5 Web3 PR Myths

Transcript

[Music] foreign how's everyone doing last day of ACC I know there's been like 250 side events so I'm sure it's been an overwhelming week for some of you as it is has has been for me um but welcome to my workshop uh gonna be speaking for a few minutes and then we'll have um time for Q and A but thank you for um yeah showing up so I'm Samantha I'm the founder of Yap Global you may have checked out our booth around the corner we are the PR partners of ECC this is the fourth time in the

year we're being PR partners so it's really great to be here we started um doing PR for ECC back at ecc3 and I remember there was just 900 attendees and that was huge back then and now I hear that there's 5 000 people that show up and so it's amazing to see the growth and shout out to Bettina and Jerome for for growing this um so today I want to be talking to you about how to elevate your web3 PR game so I'm sure some of you are project Founders or work with teams you know how many of you want to learn more about PR and boost your PR game yeah cool good good I hope that today

you'll walk away with a few pointers and tips because there's a lot you can do without engaging a PR firm yet and then you know you'll know when when you're ready to start speaking with us perhaps so a little bit about Yap Global it's our team off-site we just had an off-site uh just before this conference and so we're we're crypto PR agency we support you know web3 crypto and D5 projects and we like to say that we're quite crypto native in a sense where we follow the industry but who we really are is we're crypto translators because yeah there's a lot of technical jargon you're hearing a lot

of layer ones layer twos scalable Solutions Roll-Ups um ZK EVMS for example and all of these are technical terms but what we do is we help translate that to the media because there's a lot of work that needs to be done in this space in order for everyone to understand it we're also PR strategists so we're always thinking about the narrative thinking about you know shaping the right angle to make sure that you know it's getting ahead of the news and also you know makes sense when building your narrative and we love storytelling storytelling is a big part of what about what we do my backgrounds in journalism so storytelling has been a big part of just my career and so yeah

we're a team of storytellers and as I said we like to keep up so we we're crypto Savvy and we're here at a conference the largest ethereum Community Conference in Europe and uh it's it's a big part and a core part of what we do so that's who we are so I just want to do a recap so I know the title of my talk was the new PR rules for web3 I'm actually not going to delve too deep into this but I want to do a recap because I I shared this at eath Denver um earlier this year um but just five rules uh simple rules um but rule number one in web 3 there's another element you know there's a decentralized element where the

community is a big part of building your brand um you know back when Facebook or Google started they didn't have a Discord Channel where they or a token where they had to communicate to their Community but now a lot of these exchanges and projects and protocols they um you know they need to build their community and as you can see 250 side events at ECC week you're starting to see all these layer ones and layer twos grow their own ecosystem and that's their that's the community building aspect so rule number one is you have to know the difference between marketing PR and Community Building rule number two is to keep up with crypto Twitter crypto Twitter is a

big part of what narratives you know show up in the news and a lot of stories break out on crypto Twitter I like to say that it's the Bloomberg chat room of the industry rule number three is you have to understand the media landscape and the media landscape in crypto is yeah it does it's quite Niche and there's a you know it's it's different to kind of the global media landscape rule number four is you've got to know your audience and tailor your message to them whether it's Geographic you know whether you're commuting to communicating to the US the Asia Pacific region Europe or to developers and investors all requires a different set of messages and rule

number five is to avoid technical jargon so those are the new PR rules for web3 can take a picture of this um and that was just a recap of my talk but today I want to talk to you about the five web three PR myths so we're gonna do a little bit of myth busting just like the Ghostbusters um and so I want to go through five myths myth number one a lot of teams say we don't need a comms plan yet so we when we pitch them and we we talk to potential clients they're like yeah I don't think we need you know a comms plan but actually if you want to proactively get ahead of the narrative

and proactively communicate your message and also cut through the noise again the you know the growing industry having a comms plan is really important so here's just an example you know we're coming up to the end of July but what are you gonna do in August if you have an announcement or you're launching on mainnet do you have a plan do you know who you're talking to and we see this often in the industry that yeah you only reach out we only get reached out when people have an announcement that needs to go out like this week or next week and that's not enough time you need to get your messaging in order before you announce anything and also

there's so many projects everyone else is probably trying to announce a similar thing this week alone at ECC there's been multiple announcements so how do you make sure you get in front of the right reporters the right journalists and and share with them what you're doing and if you want to add a layer of you know complexity to that crypto is really complicated and complex and we have to be fair to the journalists and media and give them a little bit of time to digest what you're really building and why your Tech is the best so you do need a comp plan so that's myth number one myth number two the tech will speak for itself who said this before and who's

heard this before I we hear it a lot of course there's a race for Tech but hey guess what there's also a race for attention and there's only so few Publications there's only one coindesk there's only one coin Telegraph I see Z there hello Z there's only one the block you know so that if you're trying to get attention it's actually quite filtered but yes okay the tech is really important it's it's you know if you don't actually have the tech then that's also going to be challenging however you also do need to you know have a PR and marketing plan to raise awareness about what you're doing

