Do you have a Bitcoin or blockchain-based business?
Have you struggled to come up with a coherent content marketing plan?
Wondering which route would be the best to pursue?
In this post, we’ll explore seven different ways that you can market a crypto/blockchain business.
Cryptocurrency content marketing can be tricky. There have been so many scams and failed projects in the space that you’re fighting an uphill battle before you have even begun.
Why Bother With Cryptocurrency Content Marketing?
Some startups in the space don’t believe content marketing to be worth investing in. They don’t understand the value.
The problem is everyone thinks they have the ultimate “killer app” that will revolutionize the way the world does [insert centralized action here].
Whether it’s a new blockchain project with a new coin/token, or something improving the usability of Bitcoin, it’s all too common for companies and those they work with to fall victim to the “killer app” mentality.
Can you guess how many teams have seen their projects gain big exposure just because of how awesome they are?
That’s right – exactly zero.
It doesn’t matter who you are or what you do if no one knows you exist. You won’t stand out from the crowd.
And even if by chance they manage to get the word spread through the virtual grapevine, no one will trust them without content.
The fact of the matter is that all big brands today – and all other brands who want to join them – have a well-established body of content or are working on building one right now.
Take the finance industry, where I have done a lot ofwork, as an example.
Many companies have only recently discovered that they have a huge opportunity in front of them in terms of content marketing.
As young people enter the workforce and start earning their first paychecks, many of them can now start investing. They have access to financial tools that didn’t exist just ten years ago.
Gone are the days of needing a broker or a financial advisor to begin investing. All it takes is a smartphone and an ACH-enabled checking account.
Because of this, potential investors have begun searching for answers to basic financial questions like “how to short a stock” or “what is capital appreciation.”
So, by creating quality content that answers these questions, companies can both foster trust in readers and direct them to company services or products.
Here are seven methods of cryptocurrency content marketing that can work.
1) Images/Infographics
Images can be used alone or in combination with other content.
All blog posts should include a featured image and several images in the body.
There are many talented graphic designers on Fiverr who will craft images for you for as little as $1 per post. I’ve worked with one designer on multiple occasions who offers unlimited revisions, so things always come out exactly how I want.
Infographics, on the other hand, can be much more expensive – even as much as $1,000 per graphic.
But some content marketing experts insist on their usefulness.
Julia McCoy, founder of seven-figure content agency Express Writers, mentions in her book, So You Think You Can Write, that her agency invests heavily in infographics. Posts that contain infographics tend to perform very well, she says, making the investment worth it.
If you’re just starting out, professional infographics might be out of your price range.
Cryptocurrency Content Marketing Example: CoinTelegraph
One of the best examples of utilizing images for cryptocurrency content marketing comes from CoinTelegraph.
CoinTelegraph creates unique images for every single article they ever publish. Each image contains a copyright watermark. The publication has become famous for its trademark style of graphic design, as you can see here:
This style of graphic artwork has become synonymous with the CoinTelegraph brand. Plus, whenever someone shares one of these images, others are likely to see the watermark and search for CoinTelegraph.
2) Social
Social media has become a haven for crypto. Not only are there very active crypto communities on legacy platforms like Twitter, but more and more decentralized networks keep springing up and attracting new users. Heavy censorship on old school social networks incentivizes users to switch over to new platforms with the decentralized model.
A few of the most popular crypto social networks include Hive, Bitchute, and Minds.
Hive
HIVE was hard forked from Steemit in March of 2020 after Justin Sun (of TRON fame) purchased the company and made changes many users were unhappy with.
There are several applications on the HIVE blockchain, with the one most resembling Steemit being Hive.blog.
Hive also hosts D.tube, a decentralized video-sharing site.
Bitchute
Bitchute is a decentralized video-sharing platform. It works a lot like YouTube.
But as YouTube becomes one of the worst offenders in terms of censorship, video content creators have discovered the need for decentralization perhaps more than most.
Minds
Minds is similar to Steemit/Hive in that it has a built-in rewards system that pays users in cryptocurrency for creating and curating content.
But Minds prides itself on having a more even distribution of rewards. Whereas Hive has something called “Hive Power,” which users acquire over time and gain more influence over post payouts, Minds users have no such power.
Social media is, of course, another topic by itself, one on which entire books have been published, courses created, and seminars conducted.
If you’re not careful, social media can become a massive time waster. Trying to be active on all platforms all the time while experimenting, measuring analytics, and improving metrics can be a lot of work.
My advice would be this – start out by broadcasting across many different platforms (I know, I literally just said not to do this, but bear with me) and figure out which ones you get the most traction on. Then you can narrow down the focus and concentrate efforts on where it counts.
You can also potentially get to a point of having a big enough following that one platform offers you a contract to go exclusive. E.g., Joe Rogan just moved his podcast to Spotify, presumably for a pretty penny.
Remember, as with all other things content marketing-related, relevancy is what counts. A few hundred relevant followers who care about what you have to say will get better results than one-hundred-thousand random followers who aren’t interested.
And here’s one final tip on the subject of social media. As social media star, media executive, and entrepreneur Gary Vee tells his followers regularly, don’t worry about increasing your follower count.
Instead, focus on bringing maximum value to those who already follow you.
Also, try commenting on other relevant profiles/groups. You know what it’s like to struggle with trying to increase engagements and how wonderful it is to receive comments, right?
