Founders must read crypto marketing guide: From the perspective of users, value output is better than advertising bombardment

Author: Jim

Think about the scene you saw the ad last time.

You might be very tired at the time, your brain is empty, and you just want to watch a good cooking video on YouTube, but one pops up ****The 90-second advertisement is about washing powder and other things.

Or, you're listening to a very useful podcast and suddenly gets interrupted: "The next thing is news from the sponsor."

Your whole body tensed up instantly, your heart beat faster, and then you frantically press the "Skip the Advertising" button, wishing you could get rid of it immediately.

We have all done this and have always been like this. Since the first merchants shouted at the market , people were bombarded by advertisements and were also trying to ignore them.

So, if we all agree that advertising is terrible, then why do you think others will like your advertising?

Oh, do you think you are not advertising?

In fact, the definition of advertising is "announcement of promoting products in public places."

So, every time you tweet about your project on Twitter, that 's the ad.

However, most founders always make the same mistake.

They thought the founder-led marketing was about talking about their projects on Twitter, so they kept advertising, but ended up being ignored. They tweeted for a week and found that no one interacted, and finally gave up. (Don't blame the "algorithm", it's not its fault.)

When I first launched Catalyst, I made the same mistake.

I tried my best to sell my products, but no one was interested at all.

I spent a lot of effort writing tweets but was completely ignored, and it felt really bad. I even wanted to quit Twitter completely and focus only on being a product manager at Catalyst.

At work, I switch back and forth between writing feature requirements documents and writing tweets. Gradually, the two were intertwined in my mind, and finally made me understand:

I want to stop thinking like a marketer and start thinking like a product manager . I need to start from the user 's perspective and create tweets that can solve problems for my "users" (followers).

This is the key to cracking the founder's leading marketing password.

Become a product manager for your content

A Product Manager is the “voice of users” – understand their needs and make sure the product satisfies them.

Becoming a product manager for your content means knowing your followers very well and providing what they really want.

Think about it: Why do people encrypt Twitter (Crypto Twitter)? Their purpose is nothing more than:

1. Want to make life better;

2. Seek entertainment.

For point 1, they may want to find some valuable information (such as transaction advice) on the timeline. And for point 2, they may just want to smile and relieve the pain after experiencing the exhaustion of losing money all day.

This is the type of content you need to make . It would be even better if you can do both at the same time.

However, most founders are always screwed up – they can’t suppress the urge to sell themselves. They were not thinking about “What do my followers need?” but “How can I let others know how powerful I am?”

Your content is either useful or interesting or otherwise it is rubbish.

Let me tell you how I did it.

I tried to be useful by sharing my experience as a founder (like this post!).

At the same time, I am also interesting by publicly expressing my dissatisfaction with the current situation of the crypto industry and the existence anxiety I feel every day to devote my career to this "absurd industry".

Coincidentally, these two types of content perform best.

Of course – I can’t always post something that is not related to the project. I need to connect the content to my project because I have growth goals to achieve and the company needs to survive. Otherwise, my team and investors would doubt what I was doing every day.

This raises a million-dollar question: How to find a balance between providing value and promoting a product?

I found two key principles to make promotional content really work:

(1) If you have to sell, please do it in moderation

In fact, there is a research basis for how to balance sales and non-selling content (sometimes also called "give to claim ratio").

For example, every 60 minutes of broadcast time on a TV show, about 13 minutes are advertisements. To convert, the ratio of sales to non-selling is about 2:7 (for friends who are not very good at math, it is 13/(60 - 13)).

Let’s look at Facebook again. They are a little “moderate” and will insert 1 ad in every 4 posts, so the ratio of promotion to non-promotion is 1:4.

As for Twitter, especially in a "changeable" circle like Crypto Twitter (CT, encrypted Twitter community), I personally prefer to reduce the proportion of sales. I adopt a 1:9 strategy, that is, 10% of the content is sales, and the remaining 90% of the content is to provide value to everyone.

But just knowing when to sell is not enough. If your sales style is not attractive enough, all efforts will be in vain. The real secret is how to sell .

(2) If you have to sell, do it in a tasteful way

My favorite ads aren't even like ads.

Like those interesting ads—like Duolingo’s humorous comments on the Mavericks deal or their Super Bowl ads ; or those that touch me to tears, like this unofficial Nintendo ad ; and some weird ones that make people Advertisements that have to be shared with friends .

The best advertising is entertaining, so entertaining that people forget that they are being marketed. It is even so strong that people are willing to spend their free time watching ad collections on YouTube.

So, how to do this?

Once again, adopt the product manager (PM) mindset – what do your users really like?

If you don't have any data, start with what you like as a reference. In most cases, if you are making a consumer-oriented (B2C) product, you may have similar interests as your users.

Here is what I did in the CrossCats project:

I noticed that our Discord channel is full of cat emoticons, and when I was a kid I especially liked watching "Adventure Live Treasure". So we combined the two and created Cupcakes and their team.

(See tweet for details )

Excellent founder marketing practice

But to be honest, I am still far from the benchmark of "founder-led marketing". So, let's look at the founders who are really doing well.

Before you start, it’s very important: Don’t try to replicate what those successful founders are doing now . Their influence has formed a positive cycle, and basically anything they send will get angry.

For example, those ambiguous short sentences are used to create popularity only when you already have a certain fan base.

Instead, you should study the success stories of founders when they were not very famous.

For example, Rushi – he gradually became popular by becoming a supporter of Move and writing in-depth articles about why Move is significant in the context of trends such as parallelization and inscriptions.

For example, Keone, he adopted a similar strategy to me - recording his experience in building Monad projects, including everything from recruitment to community construction:

(See tweet for details )

(See tweet for details )

Have a spirit of not giving up

Hopefully this post will help you solve your doubts as a founder when producing quality content – ​​so you don’t waste time posting content that no one cares about.

But remember that just knowing these methods does not mean success.

If you really want to stand out in founder-led marketing, then you have to persevere. This is a long hardship, and the results will not be achieved overnight.

If you don’t believe it, you can follow the excellent founders I mentioned and open their tweet notifications. They publish high-quality content multiple times every day and continuously output value.

Don't treat this as a short-term task, it's not something that can be accomplished in a week or a month. You need to turn it into a habit—consume at least 1 hour a day for several years.

If you are really willing to work hard, the rewards are huge. With a strong personal brand, you will find that recruitment, cooperation, and financing will become easier.

If you find it too hard, accept the fact that being a good founder requires great effort and there is no shortcut. Not everyone can become an excellent founder, because not everyone is willing to do their best for it.

But if you really want to succeed, you will definitely give it your best.