Life after ICO: how to maintain investors loyalty and tokens economy with the help of media
Keep on publishing articles about yourself
The easiest thing to do is to release paid publications. In your situation, time is the most important resource. It's not possible to turn back lost time, so do not delay this publication. Prepare a lot of material. It makes sense to publish urgent and important news for a fee on major websites. These are reasonable investments.
For example, Ilon Mask decided to start cooperation with you, or your country's president personally approved your project. It is important to remember when writing paid article: it should be useful and not look like advertising. Useful content and competent "non-advertising" presentation, the absence of undisguised advertisement smooths out the negative attitude to paid publications.
Other publications should be general educational and written for specific media adhering to the subject matter.
It's worth remembering that paid publications are not enough. If your project's promotion is only based on paid publications - it's bad. Especially in terms of building a reputation within the community.
If your project is mentioned more often in publications labelled as "partner material" or "advertisment" than in regular articles, then many potential investors think twice about whether it is worth investing in your project at all. For the community, this is one of the main indicators showing how scammy the project is. A good project has incomparably more free mentions in the media than than those with paid articles. First of all your information should be useful and viral. Your project should win the hearts and minds, otherwise why is it needed then?
In the context of crypto anarchism, the use of the word "brand" may be appropriate. But it is better to perceive this as an idea, which is useful not only for a small (yet) crypto community. You need to think more broadly. Ethereum is at some point a brand. But its value is not so much in its existence, but in spheres where it can be applied, or that it can be used as a platform for other projects. The community of your project is built on the idea that it spreads. It is impossible to do this only by publications in media. This is the very idea of blockchain and decentralization: at a certain stage after a project is launched it develops not by the founders, but by followers within the community.
You need to put all your efforts in educating your community. This include making more training and educational material. Maintain your project with the help of your community. There may be some people among your followers who will take a new look at what you are doing. Such people often have blogs or they are influential enough for certain media outlets. They will become your partners in promoting publications for free.
Evangelists are very important for projects and public relations as well. Public, media personalities help much in the development of the project, especially when they provide interesting and useful content. Promotion is even more effective when these people are in contact with both the team and the community. All public conferences, meet-ups, are very important. And associating your idea with a certain person will undoubtedly make it easier for you to build relationships with the community, with investors and make you recognizable.
Such a person must be a part of your project. He does not have to be a CEO. If it happened that these people are not in your team, then they must be found. Try to participate in events. Start small - prepare a short report and make a presentation. Public speaking courses may be a good option as well. But do not hire strangers, your public representative must be part of the team. This will make community trust you and your project. The one who is really interested in what he does can sound much more convincing than the professional speaker who was hired for the project. The energy of your entire project will be broadcast through such a person. It is important.
Sectoral and non-sectoral media
Do not focus only on media outlets devoted to cryptocurrency. If you have a realy big project, then it can solve global problems, the problems of the whole mankind. It will be interesting for everyone, and everyone will discuss it one way or another.
This is all directly related to building links between your community and the project. Publications in general subject media can involve in the crypto community not only people who are already there and understand something in the cryptocurrency, but also those who have just heard something about bitcoin or ethereum.
Bitcoin and ethereum have long gone beyond crypto media. They are discussed everywhere, including at the government levels, because they solve global problems. Publish on all websites, in all communities that somehow come into contact with your project.
Are you engaged in blockchain-based real estate? You would better be published on the real estate websites. If your project has something to do with healthcare - then contact medical outlets.
Media plan
Useful content is the most important thing. First of all, your publications should benefit people. They don't have to be just a story about how cool your project is and how it will skyrocket to the moon, but also must contain information about how your project can help, how to use it, what prospects your project has. Focus on what you will do after going public. Look further, look deeper. The more clear your explanations for readers are, the more confidence this material will cause.
You need to demonstrate that you have not disappeared. You haven't collected money for big plans in the distant future, you already have a lot of work, and you are ready to show off the results. Such behaviour is important if you do not want everything to end before it even started, in fact. The meaning of ICO is not about making money, but about issuing a viable means of payment and a working project.
Everyone is interested in reading about the product's technology. How it functions, how it develops, what happens inside the team. Public discussions of plans is a must-have. This is what, for example, Vitalik Buterin, Dan Larimer do. Dialogues of big project funders always cause a public response. Of course, it's easy to argue in this way when you have a large project and a huge loyal community. Beginners need to cooperate as much as possible by concluding agreements, making joint projects with other teams. This is a great deal of work, but it will allow you to expand your community by integrating with other projects. It may concern not only blockchain-related spheres, but adjacent areas as well.
There are projects that publish news and releases no more than once a month, they can be limited to simple tweets or even just to updates on GitHub. If that's what your project does - then you need to worry much less than the rest. Because when GitHub update can speak for the whole project it's cool.
Press Releases
Press releases to some extent may lead to the growth of your cryptocurrency's value. But for many currencies the main task is not to grow in price, as it is with bitcoin, but the expansion of their application. Now bitcoin has become an asset, not a full-fledged currency.
In any case, good news always lead to speculative growth of the price. The only question is how important this news is. The news that your new website has changed the interface is unlikely to significantly affect the rates of your token and its demand. But the news about partnerships, agreements, improvement of the functional - undoubtedly will do it.
Longreads and teaching materials
The value of such materials is huge and can not be overstated. The more people involved in the project - the more its value. Vitalik Buterin constantly talks not about how amazing his ethereum is, but about how it can be used to create your own ethereum-based projects. This is the endearing value of your concept.
Tell how people will be able to realize their ideas with the help of your project, how they will be able to create something of their own. Not just to make money on the exchange rate of your coin, but create your own working business. It's interesting for people, it's not just a quick buck, but an opportunity to create a future for yourself. And when you explain this in your training material - people will come to you and remain with you.
Training materials are not just entertaining reading, but the opportunity to attract new adepts to your project who will carry it on and will also spread information about it. Such materials enable the viral spread of information about your project. When the information is disseminated without your participation, you get numerous reposts, your articles are quoted. Such content must be evergreen. This means that even in a year it can be laid out on any site and it will be relevant and useful. But its quality directly depends on the quality of your idea. This is good, because such a mechanism automatically screens out knowingly "dead ideas".
When each person on the planet uses bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies, then, perhaps, publications will be enough.
But in our case, publications are never enough. Especially after the ICO. You have released your brainchild into the world, and now your task is to support it as much as possible at the stage of intensive development. The task of any blockchain-based project is to be spread as much as possible, this is the essence of decentralization.
To keep the exchange rate of your token high is undoubtedly important. But for a good project it is not the only task and not the main one.
It is obvious that the project should enable early investors who supported it to earn some money. But! The main task is to extend your project as much as it is possible. The idea of the blockchain itself is decentralization. The goal of the ICO is not to raise the maximum amount of money, but to spread its coins as wide as possible, so that the maximum number of people would have them.
That is, PR's primary task is to create an environment. It's like a colony of bacteria. Its goal is not to make each bacterium big, but to spread as much as possible and to seize a space. And when you create such an environment with the help of publications and PR, you will no longer need to artificially support life in it, but simply give a nutritious substrate. With this strategy, your project will live and develop. Satoshi Nakamoto has been keeping silent for seven years, but bitcoin now is extremely trending topic to write about. His project is already developing on its own.
Therefore, grow your project, develop it. Give it all the opportunities to stand up, strengthen and develop on its own.
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