It's not easy growing and managing a Web3 community.

It's broad – there's probably a mix of everything from Marketing / Content / Partnerships / Training / Legal / Counselling / …

You’re probably on 24/7, seeing all the good, the bad, and the boring.

Perhaps, it’s even more challenging – especially if you’re managing the people handling all that (see above 🔝)

And you still do what you need to do, because you believe in the future of Web3 – privacy, ownership & decentralisation – and especially in the mission of your project.

It’s important to manage a community for any project. They are your first users, your outreach.

You don’t need to spend money, just start off with a Discord and get your community members to champion a role.

And as a community manager, your goal is to engage people. So, focus on sharing about your product & creating an experience for your community.

For example, if you’re working on an eSports project, talk about the gameplay. Or even about the tokenomics. Then get feedback from community.

Your project can be stealth too, but if you start promoting and prototyping with community feedback and responses, you can then raise funds and even an ICO.

There are many interesting use cases that came out from Web3, such as NFTs, whitelisting, even allowing users to create assets such as naming a world.

Another exciting way to engage the community is by involving and developing the narrative together.

For example, there’s an RPG in Discord that allows users to farm and fish in-game assets within Discord. Your progression within Discord can be brought bring over to the main game.

PlanetQuest is a great community, with 250,000 members. They provided narratives and enticed the community with factions. Since the game isn’t fully built yet, they even provided mini-games that the community can play.

People are very fickle, and we are competing against hundreds of projects on a daily basis.

Retention can be met with good referral loops, campaigns with growth in mind, and generally keeping your community informed and confident of your project & team.

There's also the off chance that the community members genuinely click, and find meaningful connections among themselves. This is often the most rewarding to observe; facilitating genuine human connections.

It’s also good to accept that it’s fine. People leave, play other games. But they may come back too.

Just try to be consistent and interact as much as possible. If you’re not doing anything, users won’t interact. You need things to pop-up in their newsfeed. So it goes down to you, providing activity and use cases for people to do stuff in the servers, setting events, providing content to users.

The beauty of the Internet community is that it never sleeps.

That also works against those that manages community sometimes, as it often means they have to be constantly online and engaged.

But it’s crucial to be transparent, honest and clear – no open ends. If you can’t deliver, clearly say that you’re working on it. In fact, feel free to ask for help. The community can contribute too.

Sometime, people will do anything to flame and say that your NFT project is a scam – especially if your NFT is in the market, because sometimes they do that so they can sweep in at a lower cost. And it can be difficult to moderate especially if there are language barriers too. Try to reach out to community to get them to champion and assist you.

Sometimes, your project needs to be delayed too, say by a few months. To deal and control the chaos and panic, it helps to discuss with the team and simplify deliverables so it can be shipped faster.

And if you can’t deliver and have to deal with negativity, seek transparency. Listen & talk to them directly, instead of removing or avoiding.

Be honest – that it’s done for their best interests, that you’re working hard too. If your product is good, people will come back.

Sometimes if you ask them why they said certain stuff, they’ll be receptive and talk to you. And make sure everyone can see what transpires. Or, use moderation tools to remove spelling errors or a dedicated private channel.

Of course, it’s important to not just listen to what they’re saying but also to reflect it back to the team and take what they say seriously, and do something about it.

Make sure you get someone who’s working on the issue/feature to share.

For example, get a dev to write a short piece with screenshots as an announcement to update the community. Or, you might even need to coach your devs to showcase or demo in an AMA with the community.

If you really have nothing to show in that time, consider marketing collaborations with other projects. Or even small stuff like mini-games, quizzes and activities.

Each post has to be well thought out. Give your community the impression that you respect their time, and that each post is weighty and deserves their anticipation.

For example, use Discord events and plan it. You need to decide amongst your team how long you need to execute it. For example, if you’re doing an AMA with a dev, you may need to practice before to clear any awkwardness.

If you’re letting people be involved in a narrative, this can be more complex. You’ll need to talk to team to plan this out, say every morning for 30mins on what to say out. For example, what happens if the user chooses A, B, or C? What changes?

Craft a constant stream of events, and rhythmic activities is best.

Give our users a reason to come back at a particular time to join a particular event / game / session.

Focus on a representing the community. Don’t focus on the model – not just P2E – but on the identity of the game. For example, Bored Apes aren’t sold as NFTs, but sold as the identity of individuals.

So, ideally let a user partake in the game itself. For example, PlanetQuest is not yet playable, but it allows the community to build factions and have their own identity.

The goal is to have open and clear communication.

Pull up a poll and question on what they’d like to engage with, and see their reactions. If numbers are low, check with the community again

Basically, try to understand your community’s needs and cater to them. For example, some event format which requires people to set time aside might not be easy.

For example, since we’re mostly remote, plan for sporadic events like Discord tokens that people can buy and whitelist throughout the day. Or surprise events in different timezones.

Even better to add some humour like getting a developer to come in and mess with people. But be playful, not malicious. As Community Manager, you’re not “watching” the community – you’re a part of the community!

It might be chaotic when people take part, but the community likes such engagement. And sometimes people just farm. But that’s good for retention as well.