Over the past few years, the market capitalisation of the whole blockchain space has skyrocketed, and there are numerous blockchain projects which have raised vast amounts of money with little to no substance. Many projects have managed astounding valuations, simply off the back of a white paper and some vague promises. 2018 is an important year for the whole blockchain space, as it will be the year where actual results and products should differentiate the serious projects from those which have had a more cavalier attitude to development.
What follows are four trips from our blockchain PR agency, which your project can focus on in order to stand out from the rest and cement your position as a serious project with an achievable vision.
Make the world a better place
One of the most powerful ways in which you can raise your blockchain projects profile above the ranks of the other projects is to do what the others are not doing. Currently, there is little being done to address the issue of social impact and blockchain projects. There are some projects out there that are attempting to augment people’s lives by the implementation of blockchain, yet they are the minority.
The vast majority of projects severely lack the so-called ‘human element’, in which it is clear that their implementation will be able to positively change peoples lives. In order to differentiate your project and get your name noticed in the mainstream, you could consider ‘giving something back’ to the community. This can be a very powerful way to demonstrate the qualities of your project and there are numerous ways that this can be done. For example, a percentage of tokens could be donated to a charity – this is the most simple form of so-called ‘blockchain responsibility’.
However, there are many more ways that this could be developed to influence a progressive change in society. A more in-depth and sustainable way would be to team up with an NGO and help fund the training of blockchain developers from economically deprived nations. This would be a great way to unearth talent that could potentially work for your project in the long-term.
Demonstrating the aspects of your project which will enable the world to become a better place – through the inclusion of people who have been traditionally cut out from the developments which take place in the more economically advanced countries – will bring a set of values to your project which are, to all intents and purpose, absent from most other initiatives.
This is not to say that you should ‘piggyback’ off the prestige of trying to build a responsible project but to actually implement this at the heart of your philosophy. This narrative could help separate your project from the mass of others and will demonstrate the values which society needs.
Innovation: Be creative and experiment with new ideas to engender an environment for change
Another important way of getting your project noticed in the mainstream is to be innovative. Make your story different. Make the project about building and development and not about token price. Don’t be scared to try something new. Rather than being caught in the inertia of trying to rehash old ideas, break free from their constraints and try to build something truly innovative in order to create an environment for change.
As such, being innovative to create change is something which should be at the core of your project. In order for your project to have an impact on the world, you need to first identify the areas you can target through which you can enable change to take place. This targeted form requires planning but will give you the best chances of learning about the space which your project will attempt to disrupt. The energy for the change may be latent in society and it is incumbent upon you to locate that energy and to unleash it with your project. It is this that will bring the eyes of the mainstream firmly onto your project.
Furthermore, the innovation doesn’t need to be epoch defining. It can also be incremental and allow for the gradual shift to something larger and more radical than the project’s initial goals. Mainstream attention will come when these futures are born. They don’t have to be fully formed or measured, but enabling the space in which they will be able to come to fruition will garner much greater visibility than those projects to whom hype is more important than substance.
Simplicity: Don’t try and over complicate things
They are many projects that use buzzwords to attract the attention of the mainstream media and try to make themselves stand out. Many projects fall into the trap of trying to jump on the bandwagon and throw around certain phrases around with the hope that this will make them stand out. Yet what we continually find across the space are hollow statements backed up by even hollower promises.
Therefore, there is a need for a simple idea which is easily explained. It is always better to avoid wrapping up the idea in jargon. An example of a project which has been able to do this effectively is Swiss start-up Modum. They have a purposefully targeted use case: the tracking and tracing of pharmaceuticals.
They have not overly complicated their communications, have not made outlandish statements about the potential of their project, and have remained transparent with their goals and achievements. They have a subdued but confident style which shows that they do not feel the need to hype their own project and are confident in the trajectory which they are going. Although we are not suggesting that you should emulate them, there many things that can be learned from projects which have been seen to conduct themselves well.
Furthermore, it remains essential to be able to explain your project in the simplest terms in order for the mainstream to be interested in it. If the project explains itself in layman’s terms and gets its points across to the general audience without the need to overly complicate its language, it will be inherently more accessible and understood by the mainstream.
Build a product and not hype
This can be considered as one of the most fundamental issues of all blockchain projects in 2018, as there is now a need more so than ever to build a concrete product and not hype. It is important to focus on the product as this will be one of the major ways in which it will be possible to differentiate yourself from the others in the space. That is not to say that certain elements of hype aren’t useful to a project, but this hype needs to be built on real foundations rather than simple claims intended to fuel the hype cycle. Indeed, one of the ways to really draw attention to your project is to focus on the technology. Then, when you are confident that the technology is of a reputable standard, it will be able to do the ‘talking’ itself so to speak.
This comes down to a more existential question: what is the purpose of the project if it will not be able to build a product?
We need to be clear once more that there are so many competing projects in 2018. The blockchain space has grown rapidly and there are many teams which claim to be solving very similar issues. This makes the need to build a viable product even more necessary. This is why it is essential not to rush this process as this could make or break a project. Rushing to get something to market before it is ready could have disastrous effects on the project itself, and it can also give competitors the upper hand because they will be able to see the technology that they have to compete against, and then they will be able to develop with the knowledge that they know more about about their competitor than their competitor knows about them.
Get in touch if you want to book a consultation to learn how we are able to help you. We love hearing from all types of projects are excited to play such a crucial role in the development of the blockchain space as a whole.
