Situation:
Usually, Crypto startups make a mistake by opting for an easy way out for product launch and community development. They launch products by giving their native tokens to the general public in the form of airdrops or through some influencers that encourage their followers to like, follow and join the community in exchange for some tokens. The following images can explain this:
As seen from the images above, new projects adopt the airdrop scheme at project launch to build their communities. There are hundreds of such posts, if not thousands, on Twitter alone, and that shows a fault in their project launch and community-building strategy.
But wait,
Some startups are smart enough and use third-party applications like Gleam and GiveLab to ensure their growth. But are they genius if they can't realize that more than 3.4 billion fake emails are rolling out every day from millions of fake addresses, and it is easy to cheat the algorithms? Those fake email addresses were also used to create fake Facebook, Twitter, or other social media accounts using bots and handmade fake accounts that are almost untraceable by these tech giants.
So, are this third-party software worth it? I bet not. Why? Because of my two-year personal experience as a community manager in the crypto space. Due to this poor launch strategy, I have seen many promising projects struggle with community engagement.
Adverse Effects on Community and Project's Reputation:
Airdrops are unhealthy for the project's organic growth, but airdrop at the project launch to build a solid community is a terrible idea, and the reason is:
Airdrop chasers
The moment a company announces its token launch and decides to distribute them in the form of giveaways and airdrop on social media to have a dual advantage of token distribution and community development, It will be well-received by the general public. The community will grow exponentially, but here's a surprise, airdrop chasers ruin the play, decentralized distribution, and newly built community.
Airdrop chasers are not into your project or its use cases. All they want is the free money that your project is offering. To collect the maximum amount of the tokens, they create multiple fake entries using counterfeited accounts and bots that leads to:
- Low community engagement.
- The community full of bots.
- Massive token selloff at an initial stage discouraging investors.
As soon as the promotion or launch ends, the airdrop chasers leave the community in massive numbers along with their bots because their mission of getting free money has been accomplished. The first thing you'll notice is low community engagement. You will wonder where all the hassle has gone and how airdrop has ruined your community? Following statistics will help you understand it.
You will have many bot followers and members in your community who don't engage despite having a community of considerable size.
That's the worst nightmare for community managers and project owners. After all, they have spent big money on project/event launches and got thousands of bots instead of actual humans. That's money wasted.
I studied many projects that launched their tokens with a similar scheme with the help of Gleam, and they share similar patterns. 99% of them failed to engage the community of thousands because it is nearly impossible to talk with bots and get them engaged.
A problem well defined is a problem half solved.
— Unknown
Since we have identified the root cause of low community engagement due to inappropriate launch strategies, we can now discuss avoiding them and building a better community by launching a product differently.
The Solution:
An actual decentralized token distribution and organic community growth can be achieved if we skip the airdrops for the project launch. This can be done in the following two ways:
Decentralized Distribution Engine
This is tricky as it requires a lot of developer work, but it is better than the typical airdrop scheme.
It includes taking a snapshot of addresses holding mainstream or relevant crypto projects and randomly airdropping tokens to them, followed by proper marketing so that people would not get panic to see your token in their wallets and consider it a scam. Press releases in leading crypto news platforms like CoinDesk and reaching out to influencers to spread the word could help bring the fear down.
This approach of marketing and token launch has its pros and cons. Still, the pros overcome the cons because it helps achieve purely decentralized distribution and ensures that your token is landed into a relevant person's wallet. Marketing will help to develop the community, and when people find tokens in their wallets, their curiosity will bring them to your communities, so it will grow over time, ensuring long-lasting community engagement.
Collaboration with Centralized Exchanges
Launch a project through a platform requiring ID verification like Binance, Binance Labs, or any other exchange. Talk to them, collaborate and decide the launch mechanism beforehand. That, too, will get your token into the right hands, and the token will get the exposure it deserves.
Collaborating and spreading the word with CEXs will actually grow the community more organically.
Conclusion:
Building a solid community depends on the token launch. Avoiding airdrops as the core project launch strategy and proper marketing will boost the project's reputation and investor's interest. Collaboration with a centralized exchange or building own token distribution engine for project launch is a more viable approach to launch the project and community development.
Thank you for reading my first Medium article! Your feedback will help me improve my writing skills. So, please feel free to share constructive critiques. Let's explore more strategies to build communities and discuss them in the comments section below.
