Web3 Comms for Bros, Bears & Degens - taking FUD out of PR

Transcript

part two. GM and Bonjour ETCC peeps. How is everybody today? Still good. All right. I'm thrilled to be back here at ETCC. It's one of my favorite conferences, especially in Can. The location is gorgeous. So, I just want to say bravo to Ethereum France. Well done. And let's give a shout out to the Ethereum community, the volunteers, and of course the amazing technical and speaker crew who helped make this event such a success. So, Merci, as a comm's person who's very direct, I have to ask everybody before we get started. Is it okay if I swear just a little bit sometimes? Okay, just just want to check and make sure. Last year, my topic was web 3 crisis comms,

controlling the narrative when happens. And that was a lot of fun. But today I'm here to talk to you about web3 comms and uh especially PR because no matter who you are, if you're a bro, a bear, or a DJ, if you don't understand how PR works, you're not going to make it. So, quick show of hands. Who's here today? Who's a builder, a founder, bisdev, marketing, comms journalist? Okay, we're safe. Okay, welcome peeps. Are you ready? Let's go next. So, here's a sneak peek of the agenda. As a comm strategist, my job is to make you look good. So, if you don't

look good, I don't look good. Let's go. Next, please piece. So, I'm no stranger to the community. I'm Victoria Calman, also known as the captain and mother of dragons, two teenage university students. I'm a member of SheFi and the real mamas of crypto. I'm passionate about web 3 and our community values of security, privacy, and decentralization. Today, I lead marketing and communications at Mento. Mentos supports 15 decentralized stable coins powering onchain effects and use cases including stable savings, remittances, payments, and microlending.

So, if you'd like to learn more about Mento and what we do, please come visit Mento and Mini Pay together on our booth in the Wagy Village on Wednesday and Thursday. But now, let's dive into the topic. Next, please. So, I know you are all wondering what the is PR? So, the TLDDR is I've seen a lot of bad PR in web 3, and I'm here to help. PR can and does mean many different things to many different people. whether you're a crypto bro, a bear, or a DJ. So, let me be clear. When I'm talking about PR, I am not referring to a pull request, a personal record, a public restroom, or Puerto Rico. Okay? I'm talking Well, PR could also stand for press release, but

today I'm referring to PR as public relations. And that is a strategic communication process to manage and disseminate information to the public to influence their perception. So, when I say PR today, I'm talking about public relations. Okay peeps. So PR is a strategic element of your web3 comms and this starts with your narrative. It starts with you. Remember what I said last year. We always want to control the narrative. So it's about your history, vision, mission. What are you building? What's your value proposition? What are your use cases?

Who are your partners and investors? Who is your audience? Because once we've defined your narrative, we need to define your objectives. Do you want to acquire new users, grow your community, increase followers? Are you hiring? Are you trying to attract builders? Are you seeking new partnerships or fundraising? Do you want to increase your visibility and awareness through press coverage? Understanding your objectives will determine where and how you should be telling your stories. It's important to tailor the delivery of the right narratives in the right format to the right channels. So remember my bros bears and dens in the house. All of these pieces of your comm's puzzle are important, but they are not all

newsworthy. So what's newsworthy? Let's remove the FUD, the fear, uncertainty, and doubt. There are certain types of news our journalist will cover. All of these things are newsworthy. funding, especially if the investors are well known, nominations, if you have rock stars joining your team, product launches. I'm talking about what is live today that people can use. Customer wins, partnerships, all of these things bring credibility. But there are many other exciting things that you can share, but not everything is news.

