Pay attention - the meta has changed. Thank you Hyperliquid!

TGEs and airdrops have been broken for ages. The financial motives are wrong. Teams and VCs are only focused on making big money quickly

Today that's flipped on its head. The long term game is winning. Using the token as a proper reward mechanism and kicking off a growth flywheel fuelled by price is the way to go

I'm excited for the new meta - this is how it should have been all along

https://x.com/alexonchain/status/1862516098219810906?s=46&t=7cmhHfEjGY8z6mLxCb0dlg

If you're in marketing or growth and you want an extra edge, this is the stuff you want to be studying

Tokenomics is a fascinating subject, and the lessons you'll learn will apply to so many other areas of your work

Take the chance to look at community building and network effects from a new angle - you'll be glad you did

Just finished listening to the five dysfunctions of a leadership team - definitely recommend this one

If you're in a management position, or aspire to be, then it's a no brainer

But even if you just want to be a great employee, understanding the foundations of good leadership will help you improve significantly. So the key points still apply to you too!

A small ripple at the top can cause a flood at the bottom. Understanding the dynamics at play - and how they can be controlled - is valuable for anyone ambitious

Plus this book makes its points through telling a story about a dysfunctional team. So, if you're anything like me and you get bored easily, this makes it a lot easier to follow and digest!

We did it bros

➡️ https://x.com/alexonchain/status/1864504683466739948

This is something I'll never stop talking about

I see it all the time - work starts out focused, and then gets scope creep and more and more objectives, goals and metrics get added

In the end all this does is dilute the key objective and ensures the output is going to be generic slop

Keeping hyper focused on a very small number of goals/objectives is honestly one of my biggest pieces of advice, and it's something that I think helped me massively throughout my career

You can use it every day, in big and small moments. Taking a step back to say 'what are we actually trying to do?' Or 'what really matters here?' can change everything

Going back to the $ME example to make my point:

With the airdrop they're obviously going to have a lot of attention. People are getting free money so they should be happy, if distributed properly

But, if there's going to be so much attention on your project, why not make use of it right now? On the surface it's a logical thought process - it has pros and cons of course

So if we assume everyone wants to claim their free money, then adding an extra claim step to download our app will add some friction, but the outcome is still the same, right? They get their money, they should still be happy. And then we get more app downloads!

But you ruin the user experience, even if nothing actually goes wrong, that extra step is annoying and takes a lot away from what you're trying to do

Best case, user experience is now bad. (Reminder: UX should be a top priority here)

Worst case, something goes wrong and the bad UX gets even worse

You want people to enjoy and take about this moment. Smooth experience is paramount

Why risk it all for a few app downloads? Focus on the key objective - rewarding users and making them happy. If you do that, you'll have such a strong user base you'll be able to move the other metrics later easily

New meta just dropped: yap-to-earn

Imo you don't want to miss this, plus all you have to do is sign in with your twitter and you'll earn points for your awful takes

Following back everyone that uses my ref link - dm me proof on twitter 🫡

Sign up to start earning: https://yaps.kaito.ai/referral/151304080985517670

Doing an AMA just for this channel. Ping your questions here: https://ngl.link/alexonchain

Will answer as many as I can tomorrow, and probably batch them so I don't spam you

how do i not sound like an AI on my tweets and replies?

You need to find your own voice. Don't overthink it, write like you talk. Avoid using words, phrases, abbreviations etc that you wouldn't use in real life. Read your writing out loud when it's done. If you wouldn't say it like that, don't write it like that. Repeat this until it comes naturally

do you usually tweet from phone or laptop/PC?

Since March, everything I've posted has been from my phone. I'm in Latin America and I don't have a laptop with me

It's going to be weird going back to writing on a keyboard. Took a lot of adjustment to get used to writing on a phone

do you use any 3rd party apps/extensions for tweeting?

I write all my tweets in twitter drafts. It's dumb but helps me with my process for some reason. Having separation from where I write and post my tweets feels off

I have a telegram channel with only me in it where I write ideas whenever they come to me. Eventually they get turned into something

I use ChatGPT for research and fact checking

How much do I need to understand before I start writing on a topic?
Feeling I’m not enough every time I start writing on something

I learnt most of what I know about crypto from writing about it. Good writing is essentially good thinking. To put out any good piece of written work you need to know your shit. But, you don't need to know it before you start

The authors of every book you've read will have started with a research phase. They read, they interview, they network

If you feel like you don't know enough, don't be intimidated. Just start. Do the research, start writing, when you're not sure do more research to fill the gaps

you've mentioned learning tokenomics can be an extra edge for those in growth/marketing - can you give more context? and where to start learning tokenomics?

