Blockchain PR Tips Crypto Startups Must Know
By: Rob Vardy
Tags: Marketing, Cryptocurrency, Blockchain, Public Relations, Blockchain Pr

Launching a successful blockchain PR campaign is no easy feat — especially for a blockchain startup with few contacts. However, the process is far from impossible and doesn’t always have to be a battle.

In this guide, we’ll be walking you through everything you need to know about blockchain PR. We’ll touch upon things to consider before launching your first campaign, as well as a wealth of tips to incorporate along the way.

By the end of this article, you’ll be a blockchain PR master. Let’s get right into it!

What is PR?

PR, which stands for Public Relations, is how a company or individual manages their social presence in the world. It often pertains specifically to how a company manages their presence in the media.

In the modern age, digital PR has taken over the world. Almost every company (and every single company that’s on the right path) will have thought about their online presence and will be putting time into managing their public perceptions.

What is Blockchain PR?

Blockchain PR is an extension of traditional PR that focuses directly on blockchain industries. Blockchain companies may be launching IDOs or similar cryptocurrencies, or may just be an extension of blockchain combined with another industry.

Whatever your personal blockchain startup is, you’ll have to develop an effective PR strategy. Unfortunately, the rules and regulations for blockchain aren’t the same as many traditional industries, so you’ll have to adapt your blockchain PR campaign strategy.

What is the difference between Blockchain PR and traditional PR?

The central difference between these two forms of PR is the strategies and techniques involved in both. For example, ICOs are notoriously more difficult to market due to the past history of scams, meaning a primary objective of blockchain PR is about building trust.

Typical companies are perceived more trustworthy than blockchain companies, which is why blockchain has to place such emphasis on being transparent and building trust. Considering that 46% of ICOs launched in 2017 failed, it’s no wonder that the learning curve for blockchain PR is so steep. Trust is a terribly hard thing to win.

Additionally, the channels that blockchain PR target are often very different to traditional PR. Their social channels will relate mainly to sites like Reddit and Steemit, which have a larger community involved in blockchain.

The central difference comes down to how the PR campaign is managed and through which channels it is directed.

What to consider before starting a blockchain PR campaign

Before you dive right in to starting your very own blockchain PR campaign, you should take a second to make sure you’ve considered all the necessary steps before launching. Try working your way down this budget, asking if you’ve set:

Budget

Time Frame

Goals

Measuring System

Checkpoints

By ensuring that you’ve got all of the above in place, you’re more likely to have a successful blockchain PR campaign. That’s because you’ll be making your campaign measurable, ensuring that you can frequently check-in and see if you’re on the right track.

Let’s break down these requirements a little more.

Budget

Before you begin a blockchain PR campaign, even before you begin setting goals for that campaign, you need to set a budget. A budget will allow you to more accurately set goals for your campaign, as well as giving you a rough idea of how much your campaign is going to cost you.

When setting a budget, you want to consider aspects like:

How long will you be running the campaign for?

The scale and size of your campaign?

The purpose of your campaign.

By running these ideas, you’ll be able to more accurately generate a budget that works for you.

In a traditional PR campaign, the IDC reports the following percentages of your budget going to different locations.

IDC Report

Considering that you’re focusing on Blockchain PR, not traditional forms of PR, these numbers will be slightly different. However, the pie chart gives you a good foundation. Start planning around these aspects, taking into account the various different streams that you’re going to have to cover.

Time Frame

Without a defined time frame, setting goals becomes incredibly difficult. For example, if your goal is to generate 100 new leads and you hit that, you may be overjoyed.

The ‘may’ in this example comes from the fact that time frame is obviously very important to determining if this is a success. If you hit 100 new leads in one week, then it looks like things are going great. However, if you hit 100 new leads over one year, then you might not have the same feelings of joy.

Before starting any blockchain PR campaign, it’s a good idea to set a clear time frame. You should have a rough idea of how long you want to launch the campaign for, and how long you’re going to keep it running.

Goals

Goals are the heart and soul of blockchain PR. Without clearly defined goals, which encompass timeframes, you’ll never know if you’re on the right pathway.

Before launching your blockchain PR campaign, you should develop a range of specific goals. The key to creating solid goals is to make sure they follow the S.M.A.R.T practice.

In summary, a S.M.A.R.T goal ensures that your goal is written in terms that are easy to follow and specific enough to make it black or white if you’ve hit it or not. Of course, these goals need to have a sense of time integrated into them.