because what good is building something that's super good Tech but no one knows about it so just want to give a shout out to one of our clients Neil Foundation there they're one of the sponsors at ECC we started working with them late last year and they've been recognized as one of the projects to watch already at the start of the Year by coindesk and we also had to you know help them put explainers out there because again there's so much jargon there's so many complex Tech Innovations coming out of this industry that we do still need to educate people about what what you know what you're building so yeah myth number two Tech will speak for itself no it

won't you still need to talk about it and you still need a PR plan myth number three paid content and event sponsorship equals attention now here's um just two you know exact like two stories or examples of one is a front page story that's editorally written and one is um an ad that coinbase you know um put in the Wall Street Journal which one would you trust more who would say front page ad really no one would trust the front page sorry who would say the front page story and who would say a ad that coinbase

paid for that says trust us why wouldn't you trust that it says trust us um but you know advertising there is definitely a space for ads but an earned media spot and a front page story or an editorally written story still goes a long way I think it was yeah Richard Branson had a quote where he says you know a front page ad is just far you know far more credible than um than you know sorry a front page story is far more credible than a a paid ad um look sponsorships are great you get a booth you get you know some conferences you you know you you have your logo

everywhere and that that's great to get awareness for the industry but nothing beats earned media and so that's why PR is really important and if you want to elevate your PR game earning your place in a media publication goes a long way myth number four so chat GPT is great and don't get me wrong um it's you know took off this year and everyone's kind of been using it and you know our team leverages it for you know building the foundation but I've also heard that teams say okay we can just use AI for PR marketing and we kind of don't need like any further help there yes you do because

um you know this is just an example we we just asked chat gbt to write a caption that promotes ecc-6 and we know that you've got to have the right prompts and and give it you know the AI tool you're using the right prompts to get the right information but it's not exactly fully accurate you know they they didn't even get the dates right so I also think it's important to you know obviously we use it as a tool but you have to make sure you're vetting it and that requires time and you got to make sure that the tone and the language that you want to get across is still there so we don't want to we it's really important to use it as a tool but we don't want to be too reliant on AI

because at the end of the day we're still humans and we have a there's a way of thinking of things that technology can't beat so uh yeah that's just myth number four but who use chat who uses chat gbt to help them with their work that's great it's a great tool to boost your um you know the productivity and what you put out but you still need to vet what you do and you still need to be aware of you know what narratives are out there and you know what people are talking about um and so that's why you do need you know a strategic comms team to help you with that and myth number five marketing and PR are the same thing we've heard this before

um yeah people in the industry and you know some some people we speak to I guess it's still even for us even for our industry we still need to educate people about it we educate our clients about it when we start working with them but no they're not the same thing because as I shared earlier you know you can earn your earn a story in in in press and then you know marketing is you know social media channels where you put a tweet thread together um put a blog post and yeah really the value of both is with marketing you're able to um you know you're able to announce the things that might not make news so a lot of projects are shipping things super fast and if you're integrating you know

um on a new chain that that warrants an announcement but unless it's you know big enough and there's numbers and there's more elements to it it might not you know make the cut or make news and so it's good to have you know a blog post out there a Twitter thread um but PR is is another element where you just earn your place you know on a podcast or a feature story so those are the five PR myths and we are launching marketing Services Seattle so um this is something that we've just built over the last six months we took kind of the bear Market to um yeah really complement the work we do

as a PR firm I think up until this point um Yap Global has mainly been PR but now uh yeah we're just adding the element to help boost through content creation social media content and even helping teams with their social media like auditing their social media platforms to make sure that the messages that they're getting across is complementary so I just want to announce that and also yeah if you are head upstairs you might see signs that says Yap Booth so come say hi to our booth if you have it say hi to us at our booth if you haven't already and yeah here's just a recap of the five web three PR myths that we've busted um any questions

sure my name is Jan from bark Finance uh thanks for myth three uh we have no money so we are in no danger of paying for Content or sponsoring an event great but we are on mainnet and we do have a comms plan we have a Blog we did an event yesterday et cetera Etc awesome engagement is low what do we do to start off yep good question well I mean you can do that with through um content creation marketing first just getting content out there if you've got content out there that you've got content okay so I think a good way

is to kind of keep up with the narrative that's what we do a lot of the time as a PR firm is like seeing where you fit in the trends to give you an example um you know zero knowledge Tech has been around for years we used to work with privacy coins and everyone was talking about privacy in crypto but it was only this year that we're starting to see you know the ZK EVMS launching like polygons e casing errors girl and then like others zero knowledge Roll-Ups you know launching like um yeah so you're starting to see that take off now and so you can see the narratives move along with the industry so it's kind of understanding where

everyone's headspace is at and what journalists are looking at and then you know staying relevant I don't know if that helps but yeah that's that's what we do in the pr space when we're trying to get ahead of the narrative um but yeah in terms of another way is is that Community Building aspect whether you can you know run events meetups that that helps um as well um so the industry is kind of Rife with you know crises hacks exploits people going away with money and going hey well um what advice do you have for projects