Learn about growth and growth marketing more broadly, and study the recent case studies. Look at something like Blast - it got tonnes of attention but it fizzled out. Why did it get so much mindshare? Why wasn't it sustainable? Then look at something like Hyperliquid. How did their approach differ, and why does that convert to longer term success?

When writing content, do you write with an objective or target in mind? Or you write freely and condense it into something?

How do you gather your ideas on what to write about?

Everything you do should have a clear objective. Ideally not multiple objectives, that's how good work gets diluted into slop

Each post of mine would usually have one objective, which is to maximize reader satisfaction and therefore engagement. The delivery method often changes - education, opinion, humour, etc

My ideas for writing come from:
- Past experiences
- Current trends and discussions
- My content consumption (books, podcasts, social media)

My biggest tip is always write an idea down, no matter how half baked. Later you'll be glad you did

how to grow a personal X account from just 200-300 followers to over 2k?

Read my personal branding guide, it's in my pinned thread

have you sold any $pengu

No

What was cz reaction when you made a meme on him for the 1st time

It had been done before I joined. I was hesitant at first, but soon got used to memeing him, as I'm sure you could tell. When I first met him in person I asked him what he thought. He liked it - if it gets engagement and the community enjoys it he's all for it. He took work seriously but not himself seriously

What’s the best way or what is the best CTA to use?

This is a too general question. It depends on what you're trying to do. I suggest you read more about copywriting and the principles that lead someone to take action. Study those from people who learned doing direct response

In short, the purpose of each line of text is to get someone to read the next line. With content, whether written or visual, you need to capture attention well enough that you can direct it to the next place. Eventually that place will be a CTA. Including clear benefits for taking the CTA always helps

What are recruiters looking for in marketing/social applicants?

Honestly? Probably the wrong things, generally speaking

I'm writing a longer post on this (someone requested it and I promise I haven't forgotten!), here's an unedited leak of some notes from it:

Competencies to look for:

Free thinking
Humble
Empathetic
Creative
Good simplifier
First principle problem solving
Controlled, self-aware rebelliousness
Fast worker

Skills to look for:

Strong product knowledge
Excellent writer
Understanding of marketing principles and psychology

Are quest campaigns worth it? When and how to make them work? Seeing 80% of quest campaigns starting with "follow us on X", step 2 "join our discord" only to get a ton of bots and not interested accounts.

I wouldn't do them often. In moderation they can be okay. But don't kid yourself - the results are generally close to worthless

Two ways I think they can be used well:
1) In conjunction with an announcement or big campaign, create a loop that reshares the announcement and sends more people back to the quest
2) To launch or grow your socials on other channels. For example, you're big on twitter, you're starting to prioritise instagram. A quest campaign is a great way to copy+paste many followers from your big channel to your smaller channels. This helps start your snowball on the other channel

Remember you can submit questions here: https://ngl.link/alexonchain

What are some commonly accepted crypto marketing tactics that you think are ineffective?

Juicy one! Let's see...

- Most social media and content is a waste of time
- Reply guying hurts your brand because you're doing it wrong
- The majority of money spent on events is wasted
- Paid ads are mostly useless in crypto because you won't be able to have the data structures to attribute
- KOLs and token allocations without deep and long-term thought are exceptionally harmful

I want to pivot to a more analytical kind of marketing, instead of just followers and engagement. What kind of métrics to look for?

The metrics you should and can be looking at depend on what role you're in. If you want to learn more about leveraging data and how to know what data to use, you can read 'Measure What Matters: OKRs: The Simple Idea that Drives 10x Growth'. It's boring but will help a lot

Whatever role you're in, you should be using the data that matters to constantly learns and improve what you're doing

As a Marketing Manager for a new project with an actual product (not a meme-based concept), what steps would you take to build and grow your initial community effectively?