As stated above, there is no point in developing a goal without a time limit — the limit is what allows you to know if you’re on track to achieving the goal or not!

Measuring System

If you’ve set S.M.A.R.T goals, then one of the key ways to actually know if you’re on track to hitting those goals is to ensure that they are measurable. Something like social media following count is a very easy example here. As it is a solid number, you’ll be able to very easily see it rise over time.

If your goals are S.M.A.R.T, then you’ll be able to measure them. When it comes to the success of your blockchain PR campaigns, there are several possible methods of tracking them.

Are you running advertisements? If so, the platform you’re using to run the ads will most likely offer some form of analytics software, allowing you to track your metrics over time.

Alternatively, you’ll be able to track digital analytics by using platforms like:

MediaToolKit — A social platform that allows you to track your company mentions and relevant news around your business.

Mention — Another social listening platform which allows you to track your interactions and mentions.

Google Analytics/Console — Connect your business and website to see traffic and other useful insights.

These three are just the beginning, there are plenty of media tools out there that you can use to track your blockchain PR progress and success.

Whatever tool you use, make sure it is fully set up and integrated into your campaign before you start running the project. You want to make sure you have all the analytics possible so that you can change and adapt your campaign as it goes along.

Checkpoints

The final thing to focus on before you launch is to set up checkpoints. At these checkpoints, whether it be every two weeks or every month, you’ll want to check on the progress of your campaign. You can do this by comparing your monitoring software against your goals.

Are you currently on track to hit or exceed your goals? If that’s the case, then you’ve done a fantastic job with your campaign and you should continue what you’re doing.

However, if it looks like you’re going to be falling short, then it would be better to reconfigure your campaign. You can use analytics to see which elements of your campaign are currently running the best. Once you’ve found these, you’ll then be able to focus more attention on those channels and projects.

The channels that don’t seem to be working for you can either be pulled away from, or recognized. Here, you can use the power of A/B testing to efficiently see which of two campaigns is getting better feedback. Out of the two above examples, B, the variation, receives better feedback — so therefore, the company would proceed with B.

The business could then run B against a new variation, C, to see which is better.

This, combined with analytics, is a powerful way of positively refining your campaign as it goes along.

Once you’ve ticked off these 5 things, you’ll be well on your way to a successful blockchain PR campaign.

Budget

Time Frame

Goals

Measuring System

Checkpoints

Blockchain PR Tips

Once your blockchain startup has their PR campaign up and running, you should constantly keep refining it to improve your numbers. There are a range of core concerns that you should keep in mind, making sure to include these in your campaign.

The earlier you incorporate the following things, the better. Take a look at these 7 blockchain PR tips for a successful campaign:

Be Transparent

Use the right channels

Content

SEO

Outreach

Brand Identity

Transparency

One of the central differences between blockchain PR and traditional PR is the need to create a transparent and trustworthy brand. Although blockchain is actually much safer than many typical industries due to its unalterable record keeping, it has a history of being connected with scams.

For example, in the late 2010s, there were a series of scams that shook the blockchain industry. Reuters has reported that the amount of money stolen (in the form of cryptocurrency investments) rose by 400% in 2018.

The total amount was reported by CipherTrace (a cyber security company) as valuing around $1.7 billion USD. This incredible number saw an immediate reaction, with sites like Facebook deciding to ban all promotional materials of cryptocurrency on their platforms.

The number was considerably higher than past years, with the following graph demonstrating a 3.6x shift in the amount stolen.

Due to this, many people completely most their faith in anything to do with blockchain. That’s why, as a blockchain startup, you need to make sure a large portion of your PR goes towards establishing yourself as a reputable company.

Instead of focusing on selling your products and gaining investors, you should first put down roots in the community, making sure that people trust you.

Trust and a solid foundation built on transparency will pay in dividends in the future.

Use the Right Channels

Following on from the aforementioned Facebook bans of 2018, the channels that blockchain industries began to use to promote their companies shifted radically.

Instead of traditional platforms, a blockchain PR campaign will focus on sites like:

Reddit

Steemit

Pocket

and more!

These, although not traditionally used within PR, have a wealth of crypto and blockchain communities to focus on. Just take a look at the search numbers for Cryptocurrency on Reddit. There are entire communities devoted to discussing the latest developments in the community.

This truly is just the beginning, with these sites all holding valuable places in which you can share updated about your PR campaign.

Be sure to use the right channels when launching your blockchain PR campaign. They’re not always the traditional channels that come to mind!

