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

I've talked to a lot of founders that want to join the founder-led marketing trend, but don't know where to start. What should they talk about?

Aside from giving insights and BTS into what you're building, commentary and thought-leadership around industry moments is a big part of the game. And it's getting easier and easier

This week has presented countless opportunities to share your take and show you care about what's happening in crypto

If you're struggling with this, you need to recondition your approach so when something big happens, your natural reaction is to post about it

This week was crazy. I'm sure there will be more

https://x.com/alexonchain/status/1880774211746345140?s=46&t=7cmhHfEjGY8z6mLxCb0dlg

The key: you have to be vulnerable

Show your true self. Share your real opinions. Don't be afraid for some people not to like it

If everyone likes you, you're doing something wrong

I've seen tonnes of hot takes about $TRUMP, somehow taking 36 different sides of the argument. No one has tarnished their reputation based on what side they're on

Be real, be vulnerable, be fast, be divisive. Fence sitting won't get you anywhere, you need to have an actual opinion. And if you don't, I'm not sure you're actually a founder

"Every moment in business happens only once.

The next Bill Gates will not build an operating system. The next Larry Page or Sergey Brin won't make a search engine. And the next Mark Zuckerberg won't create a social network.

If you are copying these guys, you aren't learning from them.
Of course, it's easier to copy a model than to make something new.

Doing what we already know how to do takes the world from 1 to n, adding more of something familiar.

But every time we create something new, we go from 0 to 1.

The act of creation is singular, as is the moment of creation, and the result is something fresh and strange." - Zero to one by Peter Thiel

This as true in marketing as it is in business. You have to break the script and create something new to stand out

If you try to copy something that works, it won't work the same. You need to study the mechanics and the fundamental reasons why it works, and then apply that to your new thing

Go 0 -> 1

Looks like Tribe, a new socialfi app, is getting a lot of attention tonight

Might be worth trying! It's essentially friendtech on Solana

Link here if you want to give it a go: https://www.tribe.run/join/c1ddc3

I'll also answer any and all marketing questions in my tribe 🫡

Skill-stacking is severely underrated

If you want to become more valuable, more useful and earn more money, you need to be skill stacking

Do you think you can be the best social media manager in the world?

Or the top community builder there is?

Probably not. And there are diminishing returns if you try to get there

Instead, what if you're a top 10% social media manager who is also great at crisis communications and video making?

That's objectively easier to achieve and also more valuable to a business

Focus on being great at multiple high-value complementary skills instead of being the best at one

Got questions about social media, growth, community building or anything else?

Answering the best ones here only

Lmk: https://ngl.link/alexonchain

This is funny, a few lessons and tips in here

1) if this is real and you're about to have the meeting, you need to be transparent about it. Explain the concept and why you thought it was a good idea. Show the engagement and response (if it's good) to back up your point. But ultimately if they're not comfortable with this direction, apologise and be forthcoming with wanting to reach an agreement and workflow to prevent this happening again

2) If you're running socials for someone else and you don't know their risk tolerance and their preferences then you're doing it wrong. You need to be aligned with anyone whose opinion matters. If you're not and you do something wrong, you'll get a nasty surprise

3) I wrote a long post on this on Twitter recently. You need to build trust and mutual understanding. Ultimately there should be some agreed written guidelines about what is and what isn't okay, aligned with anyone who matters in this context

Do not just yeet memes because you think they're funny. Funny isn't the only way to market something. You need to factor in what your employer(s) think and want. If you strongly believe you need to do something in a certain way, persuade them about it first

It's a very broad question, I'll do my best to answer it succinctly but still be helpful:

- If the product isn't good, or the niche isn't interesting, you're going to have a harder time by default

- Post great content. It needs to be either: useful, entertaining, educational, funny, or many of them at once

- A big part of social isn't just pulling ideas out of thin air. You do cool things and then you talk about them. Think about what your company is doing or could be doing that would get people excited. Do that, prepare a content plan and let it rip

- I would find a growth channel that isn't being used right now. A new type of content, a new place to cross-post, anything to stand out and be creative

- Focus on building a strong base. 100 engaged followers will take you much further than 10,000 that don't pay much attention. Do anything good to build those early relationships. Figure out how you can get mission-aligned KOLs to be early supporters. Build a strong base, not a big one

And to get your content to resonate with web3, you need to deeply know your audience. It's the same with any marketing. Talk about what they care about, in a way that resonates with them, in the places that they hang out

Good luck!

Sorry, this might hurt a bit

If you don't know how, you shouldn't be doing it. Brands don't need to be funny or making memes to grow, that's only one path to success

Now I agree it's a strong one and can have outsized returns if you do it well. But if you don't do it well it's incredibly cringey and hurts way more than it helps

My advice if you're not confident in your approach is to:

1) study successful meme accounts and figure out why they work. Try to internalise the recipe for a good meme and tune your taste

2) ingrain yourself in the culture and follow the inner circle. Make sure you understand references, trends and timing

3) make a burner account and practice. Post and be critical of your work. Reply guy popular accounts and try to be funny. Figure out what does and doesn't work