So, if it's not news, what is it? It's marketing content, peeps. Okay? And what do you do with that? You build a content calendar. So, here's some examples of marketing content that you can share on other channels. Your blog, okay, I'm not talking about medium or mirror, please. Think of SEO. Your social media, Discord, and community channels. You need to share your marketing content where your audience consumes information. So, what does a press release look like? Let's get back to your amazing piece of news. Why do we want a press release? One, we want coverage in target publications. And two, we want interviews with journalists. And how do we do this? by diffusing a press release with all the key details in there. It's pretty boring actually. Okay, so but it answers who, what, when, where, how,

why, and most importantly, so what? What are we announcing? You have to have a headline, subheader, all of these things on there. Okay, but don't forget call to action hyperlinks boilerplate and contact info. Press releases without this are missed opportunities to get back links to your website. SEO peeps. Next. So, the truth is you're not going to have news every day. Sorry, but that's the truth. In between news cycles, you should get to know the media. How? At events like ETC, journalists come here to meet folks. Next. And why journalists are looking for trustworthy sources of information when they're working on a story. Developing a positive relationship with journalists is going to help you become a trusted source of information. And you can learn a lot

from journalists. What topics do they cover? Relationship building is very important here. So, let me share some interview dos and don'ts. Before an interview, you must prepare. Make your first impression count. Learn about the journalist. Check their social media. Read their articles. Understand their publication and their audience because your message is for them. Be on time. Be kind and respectful of others in the ecosystem. Be yourself. Be confident. Be honest. Be humble. And smile, peeps. Next, try to create a rapport with the journalists. Prepare three key messages you want to deliver and stick to your talking points. Share examples, use cases. Try to keep your answer short.

You can bring and take notes. That's not a problem. But after the interview, show gratitude and follow up with a thank you message. Next. Now for the don'ts. Don't assume the journalist is familiar with you or your organization, even if you've met before. Don't mention competitors by name. Why? I am not paid to give anyone else free advertising. And if you talk about a competitor, they could get mentioned in your article. No bueno. Next. Don't ask the article that before it don't ask to see the article before it goes to print. That is a faux pa. Okay? It is considered rude because you're not paying for this article. And that's the difference between advertorial advertising you pay for. You have total control. Editorial you don't.

You have no control over what is printed. And normally the journalist doesn't even have control because there's an editor behind them that edits the article before it goes to print. You may see something in advance for factchecking, but that's rare. Don't assume the journalist is a friend. They're a journalist and there is no off the record. Okay, peeps. We are not in Hollywood. We are in can, but still off the record is only in the movies. Okay? And don't be rude. Uh, pay for the coffee or lunch. Be hospitable. Next, always remember you have no NDA in place with the journalist. So, what does that mean? Don't say anything that you don't want to see in print. The conversation is not over until you leave. When the interview is done, say thank you. Don't let your guard down. Stop talking and walk away. Next. So, what should a PR

agency be doing for you? So, as someone who's managed comms myself internally and worked with multiple external PR agencies throughout my career, I'm going to be honest with you peeps. Okay, I've worked with some good and some bad and some ugly. Here are some tips. Next, so a PR agency should prepare a tailored media list, events list, announcements in your pipeline, and competitor intelligence. They should ensure consistent messaging, regular outreach and pitching, and quality coverage. Quality, not quantity. They should organize media training sessions, interviews and briefings, follow-ups with journalists, reporting and analysis. What's working? What's not working next?

And here's where it gets real. Okay, you know me, no here. The pros of working with a PR agency include an address book of media contacts and relationships. They know people in the industry. The industry is volatile. They understand the changing media landscape. They are a one-stop shop for your comm strategy, outreach, and pitching. And they provide what I like to call PR air traffic control which is managing your announcements with other things that are happening in the ecosystem. When is a good time to share your news? And they should be focused again on quality coverage. Think ROI. Next. The cons of working with a PR agency include being seduced by senior staff at the beginning and then having junior account managers working with you day-to-day. They also have high staff turnover. PR agencies need to be properly managed and they cannot work on

autopilot. You need to feed them with regular news, regular updates, and give them KPIs, number of interviews, pieces of coverage, etc. You have to be proactive. Keep them up to date on what you have to talk about and what you want to talk about. Because diffusing a press release is more than just a newswire service. Personalized pitching takes time, effort, and a plan. PR agencies can also come with a high price tag, so you need a sign significant budget for external support. Next. All right. My bros bears and dens. I tried to throw this at you very fast. So to wrap it up, I want to leave you with a few things. Public relations is a critical part of your web3 comm strategy. Many organizations are not doing it right. Web3 comms is a

