Five tips on how brands can successfully engage their communities and keep their NFT projects alive

We are social animals, so it should come as no surprise that our sense of safety, importance, personal and business validation, and visibility comes from community and the social evidence of belonging to the ones representing our values out loud.

It’s also noteworthy that it was the community primarily that stoked the flames of the NFT frenzy of 2022.

One of the most well-known and private NFT communities is VeeFriends of Gary V. The name Gary V has significance. In May 2021, when he first announced his NFT initiative, it wasn’t immediately taken up. The majority of people did not see the benefit of paying 0.5 ETH. Furthermore, Gary’s NFTs are merely doodles (he isn’t embarrassed about it) and are probably not the kind of things you would expect to sell for five figures in terms of aesthetics.

Gary, though, remained steadfast in his commitment to “continuing to create, and continuing to generate value” for token holders. When Gary V launched his NFT, I didn’t understand what he meant when he said these things, but I now recognize that the value of VeeFriends lies in its ability to connect you to a community rather than in the ability to converse with or hang out with Gary V personally.

Others include Cryptopunks, Cool Cats, Bored Ape Yacht Club, and Lovely Humans.

What traits do the top NFT communities share in common?

●       Entry-level difficulties – Limited Access to the community. You cannot simply pay to enter. It takes a trigger, just like a real NFT drop.

●       No need to explain FOMO. When we are excluded as humans, our imaginations run wild.

●       Access offers resources, confirms identity, molds behavior, and develops integrative links between individuals, families, and groups.

●       Intellectual capital: Knowledge, talents, and any confidential information held by the community have value. Just consider the magic that happens when you are one of the world’s smartest or most powerful people. Think of the Stanford and YPO WhatsApp groups around the world.

●       Deals and other opportunities to profit – The world’s top 1% achieve participation through inclusion.

Community is powerful because it interestingly trumps content.  This is really significant because it shows that there is a community filter protecting NFT projects from all the negative information floating around about the industry. This filter serves as a defensive wall against the hurricane-force winds that FTX and other unfavorable information about NFTS and the Web 3.0 world as a whole have stoked.

Knowing this, the strongest communities for NFT initiatives will endure and even prosper as their community works together. For NFT projects, strengthening the community is crucial at this time.

Here are 5 suggestions for how businesses can successfully interact with their communities and maintain their NFT initiatives:

1. Inform your neighborhood about NFT use cases.

If you educate your audience about industry developments, they will remain devoted to you. In fact, because you are paving the path among the greatest businesses in the world, people will start to view you as a pioneer in the industry. Additionally, nobody does not want to be a part of something fresh and cutting-edge.

There are several amazing use cases available, many of them are first-time uses. Here is how Lovely Humans by Gleac operates. We provide 5 intriguing NFTS use examples every Monday. Here is what it looked like this past week for us:

2.    Your NFT Community Channel should be located where members are most likely to appear and feel at ease in the course of their daily lives and jobs.

The worst error we can make-and one we also committed-is to assume that your NFT community needs a Discord and Telegram channel. While many of the early NFT buzz initiatives find their audience on these communication channels, the majority of businesses’ existing community and customer base are absent from these platforms, uncomfortable using them, and compelling them to do so is like asking them to swim against the current.

For us at Lovely Humans, our community is made up of world-renowned specialists who are typically older than 35. They favor WhatsApp, and it is where we established our successful community. Even though our NFT community does have a Discord channel, it is not the hub of activity there.

3. Your NFT Community should be Several Tribes of no more than 100.

A community is not just a group of hundreds or thousands of people. The evidence for this is supported by science.

Consider your high school or college days. Even if you all attended Harvard, you have a special link with anyone from your house if you were a member of a House like the Kennedy School there. Building a community is exactly the same in this regard. And this dates back to the tribes and ancestors we have. There is a reason why tribes should never exceed 50 members. When you become larger than this “optimal” size, intimacy and connection do not develop.

Every community has a top tail that is extremely involved (10-20%) on any given day and a bottom tail that is never engaged (10-20%), with the remaining 60-80% falling in between. This has an impact on the daily activity and post count in the community. The risk of crowd architecture increases with increased size, which results in excessive daily activity and our termination. You can see the issue with crown architecture and too much conversation by imagining yourself eating a buffet every day.

Therefore, maintaining tight-knit communities with high levels of engagement depends on the proper 100 tribal members.

4. Community Walls requires curatorship a la Tate Modern.

Communities that lack inspiration and where no one feels included quickly disappear. Only communities that promote themselves endure. Just consider the definition of a community, which is a collection of individuals with various traits who are connected by social ties, have similar viewpoints, and take collective action.

Thus, maintaining order and establishing the community wall’s tone are crucial. While NFTs may have brought everyone together, there are other factors that bring people together to support one another on a more personal basis.

We make sure to do a variety of things, like showcasing community members to halt the self-promotion muscle, educating about NFTS and other business topics that are important to our community, inspiring through photos and storytelling, and acting funny occasionally.

Try things out to find out what ties your community together. And don’t be scared to question them why they came to our community and for what. The response may astound you.

5. Your community belongs to its members, not you.

We distribute curation days at Lovely Humans to the actual active community members. It’s amazing how this little action has sparked activity on our sales pipeline. In fact, a lot of people from our neighborhood ended up buying Gleac.

You’re there to help out your neighborhood. This is the attitude you need to have if you want to build amazing, engaged communities that turn customers into rabid brand advocates. They must experience ownership over it. It must be a place where they feel safe mentally.

With a top-down approach and talking at the expense of communicating to their communities, many businesses get this wrong.

NFT efforts are effective for a variety of reasons, not just because they are attractive or useful. But what makes them successful is communities. Any NFT project should have this as its guiding principle.