Align on the vision and mission with leadership. Make sure I fully understand it. Focus all efforts around proliferating that

Tools and tactics would be things like content, social, events, community games, exclusive groups and roles, UGC, campaigns, giveaways, etc

The magic isn't in the tactics, it's in the extreme ends of the barbell. At one end is the direction of the project, and making sure that's something people can get excited about and rally around. The other end is in the micro details of how you apply these tactics, to ensure each piece achieves as much as it can. The little things matter. Not all social posts are equal, for example

How to market a web3 project in a new ecosystem with a lot of attention, like Abstract, been a non speculative product

Research internally and externally. Find what growth levers you have and exploit them

What makes you unique? What are your strongest benefits? Do you have connections you can leverage for distribution? What big ideas do you have to get attention? Etc

Will do one last round today. Questions here: https://ngl.link/alexonchain

What’s the next way for a brand new project to break through the noise and actually get some attention and build a following?

I don't have a crystal ball. I wish I did!

The answer is: they will do something different that gets people interested and/or excited

And in this industry, that's almost always tied with a fresh approach to wealth creation for the right people (advocates that will hold)

I also hope we'll see more marketing stunts that generate huge attention like Polymarket's this year. Let's see

What are the most effective ways to reach specific target demographics worldwide with your content without needing to host events on location?

Meet them where they are. There are a few way to narrow it down like language and channel

If you've done all of that, you may need to do smart promotion through communities or niche influencers, or if paid ads if you can attribute it effectively

With all that said, I'd like to go back to my default answer: make better content. If your content is truly great - highly entertaining, hilarious, incredibly useful, or whatever - it will reach who you're aiming for soon enough

What was the most out-of-the-box engagement campaign idea that you came across and were impressed by that proved to be effective and successful?

I always liked the example of Burger King sponsoring Stevenage FC purely to get their logo in a FIFA game, and then how they activated that only to get tonnes of attention

which are best marketed product? and best product?

This is obviously highly subjective. How do you define good marketing?

Binance has the biggest userbase and revenue in the industry. They do amazing growth work with affiliates, performance marketing, and also through their business strategy, token, and product decisions (or at least, still benefit from those done previously)

There are obviously a couple of projects - monad and bera - that have done well of capturing attention and builders pre-tge. They've both done a lot of impressive things, and I particularly like how bera are carving a new path in terms of culture and community. But I personally want to see how attention holds after the token exists

My real answer is probably phantom - love what they've done with product, brand building and content. They've blown up and it's fully deserved

Last one: What’s the right way to be a reply guy?

- Make sure you understand all the context first
- Be real and authentic
- If you have it, be funny. If you don't, don't
- Add value, be thoughtful
- Start discussions, share opinions
- Don't overdo it by spamming replies to the same person
- Have fun with it

That's all for today - thanks for reading 🫶

New thread just dropped!

Appreciate all engagement, let me know you came from the tg channel

Confession: I was writing it for this channel, but I'm focusing on farming yaps right now so it had to go on Twitter 🤝

➡️ https://x.com/alexonchain/status/1870823865880105330?s=46&t=7cmhHfEjGY8z6mLxCb0dlg

I put way too much alpha in this new thread - please check it out and drop some engagement 🤝

👉 https://x.com/alexonchain/status/1875931096413851759

Five years after the Uniswap airdrop, projects are still trying to replicate that moment

What they don't realize is Uniswap created an unforgettable moment - that's why it was so special, it had an emotional appeal

Reverse engineering or directly copying the mechanisms without understanding the emotional impact - which is what actually made it work - is a sure fire way to fail

You replicate by understanding the principles that led to this moment, instead of copying the mechanism. In fact, if you understand the principles, you would also realize that copying is futile if you want the same result

I recently finished reading 'the power of moments', and it helped me clarify some of my views on what can make a company stand out. So I did a write up with crypto examples

Test your attention span on this one: https://x.com/alexonchain/status/1879190825386602884?s=46&t=7cmhHfEjGY8z6mLxCb0dlg

This thread is worth a quick read. It takes a look at a bunch of new growth hacks in a new viral app

These are super interesting because they use what are essentially basic principles and techniques but in new, novel ways. Clean UX, well integrated tutorials, smart rewards and a viral product idea

Note there are also a number of dark patterns (potentially unethical design tactics that mislead you for the business' gain). I find these interesting, but I not recommended to replicate

https://x.com/thomasschulzz/status/1879240978244289000?s=46&t=7cmhHfEjGY8z6mLxCb0dlg

I've combined all the road to intern posts into one article to make it easier to reference in the future

Enjoy!

https://x.com/alexonchain/status/1880292571680837921?s=46&t=7cmhHfEjGY8z6mLxCb0dlg