Others feel the same way. Some successful social media gurus claim this to be their number one tip.
By contributing to the conversation around other people’s content and helping their engagement stats, you can earn lots of exposure and potentially attract some relevant new followers (some of whom might just be your ideal clients).
3) Press Releases
Press releases aren’t just for the press anymore.
Whereas there was a time not too long ago when press releases were targeted at reporters who work for the big mainstream media corporations, today the use case for press releases has expanded.
As noted by David Meerman Scott in his famous book The New Rules of Marketing & PR, press releases can now be used to get the word out about almost anything.
PRs can be useful for SEO purposes and keeping the entire world updated on what’s happening with your company. There are various levels of paid press releases, each with their own set of features and exposure benefits.
Free press releases work fine too, but are only distributed to search engines and hosted on the PR company’s website.
4) Podcasts
Podcasts have been gaining in popularity in recent years, as have audiobooks.
People appreciate audio content for the simple reason that they can listen to it while doing something else (like driving, cleaning the house, or checking their Blockfolio account).
There are a ton of big podcasts in crypto. “What Bitcoin Did” is a very popular podcast in the crypto community.
5) Video
Along with podcasts, video is one of the fastest-growing forms of content <stats>.
Here’s another fun fact about videos – having a video on your page helps to increase SEO, if only somewhat. That’s according to SEMrush. See here:
Among all the metrics listed, video is at the bottom. “Video on page” doesn’t just mean having any old video on your site. It needs to have relevance to your article and your audience.
Videos don’t have to be fancy. It’s not necessary to spend a lot of time and money on video content. Just a quick clip of a person speaking on camera can work wonders.
A behind-the-scenes look into the operations of a company often gets great engagement as well.
6) White Papers
For almost all forms of cryptocurrency content marketing and blockchain content marketing, a white paper will be necessary. Most companies in the space seem to understand this. But not all white papers are created equal.
A white paper is not just a dry technical document. Nor is it a pure sales pitch.
The best white papers describe a new product, service, or technology in detail while also explaining how it fits a current market need. By the time the reader has finished reading, they turn into a prospective buyer, investor, or customer. They want to work with you after understanding how your project will be successful.
That, in a nutshell, is how white papers ought to be used.
7) High-Quality Informative SEO Content (Blogs)
Many people believe that written content is a dying art form.
If this were true, freelance writing wouldn’t be a thing, and you wouldn’t be here, on this site, reading this right now.
Just because other forms of content (like podcasts and videos) are growing in popularity doesn’t mean that written content is on the chopping block.
For an analogy, look at social media networks. Instagram is the fastest growing social network with over 1 billion users and rising. Tik Tok is also growing rapidly.
Does that mean Twitter and Facebook have ceased to exist?
Of course not.
It’s not the best analogy, but in a similar way, written content hasn’t ceased to exist either, and it never will.
To illustrate this point, let me tell you about a funny encounter with someone on LinkedIn a few months back.
I had created a post about how wrong it was that some people ask writers to write for free. One of my connections (who had a publication on Medium that doesn’t pay writers anything) commented saying that written content is a dying form of media, so why would anyone pay for it. He rationalized this by saying that anyone can Google anything, so they don’t need written content.
This was hilarious, because the only way for Google to find good results is by indexing – you guessed it – written content!
There’s literally no way for a website to rank high in search results without having high-quality content that is optimized for search engines and gets linked to by other sources.
This person on LinkedIn was not happy to hear this, so much so that I wound up having to report him for harassment (something I had never done before) and block him.
All that aside, the way I see it, written content for SEO functions in a way that parallels the bitcoin mining difficulty adjustment. What do I mean by that?
An Imperfect Analogy
As you may already know, the more computers that mine bitcoin, the harder it gets to solve a block. When more miners drop off the network, however, difficulty adjusts downward, making it easier to find new blocks.
When difficulty falls, more miners join the network, as it becomes profitable for them to do so, because they can more easily mine new coins. Of course, this eventually causes difficulty to rise, leading to some miners dropping off the network again.
How does this parallel SEO content?
For a long time, everyone has known (with the exception of a few people, like the guy in my LinkedIn example) that ranking high in search results leads to big results. And the only way to get there is through written content.
Over time, though, people forget. Some people begin to think that just because videos, live streams, and audio content are all gaining in popularity, that somehow, they no longer need written content. So, they stop publishing.
Now it becomes easier to rank. Now everyone has even more reason than usual to create high-quality written content. Eventually, people figure this out and start publishing more, making it more difficult to rank.
This is just a hypothetical. I don’t have any actual data to back up this analogy of bitcoin mining and SEO content. But in theory, it makes sense.
The moral of the story here is: don’t underestimate the power of written content.
Cryptocurrency Content Marketing is Necessary
In the end, it’s all about how you want to define your brand.
Now, I wouldn’t recommend trying to go all out and engaging in every single one of these seven cryptocurrency content marketing methods right away.
If you’re a smaller startup, you might want to begin with getting a white paper written, publishing some press releases, and getting established on the most relevant social media platforms.
At the same time, don’t limit yourself to a single medium, either. If you go all-in on a guest appearance on a big podcast, for example, what happens when nobody else picks up on that?
Being in cryptocurrency content marketing gives you a distinct advantage. Many of your competitors have neglected to bring their A-game. That gives you a chance to benefit.