Steps to Create a Successfull NFT Project

Creating a NFT community loyal to your project.

Creating a community loyal to your project

As NFT (non fungible tokens) grow in popularity and visibility, there are many web3 developers, artists and entrepreneurs who want to know what it is all about, and get into experimenting with this technology. That is why, from Extrimian, we want to give you some tools and steps to follow, so that you can carry out a successful NFT project in the long term. But we want to clarify before that not all experiences are the same, so let’s take this article as a guide and not as a bible on “how to do things” in such a fluctuating universe as the NFTs one.

Community first. Always:

The success of your NFT project ultimately depends on how engaged and loyal your community is, right? It doesn’t matter if you are a brand or company looking to sell your tokens, or an independent artist who wants to showcase your art. In all cases the community always comes first.

You might be wondering then, how can you create a strong community? It’s not that hard if you do things right. But here are some tips that can help you:

1. Generate a meeting point as soon as possible: Whether on Discord, Telegram or any direct contact and messaging platform, it is important that your community knows that “you are there for them”. They should feel that you are available and feel like an equal, in order to generate empathy and know that you can respond to any query. Usually, the most widely used messaging app in the NFT universe is Discord. In recent years, Discord has become the “mecca” of NFT projects. If you don’t have a community there, your followers may not get to engage with the project.
2. Don’t wait for the “perfect” moment to launch to the public: The sooner you start building that bond with the community, the sooner you will achieve that connection, and the success of your project.
3. Analyze the activity of your audience: It’s important to analyze the behaviors of your target audience, spend time in those places and understand the codes (or even get references or ideas to apply on your project). In this analysis, you may discover that it is not necessary to be on all social media platforms, have a perfect website, or create a viral YouTube channel to sell NFT collections. Sometimes it’s all about knowing how to communicate the ideas. Be clear and empathetic, not all social networks are for everyone. So we insist on the importance of doing a study about where your potential investors/users spend time, and make an investment in their channels.
4. Identify influencers and potential users related to the NFT and cryptocurrency universe.
5. Buy and support original NFT 1/1 art: It is important to immerse yourself in the NFT world before launching a collection into the world. Although equality between users and fans of this universe is encouraged, there are also statuses here, and it is important to know that the more you know about the most “strange”, “unique”, and important collections in the environment, the better it will be. Especially if you are the owner of a well valued NFT, since being a “holder” of an NFT, allows you to have access to different functionalities or exclusive channels in other communities, which can open more than interesting spaces to promote your project.  

Social Media strategy for NFTs:

1. Join Twitter spaces to advertise your project: Just as Discord is probably the most popular platform for those interested in crypto and NFT, Twitter, TikTok and Telegram are also great focuses of attention and gathering of our target audience. 
2. Look to do marketing actions and collaborations with Influencers in the field, and reputable companies. It is very important to relate with influencers in cryptocurrency social networks and companies with a history of integrity and that are not known for supporting scams and that have a number of followers according to our target. Additionally, and not less important, it is advised that this person or company trusts, believes and likes your project. It is always better when we see that the person advertising our project does it with conviction and honesty.
3. Do not wait until the week before the launch to promote your project. It is essential that you start sharing your NFT collection and generate hype as soon as you can.
4. Create a social media campaign: Twitter is very important here. The communication of your project, sneak peeks, graphic badges that give relevant information about your project (price, dates, network, amount of tokens in the collection), counts, etc., will make the community be aware and expectant for your project.
5. Roadmap: Sharing the long-term vision is important in these cases. Our community doesn’t really know us in most cases. That is why we must provide them with a “plan for the future”: What are we going to do next? What will the money raised from the minting of this project be used for? What benefits will the “holders” of my NFTs have? What extra benefits does it bring to be part of my community?
6. Organize contests to get on the “whitelist”: This is the goal of any NFT collector. The easier and more fun the process is, the happier your community will be. A great alternative to a simple raffle is to organize a “Scavenger Hunt”. A success case where this strategy was done for promotionate a collection is a studio with a strong presence in the NFT industry like RTFKT. In this case, those who reached the first places won different prizes, among them WL spots, or tokens that gain value due to their “rarity”.This type of actions usually culminate leaving a large number of new members on the Discord server, and many new followers on Twitter (usually conditions to start and finish the Hunt).
7. Create games that encourage participation: In line with the previous tip, we propose that both on your social networks, as well as on your Discord, offer activities, games, challenges, etc. People love to have something to entertain themselves at any time of the day. It diverts them from waiting for news, important dates, etc. An entertained public is always better predisposed. And if it’s with a prize in the middle, even better.

A difficult issue: The price

How do I know what the minting price of my project should be? 