Content

As a blockchain startup, you won’t be known within the community. Very few people will be familiar with your brand and even fewer will be invested. Although it may seem counterproductive, the content you produce should focus on bringing useful advice and guidance to your community, rather than just pushing to get more investors.

Structure your content around what people are currently searching for within your community. You can even use social sites like Reddit to see what’s currently trending. Alternatively, you can find keywords to write about by using Google Keyword Planner.

On Keyword Planner, you’ll be able to type in your niche’s keyword — blockchain — and get a range of keywords and longtails that are associated with this niche. This will show you what sort of things people are searching for.

By writing articles about those things, you’ll be able to provide actual value to your community. Over time, as more people come across your articles, you’ll be establishing yourself as a reputable brand.

This goes hand in hand with transparency. If you’re continually providing free content on your site that your users enjoy, they’ll be more likely to invest when the time comes.

Always focus on content first — above everything! Great, useful content is the heart of any blockchain PR campaign.

SEO

Search Engine Optimization is the process of editing your content to make sure that Google, and other search engines, can read and then rank your content. A post with great SEO has a higher probability that it will make it to the first page of Google.

Considering that over 71% of traffic comes from the first page of Google, you should do everything possible to rise through the ranks of your chosen keywords until you hit that first page. The closer you become, the more likely you are to increase the traffic you get to your website.

Although SEO is a vast topic, we’ve included a SEO strategy pathway that you can follow, allowing you to hit all of the necessary points of the process.

Within your blockchain PR campaigns, you should make SEO a priority.

Outreach

As an extension of SEO comes off-page SEO, which mainly focuses on outreach on your website. This is the process of contacting other sites in order to build up backlinks. Most commonly, this will come through Guest Posting on other websites.

One way you can do this is to use Google’s quotation marks to directly search for opportunities. Take a look at the following example:

By using quotation marks, you’ll be able to only get results that contain the terms you’ve typed in. Here are the results for the above search:

Consider changing “Bitcoin” to anything to do with blockchain, like:

Blockchain

Cryptocurrency

Blockchain Technology

Crypto

These will allow you to find opportunities for guest posting.

You may be wondering, what’s the point of creating content for other sites? The main reason to guest post is to accumulate backlinks to your own website. This is a vital part of blockchain PR, and when done well, can seriously boost the impact of a campaign.

A backlink is when one website links back to your website, thus telling Google that you’re a reliable source. The amount of backlinks a site has from other reputable websites is a large portion of how Google decides where to rank a website on their search pages.

Take a look at this study by GuerrillaBuzz which shows the correlation between the amount of backlinks that a blockchain startup received and the amount of money their IDO was able to raise.

As you can see, the more backlinks that a website managed to source, the more total funds they eventually raised. This correlation further demonstrates the importance of outreach as a stage of your blockchain PR.

You should never overlook the importance of outreach and off-page SEO!

Brand Identity

The final aspect of your blockchain PR campaign that you should always try and consider is building a strong brand identity. Without needing to read your brand’s name, a person should be able to recognize your logo, colors, and more.

Developing your personal brand is something central to PR, making sure that you are recognizable and noticeable in any online context. Be sure to perfect your logo, color scheme, and more before you start publishing content.

Everything should be cohesive across your site and all of your external marketing.

Take a look at this article on how to develop your brand’s identity by Studio1.

If you manage to consider all of the above aspects when running your blockchain PR campaign, you’ll be well on your way to having a fantastic launch.

Should I Hire a Blockchain PR Agency?

If the above lists of steps and requirements seems overwhelming to you, or it’s just simply the first time you’re launching a blockchain PR campaign and want a little help, then we recommend you contract a blockchain PR agency.

If they have case studies of their previous work, then you’ll know that they have sufficient experience that they can then apply to your own campaign. What’s more, a campaign manager makes things much easier as if you have any doubts or concerns, you’ll simply be able to reach out to them.

Be sure to factor in the agency into your budget. In fact, in your opening call with a PR agency, you should discuss things like:

Budget

Expectations

Time limits

Styles of operation

Knowing and agreeing on these things will make sure that you’re on the same page as your blockchain PR agency, making the whole process much easier.

Final Thoughts

If you’re a blockchain startup that’s looking to launch their blockchain PR campaign, then this article has all the tips you need for a successful launch. You’ll be able to run initial checks before you begin, as well as using our pointers to check in on its progress throughout your journey.

Although blockchain PR is a complex topic, as a startup, it’s something you should put energy into mastering. By following this article, you’ll be a blockchain PR pro in no time.

Best of luck!