ICOs: Ads on Facebook and Twitter

Facebook is a great way to reach this audience, the 99% of people who don’t

currently understand blockchain, but could be interested in a good investment

opportunity. One way teams have been doing this is through Facebook pages.

Facebook posts are not limited like that of twitter’s  use of 280 characters. The

longer the words you use in explaining your cryptocurrency, the better your

potential investors will be able to understand. Which means, that with Facebook,

you can always go in-depth no matter the complexity of your cryptocurrency.

Currently, The popular exchange Coinbase regularly posts advertisements on

Facebook, allowing the ease of buying cryptocurrencies through its site.

Coinbase has seen significant return on investment. New user signups are

hitting new records everyday, although part of this is undoubtedly a general

bull market.  Crypto enthusiast groups are common on Facebook, where people

discus hot ICOs or debating the latest Bitcoin fork. These can be another solid

place to pitch a currency.

In using Facebook ads however, you have to be able to ascertain if you are

making a sales in your tokens. For example, in using a facebook ad, you have

to pay an amount of $2 in a day for  a post. Assuming you pay $10 for five days of advertisement and you make about have of that in the sale of tokens, would you

say you have made profit?

The main difference between Facebook and adwords can be simply put as:  

AdWords helps you find new customers, while Facebook helps new customers

find you.

Another option would be to make use of twitter ads.  Twitter brand friendly

environment will allow you to reach potential new clients and investors. While

it is not as detailed as Facebook and Google ads, it sure goes a long way in

reaching the right and targeted clients. To get the best out of your Twitter ads

for the advertisement of your tokens, you can do the following:

1. Gain followers through promoted tweets:

You can pay to have some of your tweets displayed even to people who are

not among your list of followers. Like normal tweets, they can be retweeted,

liked and  so on. For example, if you search for a keyword in twitter, it is likely

you see promoted feeds amidst your results.

To promote a tweet,

i. Go to the Twitter advertising section , sign in with your usual twitter username

and password.

ii. Click the new promoted tweets campaign button to start a new advertising

campaign (if you have never used twitter ads before) or click new promoted

campaign button (if you have used Twitter ads before).

Iii. Answer the set of questions given concerning your  campaign. E.g. targets

based on keywords, television or others.

Iv. Set your budget limit.

Adverts strategy for an ICO

Creating an awareness in the world of cryptocurrency, introducing your tokens

to the community. Your adverts should give potential investors a feeling of “must

have.” Investors should be made aware of the date and every other relevant

information needed for the sales of the tokens.You can also incentivize a social

influencer to help you market your coins.

Paid Advertising

Consumers use the Internet for more than simply entertainment or information,

as they do with radio, television, magazines and newspapers. Consumers use the

Internet to assist them in nearly every aspect of life, creating countless opportunities

to place relevant, targeted ad messages.In putting out your ICO for sale, the need for

it to be known by users before its sale is important. In doing this, you can make use

of ads. The common form of ads you can easily pay for is the Google ads and

Facebook ads.

Google Adwords make use of keywords, which allows you to select specific words

to be used in the advertisement of your product, in order to receive many hits as

possible. Google Adwords allows you to reach a large number of people at a time.

Facebook is a good platform for advertising. Over two billion people use facebook

every month. Facebook is therefore the second most visited site in the world, trailing

only google.With the right set of audience tools, you can target the right market for

your ICO. Promoting your product using a page on Facebook allows you to reach a

targeted people, either per day or hour. You must ensure that your objective for using

a Facebook ad is properly stated. This will allows a user/investor to understand what

your ad is aiming towards. Facebook also gives advertisers the ability to upload their

own information in order to make Custom Audiences(uploading). With Custom

Audiences you can target users by:

1. Email Addresses.
2. Phone Numbers.
3. User IDs.
4. Mobile advertiser IDs.
5. People who have visited your site.

Pitching a token through websites like Reddit, Twitter or BitcoinTalk allows you

to hit niche audiences. Even social media giant Twitter offers a strong crypto

community and the ability to hit a target demographic. But Facebook is the

reigning king of social media. Advertising on Facebook is consequently more of

a shotgun approach. It is a common occurence to see cryptocurrencies being

promoted on Facebook. Facebook can help you reach the maximum number of

potential investors in several niches.