marathon, not a sprint. And you want to make sure you deliver the right message to the right audience and manage your PR agency properly to ensure success. Thank you. And wag me baby. Do we have time for questions? Oh, we got a lot of time. I was like on fire. I hope I was clear. That was a lot of stuff. Come on, hit me up. Yes, sir. So, at what stage in the as you when you're a builder and building your project, at what stage do you advise to start using a PR agency? Um is it after you've reached your series A after you've raised enough money after you

need like how big of a community do you need? What's what's required to start engaging with a PR agency? You need to have somebody in house who's able to manage them who understands a little bit what's going on because if you just hire an agency and they're managing you, you may not be going in the direction that you want to go. So, you need to be able to have if you don't have a person inhouse uh who to to support you with either marketing and comms, you can look for an external agency. I would reach out to several of them and compare, you know, see what they're offering. Talk to other folks that they work with, get some feedback on them. Um, at what stage though, it's when you can afford it because it is an investment, okay? And you may not need a full-blown agency.

Maybe a freelancer. You know, there are all kinds of solutions out there depending on what it is that you want to achieve. But if you're doing fundraising, that's a fantastic opportunity to get some coverage. So, you need to make sure that you have a plan and that you have some kind of support in place because just a tweet about it is probably not going to get you the beautiful article on the first page of CoinDesk or the blog or what have you. Is that helpful? Very helpful. Thank you. Don't be shy, peeps. Thanks for the talk. Uh you had this slides early on around figuring out what your objectives are. Yes. Like uh if you are going to be raising or if you're uh doing user retention or growth, whatever

like that. Um could you give some examples of like how if you're going in any one of those directions, what steps would you take to kind of like target that? Like for fundraising as an example, how does that different from the other kind of objectives? What would you do or not do in terms of a con strategy? Yeah, just at like a I mean I know it's a very broad question but just like at a high level like how would you think of it differently? Like how do you position yourself if you're going for not not only if like your positioning but like what would you do or not do if you're going in different directions for your objectives? Okay. If you just pick like the most important or most common objectives. Yeah. If you're just trying to get your brand well known out of the,

you know, out of the starting blocks, um, maybe a PR agency is not something that you can afford right now, maybe you're a little bit too early. So, I would start with like building up your community, starting to get some partnerships, you know, some little small wins that you can announce to start building traction. And then when you start getting closer to a fund raise, you know, you can preede or seed a, these are nice things that are going to get journalists attention. And then you want to be able to have the ideal situation is if you have early investors that are able to support you with quotes in the press, um your their logo on your website, joint communications, with images, you know, visuals tell good stories as well, you know, but if you

can get like investors backing you, supporting you, also helping you, not just with uh quotes in the press, but with interviews, that's golden for an early company to really have the support of partners and investors early on. So, you know, at the beginning, maybe you don't need a PR agency. You can't afford one right away, but you could have a freelancer or uh you know, work with your in-house team to start to get the word out before you get some more momentum. But yeah, a business wire or something, a crypto chain wire is not going to just be something that's going to help you straight away in my opinion. Yeah, I'm curious. Yeah. Um uh so I think like as marketers and comms

people we understand the need to wait for organic growth like even in PR like it takes time to get that. Do you have any tips to communicate that to the founders or the CEOs who are like I want to be front page of CoinDesk you know tomorrow and I guess so like that's that's one question like dealing with that and how you like set up that expectation and then like what do you think is a realistic timeline to start to see results from PR because it is different than like content marketing or stuff like that for example you have to be very straightforward very upfront and say okay it it is it takes time to build your credibility and uh visibility in the space and Your internal team also has to be coached because there may be spokespeople that are extremely