on using social media during a crisis like how yeah how how should projects sort of deal with that while I'm using social media yep good question so um I had earlier in the web through PR roses to keep up with Twitter because Twitter is the first place that people go to when they want to check out like a Project's credibility and what you know most live up-to-date uh you know updates from a project so in the um in the event of a crisis a hack or exploit timeliness matters and over communication matters so it's important to make sure you get ahead of the narrative so even if you don't have all

the pieces of information even just putting in a tweet out acknowledging that you know you are aware that this is happening and you know in any kind of uh updates you want to share with your users for example if you want to warn users to stop using that protocol because there's like a you know a leak somewhere um or a data link somewhere you know put that out there ASAP and because teams and and the industry and users want to know that you're there and you care about them so yeah timeliness matters over communication matters and then following up when you have more pieces of information with like a blog post and you know a postmortem when you have the whole picture

um so yeah that's just some advice on dealing with crisis comms because there's a lot of that over the last year and a bit sure oh one more there cool hello hi Jing from Soul Finance um you talked about crisis management can you give an example of what is one sorry hold up with it what is one that has actually been done well recently right like example there are a lot of hacks a lot of stuff that actually happen can you give an example of something that was actually done well in terms of Crisis management because we've definitely seen a lot that were not done very well yeah um okay I can talk about an example that we had uh last year so

we work with Lido finance and when the Terra Luna D pegging happened people kind of mixed up the de-pegging of you know the stable coin with because s t eth and East it was an exchange rate that started slipping and then people started saying oh you know it's either like d pegging and that was a wrong that was like inaccurate and so what we did was well one there was a statement being issued on the the Twitter account and there were statements being put out but we also started having conversations with journalists to correct the inaccuracy we managed to get for example

Bloomberg out there explaining the nuances and differences so kind of if you yeah in an event of a crisis when there's a lot of fud fear uncertainty and doubt getting ahead of the narrative um speaking up about it again over communicating about it using the media to educate people about it because sometimes it also helps having a a media publication say it carries more credibility than just the the project or yeah the team so that's just an example of how to really be proactive in a situation of a crisis um and yeah I mean you know hacks for example it's really

unfortunate but it's important not for the hack to not be the last story you hear from the from the project if it's still standing if it's still surviving just keep keep going keep communicating you know what's being done to um grow grow the protocol so just one more there and then hi Samantha I'm Ed um just a quick question are there any tools or channels in web 2 that you wish were in web3 that just aren't available yet or you're waiting for it to be built following Twitter has been you um not really but what I would say

is what we we do a lot of time is educate the more mainstream media so it's not so much tools but it's you know how like it so we care so much about this industry but BBC and Reuters aren't talking about the layer one and layer twos that are launching because it's not that important to them at the moment also there's more important things happening around the world but um we've seen for example over the last few years it's been encouraging to see Bloomberg higher uh crypto reporters they have a whole crypto team now there's like crypto reporter in every region so that's been encouraging what we would like to see is uh yeah Reuters a few other financial publications up there uh

crypto reporting because it it's a whole field and I was talking about it earlier with the journalists but crypto so there's Financial reporters and there's Tech reporters and they can cover their own different beats but crypto is a combination of understanding finance and understanding Tech so it requires a whole uh different skill set and yeah ball game basically could you please give us an example like really focusing on the last six months because that's been very difficult time for projects so new project you know who just Was preparing maybe for launch buildings a community building the power

awareness and how your agency could help them this like success case you know or a success study yeah sure um so uh you know the gentleman over there said okay they don't have money for marketing I you know I just want to encourage teams there's a lot you can do with your marketing and PR before you hire a PR agency because it does cost money you know gonna be real here we are an agency we do need a charge fees um so what I would recommend is um so an agency like ours we would onboard a team um just before they announced their series a so from C to series a is a stage where uh perhaps having a PR agency is is the

best way for growth but before that there's a lot of you know organic things you can do build up your Twitter um you know build up engagement and and put content out build up your blog these are things you can do without hiring anyone yet obviously maybe you could have a Content writer or a social media manager and then I recommend you know engaging an agency and why an agency well it actually helps supercharge that growth because you could you know it's it's chicken and egg because I would say Okay hire a marketing manager but with an agency you kind of have you know we we're a team of 24 people right now at the moment and um you have the collective kind of uh wisdom of the group where we have the relationships

with the media so it kind of super supercharges that those connections that you can have and you know the agency can help you build those relationships with journalists much quicker than if you were to build your networks yourself so that's what I would recommend um and yeah over the last six months just to address kind of yeah the the market because I understand events of last year Tara FTX people lost money and you know obviously PR and marketing is one was one of the first things people cut which which makes sense to preserve Runway however just to remind everyone that communicating what you're doing communicating that you're still around building things also goes a long way

because um yeah the longer that you stay in the industry the more credible you are and I think nowadays users and and customers they want to see the projects that they can trust and that are here for the long run I'm done okay cool I think time's up but just quickly who can call yeah Global um do subscribe to the context this you know we keep up with the industry so if you want to scan QR code we've got a newsletter that goes out every Thursday and we have a podcast but yeah leave that up and I think my time oh wait I do have 10 minutes right

no okay cool well thank you guys come visit us [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] thank you