According to www.coinist.io, Cryptocurrencies burst into the mainstream in 2017.
Ethereum rocketed up to prominence as the ICO craze took off, while mainstream institutions began adopting Bitcoin. A large amount of people who had previously
never heard of cryptocurrencies learned about them.

Importance of Social Media in Cryptocurrency

1.Facebook The existence of Facebook has propped up cryptocurrency in a very unique way. Facebook is one of the biggest platforms where people meet to talk about daily trivialities, latest gossip, technology, and cryptocurrency. Significant announce ments happen a lot of Facebook. Development teams and cryptocurrency projects run their organizations with Facebook. Post about your products every day. Advertise. The more people see you, the more you are rooted in their minds and their thoughts. If you don’t have a large advertising budget, optimize your ad spend. Remember that it’s often always better to get people to know you before you push your product at them. Advertising is a very effective way of building audience. People want to know what you are on about, competitors, media, and people who are just curious. They want to be able to say they were there when you came out. And for the people who do not normally click on ads, one day, when they keep seeing your ad pop up on their newsfeed, they’d check you out. People want to also have some thing they can talk about. Give them news,something to talk about. In the whole rage, be you, be your product. You want to be able to attract the right audience for a long term. Create an official page for your products where people can connect to and answer questions they might have. Build your platform to be a form of discussion forum where people come to share their ideas and concerns about other ICOs. Be wary of spammers who come to your group to send secondary ICO offers to your members via Direct Messaging and adverts. Weed them out so that your group members can see that you are responsible and you mean business. 2. LinkedIn Having a lot of LinkedIn followers is a big advantage. LinkedIn is a platform where the world’s professionals are all in one place. You can find the big shots here on LinkedIn. Unlike other cryptocurrency platforms where scammers and hackers may raid, 99% of people on LinkedIn mean business. LinkedIn is the largest business networking site where everything revolves around buildinga strong network of connections and partnerships. It is always advisable to tap into influencers network if you want large scale attention. Work towards building thousands of followers by connecting with people and accepting invitations to people. Having a big network helps with attracting great opportunities to you. Write great contents and have people want more of your articles. Put links to the crowdsale site so people can buy their tokens from there. People are watching you and partners look out for people whom the crowd believes in. IOTA’s tangle has a page on LinkedIn with 753 members. This group consists mainly of the founder, David Sonstebo, who is also the moderator, Robby Shwertner, the influencer, Wilfried Pimenta de Miranda, development director, and other members.

Usage of Twitter and Slack for ICOs

While there are 330 million monthly active users on Twitter, there are also lots

of inactive users there too. Your aim of making a tweet is to cut across interested

users and have them react by retweeting or liking or even replying to your tweet.

The challenge then is, how do you make tweets worthy of your followers attention?

Promote your product by tapping into influencer network. Tapping into influencer

network simply means placing your focus on successful ICOs. Because tweeters

are looking for current news, your story might not meet their fancy so, you want to

reach out to people who would value your tweets. Timing is everything. Consider

the timing of your tweets. If you tweet early in the day, you might not be able to

get more retweets, but later in the day, when people are relaxed in their workplaces,

and are probably discussing the hoo hahs around ICOs would be the best time to
tweet.

Again, direct your tweets at your influencers. You will reach more followers this way.

Make your tweets brief. This will not encourage retweeters to tweet your story
because they get to add their thoughts to your story.

Use hashtags. This is very important. Some people may not be following you but

want to search for news surrounding ICOs and because you used hashtags,

you pop up, and you got yourself a new follower or a fan, depending on how

this person views your tweet. People get lots of retweets through hashtags and

new connections too. To sum this up, understand your audience. This way, you

know how to spread your content.

Slack

Slack has created a unique environment where teams work together from

everywhere around the globe remotely. Unlike Facebook, which is always open,

slack is an invite only group. It is a closed group.

There are many successful ICOs that engage their users on Slack. What is

noteworthy is building your slack channel to be productive by dusting off the

dump - people who are in your slack channel for other purpose like hackers and

spammers. Scammers are there to remove the interest of your audience by

creating bots and fake admin accounts and sending pre-ICO offers to new

slack members via several upsetting means.