One of the most important parts of creating a successful NFT project is to correctly set the initial mintage price. If you charge a very high mintage price up front, you risk losing momentum, failing to sell your collection, and losing the support of your collectors.

Tips for setting the price in your NFT project:

• Consult your community on what they would think would be a fair price for the collection.
• Consider the utility of the NFT in the short, medium and long term.
• Research major NFT projects on sites like Nonfungible.com or Dune Analytics to find out what the average mintage price is. Generally, between 0.05 and 0.1 ETH is the price set by most successful NFT projects.

Try to set an affordable mintage price. Don’t make it too expensive, or you could throw away your entire communication strategy so far.

• Pay attention to secondary sales in NFT marketplaces such as Open Sea. These can generate long-term revenue through NFT royalties.
• Some projects, such as Smol Brains, have even opted for the “free mint” route, making their community pay only the gas fee of the network on which the project was developed , knowing that the value they create over time will allow them to build a sustainable business and make money from secondary sales. 

With these tips we want to remind you that it’s not about how you start; it’s about what value you can create over time, and the community you build with it.

Plan a clear and comprehensive roadmap:

While a successful NFT launch is exciting, it’s only the first step in creating a project that will withstand the volatile nature of NFT markets and people who buy an NFT just to make money. If all this goes well, most of the revenue will come from secondary sales in already named markets like Open Sea. So it is crucial to keep adding value to your collection after minting.

This is where we need to think and plan, what we will offer our community to make the project and the idea of acquiring a token from our collection, seductive. While there are pros and cons to creating a DAO, NFT collections can consider creating a kind of these organizations in which members of the community can participate, promote and drive the direction of the NFT project, through suggestions and ideas. In addition, thinking of ways to add more value to the people invested in your NFT, can further increase enthusiasm. 

Examples of NFT projects with solid, eye-catching Roadmaps:

One of the clearest examples of NFT projects that continue to expand their roadmap to bring value to their incumbents is Bored Ape Yacht Club (BAYC). 

This is not news, but BAYC is famous (among other things) for releasing serums to create mutants, which dramatically increased interest in them, and many BAYC holders were able to sell their mutant for much more than the initial mintage cost. Now, with the launch of $APE Coin, the purchase of CryptoPunks and Meebits, and a new roadmap, it is clear that the BAYC team (Larva Labs), is focused on creating long-term value for their holders.

You don’t need to be clear about everything from the start. But you do need to constantly pay attention to your community, and implement improvements, benefits and provide value to those holders over time, so that way their tokens acquire greater potential over time.

Communication strategy:

Don’t leave communication aside. It’s important that you keep up to date with your community on social networks like Twitter, and especially on Discord.

The worst thing you can do to lower the enthusiasm of your audience is to remain silent after the launch.

How should the communication of an NFT project be successful?

1. First of all, organization and order is very important: Set up a publication schedule and try to be as rigorous as possible with it.
2. Put together a team of collaborators that can sustain the communication 24×7: Let’s not forget that the members of our community can be from different parts of the world. It is important to have moderators who can cover the different time slots and that our community always has someone online to return your message, answer your question, or simply check that everything is going well.
3. Post regularly in the #announcements channel and tag @everyone: Don’t let your community think you’re not active. Nowadays, most users are present on many servers, or pending on many projects at once. To get their attention, use @everyone and create an announcement channel that communicates the most important news about your project. But be careful! Don’t overuse this tool either, because users can get annoyed if they receive a notification all the time, and don’t find relevant news.
4. Be sure to advance the urgent/important communications you are going to give (like roadmap news, contests, sweepstakes, giveaways, raffles, games, events, etc.). Building some “hype” is necessary for your community to be active and expectant. 
5. Don’t leave your “holders” aside. They’re the most important within your community, and they want to be treated that way. Give them exclusive benefits and something to encourage them to spread the word about your project and your amazing community.
6. Also, a good idea is to make an AMA (ask me anything), events, documents, or even sneak peeks, exclusive for them.

The basis of everything. The code:

Since bad actors and hackers/scams proliferate in cryptocurrencies and NFTs in general, it’s essential that when you create an NFT you make sure your code is well written to protect your users from possible attacks.

Whether you have an in-house developer or outsource your NFT contracts, it is important to invest in the best web developer talent3 who can ensure high security standards. While common NFT smart contracts used by many industry teams, such as ERC721 and ERC721A, help mitigate risks, attacks are always a possibility.

Since these attacks can be detrimental to the success of your NFT project, if you have the ability to hire a smart contract auditing firm to review your SM, we recommend doing so. 

With these tips we believe you will be able to do a good job of creating, containing and growing your NFT project’s community. 2021 was a record year for crypto fundraising by NFT projects. It’s a very exciting time in the world of non-fungible tokens and we encourage you to dive in.