If you’re looking to develop an NFT collection, be it an art drop, utility token or otherwise, you can’t underestimate the value of the Community you build around your project. Community is undoubtedly one of the most influential factors in a project’s success.
Bored Ape Yacht Club was the pioneering project in creating value through exclusivity for ape owners. RTFKT CloneX tapped into the creative talents within their community to create a thriving creator economy of their own. The DeadFellaz “Horde” developed strong bonds because of their love for zombies and horror.
An NFT inherently bridges the gap between brands and their audience. The more time and effort put into cultivating a healthy community, be it prior to a mint or through long term engagement, the more likely a project is to be successful.
Although there are a plethora of platforms that you can use to set up and build a community, the primary platforms used in the NFT space currently are Twitter and Discord. Ronin, GigLabs’ Head of Business Development and I will share some best practices about how to set up your community for your NFT project.
How to Use Twitter to Grow NFT Community
Growing a community through Twitter should be approached in similar ways that one would approach it traditionally. However, whether to run your social media channel through a brand new account to focus on just the NFT side of your business, or utilize your main brand account is a strategy in itself.
If your brand is large, well known, and already employs a distinct voice, it may not be a good idea to try to shoehorn in the conversation around NFTs. However, we always encourage a full brand buy in, and would leverage your main account for retweets on event days for example.
Should you approach creating a new Twitter account specifically for your NFT project, the following are some tips that pertain more particularly to the NFT space and can help expedite the process of building a community presence.
Profile Setup
Ensure your profile and bio are in excellent order. This means including a short description of your project, a link to your Discord and other links that are pertinent to the project. Landing page tools such as Linktree or Yat are often used for projects that have a variety of important external channels/links related to the project. Any links should be checked and if you choose to include a Discord link, make sure to use a link that does not expire.
Azuki’s Twitter Profile includes their Discord, OpenSea and Linktree link.
Azuki’s extended link list lives on their Linktree page.
888 Inner Circle uses only their Yat link on their Twitter Profile
888 Inner Circle Yat contains links for all pertinent webpages
Communication & Conversation
Place an emphasis on taking part in the conversation (responding/retweeting) vs. leading it (posting original tweets). Successful NFT projects are part of the greater NFT community. They interact with other projects, collectors, artists, and creators on a regular basis and build relationships. Twitter is an excellent place to do this in an organic way that will help build your own brand in the process.
@jtobcat has been one of the most engaged RTFKT community members — primarily through solving RTFKT’s notoriously complex ‘quests’. After one of the RTFKT founders realized his birthday coincided with the day of the final quest, they included a 3D birthday cake in their final quest with ‘JTOBCAT’ encoded on the bottom of the cake. He was also rewarded for his participation by being airdropped a ‘MNLTH’, which was valued at approximately $30K USD at the time of the drop..
Updates & Announcements
Use Twitter as a vehicle to communicate with your community quickly and for all updates pertaining to the project. Do not keep announcements segmented to Discord or other platforms. Some collectors only follow on one platform or another. If you are wanting to schedule these announcements, use tools like Sprinklr and Hootsuite for social media post management.
Adidas Into The Metaverse posted the same announcement at the same time on both Twitter and Discord to ensure all community members receive the communication, no matter what platform they use. In this case, Adidas used Sprinklr to schedule this Twitter post.
Leverage Large Communities
If your core audience intersects with another large community, leverage that community by interacting with it in the same ways listed above and make an effort to bridge the gap between the two. For example, sports focused brands can go on sports focused podcasts, YouTube shows, and Twitter Spaces to discuss how NFTs are affecting sports on a variety of different levels.
DeadFellaz has used platforms such as Twitter, YouTube and traditional publishers to spread the word about NFT art and anon identities. They have also worked with the likes of UTA (to whom they are now signed with) to celebrate diversity within the NFT space.
How to Use Discord to Grow NFT Community
If Twitter is your communication outlet, Discord is your community headquarters. Discord was built from the ground up to be the home base for communities and thanks to the ability to use programmable bots to leverage web3, it has found itself being the preferred platform for NFT projects that interact with their communities on a regular basis.
If you’re unfamiliar with how Discord servers are used to develop and engage with communities, visit several Discord servers to understand how they can be organized before you create your own.
Discord Onboarding
The Discord onboarding process is very important. Take time to ensure yours is as smooth as possible. Use the built in welcome tools and the ability to assign roles to walk new members through a process that familiarizes them with the platform.
The Cool Cats Discord onboarding workflow is a good example of low-friction server onboarding. Users simply verify they are human (no CAPTCHA required), agree to the server rules, and are then set up with a community cat role automatically. Other roles can be assigned easily, and users can click on each members’ profile to view their roles.
Setup Channels Properly
Make sure to assign channels their proper role. For example, an announcement channel should be titled accordingly. This gives both admins and users additional capabilities, including the ability for other servers to subscribe to your announcement channel. This delivers your news to their server automatically. Also, ensure the ability to message ‘everyone’ and ‘here’ are restricted to admins of the server.
In this example, a user with an admin role is able to manage channels whereas a user with a Verified role is not.
Keep Channels Simple
Keep the number of channels to a minimum and focus their content on what you believe will resonate with your community. More channels means more places for the community to splinter into smaller, less frequent, conversations. This can be detrimental to a new community trying to build. For instance, some community members may request language specific channels, thereby creating many new Discord channels within your server and fragmenting the community further. As you grow, adding those channels may make sense but when you begin, keep it as simple as possible.
A set of language specific channels on a popular server were created in 2021. One channel has not had a single post since creation.
Use Discord Bots
Leverage the flexibility of Discord by installing robust bots that add extra functionality to your server like automatic role selections, voting, server statistics, and a lot more. Popular bots include:
TweetShift for automatically pulling in new tweets to their own channel
MEE6 for welcoming users, leveling and role selection
RTFKT uses MEE6 to track user leveling and engagement within their community.
CollabLand for NFT ownership verification
World of Women implements Collab Land to verify ownership of World of Women NFTs. This allows them to token-gate channels within their community so only WoW owners can access them.
GiveawayBot for running giveaways
Ethereum Homies used GiveawayBot to run a competition where a user won a partner project’s NFT. Community members simply clicked the party hat icon to enter the draw. The winner is drawn automatically by GiveawayBot at the end date of the competition.
Statbot for Discord server usage analytics
This community deployed Statbot to track the user engagement on their server over time. Insights include most engaged users, most active channel and server downtime analysis.
Dyno Bot for holistic Discord management
Dyno Bot is used by Meta Angels to allow users to assign their own roles within the server.
Discord Server Boosting
Discord has the function of Server Boosting which allows you to gain access to unique perks based on how many boosts your server receives. Anyone in the community can boost the server. If you’re wanting to gain additional functionality, it’s worthwhile boosting the server yourself.
Sougen has a role specifically created for their community server boosters.
Emojis for Community
Consider creating a set of emojis that are unique to your community. These can be based on your artwork or references to your project.
BFF created their own set of emojis for their server to help the community engage in-chat in a branded manner.
Using the above information, we believe you can set up a Twitter and Discord server that will enable you to grow a thriving community around your NFT project. In our next iteration, we will share some best practices around how to communicate with your community across these two platforms.
Originally published @ https://medium.com/giglabs/setting-up-your-nft-community-using-twitter-and-discord-e2506f4fc53c