Preventing hackers can prove to be a difficult task but turning off bots for non

admins is a huge step in having a calmer slack channel. Staying active on slack

can also prove to be on top of these spammers. Once they start spamming, weed

them out immediately, this shows that you are in control of whatever is happening.

Explainer videos and Twitter usage for ICOs

You just have to be committed to telling your story to your audience who are ever
ready to hear you. Again, remember to use different passwords for your social media
key accounts to ensure that you are still safe even when one gets compromised.

Explainer Videos

An explainer video goes a very long way to communicate what an idea is about.
Most people require technical knowledge to be able to read and understand the
whitepaper so explainer videos is always the best bet.This video should explain
what your token is all about in a clear and concise language and in a way that grabs
the viewer's attention. An explainer video is a short video that focuses on explaining
a product in a simple and engaging way so that in the end, it compels your viewer to
do what you want them to do. You can make an explainer video script all by yourself.
Just remember to keep it short. You are writing an explainer video, not a movie script.
In the first 30 seconds, put your message out there and speak directly to your
audience. Find the right tone that matches with how you want your audience to see
you. Tell your story. Everybody is looking out for a good story. PowToon is a free
online software that lets you create cool animated videos. Wideois good too.
RawShorts is good for creating an educational video. It is always better if you make
your videos yourself because people want to be able to connect with the person
behind the idea but if you can’t make it, there are people who make explainer videos
for a fee and they are professionals too. You can find them everywhere on the
internet. An explainer video can go for $3, 500.

Twitter

With the rage surrounding cryptocurrency and ICOs, Twitter is the next go to.
Seeing as Twitter was built as a place where people go, to get the latest news on
music, sports, tech, and everyday moments. In short, people go to Twitter to connect
with what is happening in the world right now.

Everything begins with a tweet. All tweets are 280 characters, and hashtags are
used for adding to a large conversation. To be able to use twitter, you should be
very good with manipulating words. Write your thoughts to fit into the 280
characters. You can tell your story by threading your tweets together.
In threading your tweets, start first by making a tweet, and clicking ‘reply’ on that
tweet, and deleting your @username and sending another tweet. So, threading
your tweets is like replying to your first tweet and linking them together.

What You need to know about ICOs

According to Wikipedia, the first ICO sale was held by Mastercoin in July 2013. Another
example of a successful ICO project that was profitable to early investors is the smart
contracts platform called Ethereum which has Ethers as its coin tokens. Ethereum
announced its ICO in 2014. They raised $18 million in Bitcoins at about $0.40
per Ether. After raising the money, they built the project and put it live in 2015
(more than a year later) .In 2018 (4 years later), 1 Ether now costs roughly a
whooping $900.

In April 2014, a team called Karmacoin went on an ICO and raised funds for its
Karmashares project. A messaging app developer called Kik went on ICO.
They issued  $50 million in tokens called "Kin" totheir institutional investors before aiming
to raise more $125 million from the public. ICOs became very popular in 2017.
About 20 - 50 offerings were being issued per month. Brave browser, a new browser that
went on an ICO raised about $35m within 30 seconds!

 Today, there are about 18 - 30 websites tracking ICOs. The total money raised from
ICOs in 2017 was about $2.3 billion which is more than 10 times the one raised in 2016.

Preliminary studies

• Understand ICOs and what you need it for
• Research on other ICO’s and tokens
• What to expect at each stage of the ICO
  What is an ICO?

In order to start your ICO journey, you need to first find out what an ICO is and what
you will beneeding it for.Initial Coin Offering (ICO) otherwise known asInitial Public
Coin Offering (IPCO), crypto crowdsale or crypto crowdfunding is a means or method
of soliciting for new funds in the creation of a new cryptocurrency.

It saves startups the stress of having to solicit for funds through loans, investors ,
campaigns and others. It is a new way of funding cryptocurrency projects. In the

process of raising funds, a part of the new cryptocurrency is sold at a discount to early

investors/backers of the project in exchange of the funds needed in form of legal tender or
other cryptocurrencies, most especially  bitcoins.