intelligent, but they're like grizzly bears, you know, and you don't want to put that person in front of a journalist. So, in those types of situations, I'll say, you know what, the journalist is really busy, but we're going to get the questions in writing and we can answer them that way, right? So, there's always a way to try to like get the news out. But just, you know, try to get your executives to start meeting with journalists and then they understand, you know, okay, this is what I'm working on today. these are the stories and maybe instead of having a dedicated article about yourself to start getting awareness and mentions and articles about other folks or about the topic. It's just really like it takes a long time. I know they don't have a lot of patience. Um but also other things that are maybe not necessarily

u press coverage, but podcasts, things like that, AMAs with partners, that's also really nice. And I'm a big recycler. So if I have an AMA, what am I going to do? I'm going to take the script. I'm gonna get highlights out of that. Snippets, you can turn those into videos. You can turn that into an article. You can have little pieces of content with nice quotes, right? So, every single thing that you do is recyclable and reusable and you can push it out to different channels. So, I would just keep doing that until you start building up momentum and awareness that way. And also tagging your partners, your customers in different announcements because people like it when you mention them. So, that also helps spread the word. And even if your ecosystem is small, but the more you keep sharing, the bigger it's going to

grow. Thanks. Come on peeps, don't be shy. There's no bad question. Uh, thanks for the talk. Um, I had a question regarding uh doing it yourself in house, hiring kind of a single individual to manage PR inhouse versus using a firm. When do you recommend to do one or the other? Okay, similar question to what we had earlier, but that's okay. Maybe you came in late and that's totally fine. Uh, so um, if you have someone who's kind of a jack of all

trades, marketing comms person in house, um, you know, it's not hard to outreach to journalists. They have telegrams, they have emails. It's just like that person should have some relationships already to kind of make things go a bit faster. And it's really a question of, you know, your budget and your time frame. If you just got funding and you're in a hurry and you need that extra external support, uh, an external agency is going to have that rolodex and know, okay, this is exactly the right person working on this topic and maybe help you go a little bit faster. But it's quality, not quantity, you know, and one or two good articles has a lot more value, especially if they have backlinks to your website, than a bunch of like stuff you never heard of because the media industry in web 3 and crypto

is extremely volatile. It changes all the time. Journalists move around to different publications. Uh so, you know, you just really have to have your your finger on the pulse of what's going on and then decide what is your audience reading. Is it Financial Times or is it Coindesk? You know, and then how are you going to get your stories to those folks in the way that they want to consume the news? Oh, a journalist. You're hiding back there. Hi, Olu from Mary Blog. Yeah. Hi. Uh, thanks for the talk. Um, so I just want to ask you, so you have um I'm sure you train your execs uh on how to deal with media many times, but you have you you get them in an interview, they say

something they are not supposed to say, right? That happens a lot of times. Uh how do you uh manage that with a journalist? And I feel like maybe people here could like benefit from that. Uh that someone says someone something they're not supposed to say, right? And you said earlier that nothing is off the record, right? Don't No, that is not true. There is no off the record. I mean, I know you. We've had lunch and coffee together, but I'm not going to tell you anything because you're my friend, right? that if I'm going to be talking to you about what's going on with my protocol, I'm only going to give you information that's public and I'm going to make sure that all of my executives before they speak to any journalist, understand, okay, this is how it works. This is not your friend.

This is a journalist. These are the dos and don'ts. If I'm physically sitting next to them in the interview, I'll just interrupt. You know, it's same thing. If the journalist starts going off topic, you just step in there. It's good to have a comms person uh that has your back to kind of, you know, change the subject and get back on topic. You might get a spicy question. Well, you don't want to answer the spicy question. You thought, "Oh, that's a really good question, but actually like the important thing is this, right?" And you just bring them back to whatever you want to talk about. So, it's uh it's really tempting to try to get drawn into other things or comments, you know, and you just have to really have like the the instinct uh to know how to dance a little bit to get back to what you want

to talk about, right? Thank you. I I'm just saying that maybe for the benefit of the founders here. I was in an interview about two weeks ago uh with a founder and said quite a number of things I felt like shouldn't have been said. And I you printed those. No. No, I didn't. Not yet. Anyway, you're going to give us the alpha. Thank you. [Applause]