During the course of the ICO, the new coins are purchased by the investors or
backers with fiat currency . A fiat currency is a declared legal tender either by the
government or a centralized system eg. US dollars. These sample coins are referred
to as tokens and are similar to buying shares from a startup or firm. The team organising
the ICO usually states clearly how much they intend to raise for the project from the public.
If the money raised during the ICO campaign does not meet the minimum amount of funds
needed for the project, the money is returned to the investors and the ICO is tagged ‘failed’.
If the fundsare seen to be enough for the startup, the money is used to start the scheme or
complete it.

Important questions to ask about your cryptocurrency:

In choosing an ICO, the following is important

1. How does the token and network attached to it function together.?
2. What is the problem the new currency is trying to solve?
3. What is the structure of the token?
   
   

This question will be answered in depth further down. ICOs can be used for a wide range
of activities ranging from corporate finance,  fundraising and even fraud.

Types of cryptocurrencies:

There are two main types of cryptocurrencies from a regulatory point of view:

1. Utility tokens:

Utility tokens comes from the value which should enable the holders  to exchange the
token for a

service, such as a Bitcoin or ether. If the token will be used by the users to purchase
items or services inside the platform being built by the ICO team, it is a utility token.
Eg. Imagine an ICO that is building a game in which the users will use the token to
purchase items in the game.

2. Asset-backed tokens:
   
   

For an asset-backed token, its value comes from the underlying assets which
the token can give to its holder. These are tokens backed by assets such as houses,
land, gold, oil etc It offers some sense of security to its investors who know that if the
ICO fails, their money won't just vanish into thin air.

Research on other ICOs

The next step would be to come up with an idea of a problem you would like to solve
using the blockchain related technology. Once you come up with the idea, you need
to figure out what field or category your solution falls into, then research about other
similar ICOs in that field. Go for the best ICOs in that field and find out how they
approached their ICO, organised their team and solved every other problem. For
instance,if you wanted to build  a blockchain that would help people build their own
blockchain based apps , you may want to do a research on other existing blockchains
in that field that went on successful ICOs such as Ethereum, NEO, Stellar etc

Make a list of what to expect

You need to make a list of what to expect at each stage of your ICO

Why Create Social media Handles for ICOs?

Create social media handles on Twitter, Youtube, Linkedln, Facebook, Reddit and
other network of choice.Be aware of what is going on in the cryptocurrency world.

You need a strong community around your project. This is because having a brand and making people aware of your brand are the most important aspects of being transparent. Transparency quells whatever fears potential investors may have concerning your product. People are drawn to people who know their onion about a particular subject. So, it is always good to know your audience. There are two particular type of people on social media. There are those who understand and follow up everything on digital currency, and there are those who have heard something about cryptocurrency and probably feels every cryptocurrency is bitcoin. It is very important to have these two types of audience at the back of your mind when preparing materials for them. Adapt your message to make it suitable for your target audience.

Social media has become a place millions of people go to learn more about cryptocurrency.  An important aspect of an ICO campaign is getting enough attention to get investors on board. So, many ICOs split into teams that will go to different platforms to engage their audience on in cryptocurrency talks. The main platforms include Twitter, Facebook, Whatsapp, Reddit, Github,Telegram, Bitcointalk.org, and other online forums.
People come to these places because they expect to be clarified on issues they know little or nothing about. We will look into each of these social networks further down.

You need to constantly communicate the progress of your project with your audience and to always be prepared to defend your position about a topic. Most of the successful ICOs started early in building their community. They communicate well by responding to feedbacks, and complaints about an issue, and listen to ideas. Building an audience also helps interested developers, miners and other people to find you. Listen to what your community wants so that you can understand how to get their interests to align with what you are offering. People want to invest in something that is not shady, something they can account for and what more, than invest in someone who is as invested in something as you? You can decide to manage your social media all by yourself or you could outsource your social media to companies / agencies to manage it for you. The only difference is that you get a whole different team outside of your ICO team who is responsible for letting the outside world see who you are. But if you decide you could manage your socials all by yourself, perfect choice! Nobody knows your product better than you.