Hello everyone, hope you are all enjoying your start to 2022!
I have an idea for community marketing, that largely relates to developer updates which I think is especially important with the development and launch of Snapps later in the year. My perspective on building a good community, positive outreach and inclusivity has come largely through following the Elrond blockchain and its development. Specifically, it’s weekly developer updates.
Here is a link to an example tweet thread:
Pros:
I think this could be a great opportunity for developers at o(1)labs to build their online presence (typically tweeted out by various developers and then retweeted by the main Mina Protocol twitter account)
Educates the largest online following of Mina on technical updates
Brilliant for developers stumbling across Mina on twitter to pique their interest r.e. Mina’s tech without having to join the Mina discord for technical updates
Cons:
Time/effort making the tweet thread
I fully believe the pros massively outweighs the cons and would be interested in hearing other people’s opinions, as well as that of any o(1)labs employees.
I proposed something similar a while ago, I feel like it would be some easy, yet very efficient marketing. I personally enjoy talking to the team from time to time on discord - some sort of a short “recap of the week” would certainly be very interesting to read!
100% support the idea. I do think there has been a big information asymmetry beteween the Mina dev team and the community, and there are very little technical stuff and up-to-date development communicated to the community. This weekly tweet thread idea is excellent, and I would love to see Mina Foundation or O1 employ a dedicated or part-time technical writer for these communication efforts.
+1 - Twitter threads like this hold tremendous value in showing network progress, celebrating milestones, and keeping the community informed and active.
Something to keep in mind is that a majority of Twitter is not technical so keeping these threads high-level is critical to maximizing impact. The Elrond example was great because it was a summary supported by more details in the thread, which are optional for those interested. But it sounds like some are interested in the technical detail.
Does anyone here remember the monthly ecosystem updates call and twitter threads that recap the meeting?
The community seemed to enjoy these a lot, and they got good organic attention, however, they weren’t too efficient from an operational standpoint.
I’d be curious to know more bout what you all think:
what kind of updates would you be interested in?
how technical of updates are most looking for? Or how in-depth should each line item be?
what medium is best for this? (Twitter, Discord, Youtube, Blog, etc)
I would like to some sort of weekly or bi-weekly status update, where the team just compiles a few sentences about what they have doing in that time. I really liked the ecosystem updates you linked, but I also understand that they are a lot of work - so I think that “replacing” the ecosystem livestream/video with just a quick written status update will end up having the same marketing effect but with way less effort. Those updates don’t necessarily need to be in the form of a blog or anything like that, a quick overview of the size of maybe 10 bullet points with a short explanation should be more than enough
These updates don’t have to be too technical, so they are also appealing to normal users. However, I think when the team made a major improvements to the protocol, eg like Kimchi recently, I would expect to see maybe a small dedicated and more in-depth “status report” on that
Twitter would reach the majority of the community, I feel like, while Discord certainly is a more tech-focused group. Perhaps there could be a dedicated channel on Discord where those updates are just posted, while simultaneously being tweeted and posted on Telegram.
Maybe there could even be a dedicated markdown/webpage where all the updates are being added, then only the link is being retweeted or posted in Discord - Something like HackMD perhaps? Here is something similar to what I am imagining https://www.notion.so/12-29-8aa2c96032754fa7938ebc40d9a4dece
Thanks for the speedy reply Drea, we all really appreciate it!
I’d say general dev updates would be highly valuable as tweets, as this would reach the widest audience possible - and bring the possibility of bringing 1000s of devs into the ecosystem, by stumbling across the thread.
I just think the way Elrond do it is excellent and would still think a shortened version would be highly valuable. Start with a summary that is accessible to most with increasing technicality down the thread maybe?
I also love how they change who does the update each week, as you would then get to see a much larger proportion of the o1labs team, which would be really nice to see.
Would be happy with any regular developer updates though !
Thanks for joining the discussion Andrea, I think that there are lots of suggestions in this thread… I have put my thoughts below
what kind of updates would you be interested in?
— All / Any. What drives a project forward is momentum - ie, news and developments. While I am sure there are lots of things going on behind the scenes atm from the outside there is little information filtering through.
how technical of updates are most looking for? Or how in-depth should each line item be?
----- As @Trivo mentioned, if it can be explained easily then simple is best, but I don’t think we should be too scared of being technical either if there is no simple way to explain it.
Every tweet will be shared and end up on multiple timelines, bringing new people and ideas into the project. Even if someone can’t fully understand it they will still be reassured there are things happening.
what medium is best for this? (Twitter, Discord, Youtube, Blog, etc)
---- All / Any medium is good. Short news should be tweeted and posted on Twitter and Discord / Telegram. I had an idea for a read-only category here Mina Protocol in other languages? - #5 by Pete (but maybe this is actually better suited to discord? ).
If there are bigger updates/news then blog posts can also be done if there is something interesting to say. There could be a monthly round up as a blog post of all the news from the previous month too.
The EcoSystem updates were good and I think in 6months time when the ecosystem is big enough to support it this might be worth starting again, but right now regular bite size news items on Twitter (as @lamps detailed) are more straightforward and easier to do.
As @sMgT mentioned, any tweet / blog post creates discussions and this will attract further interest in the project. I also think his idea of hearing from a different team member each time is excellent too, not only do you see more of the teams, it also shares the workload, so each team member only has to do it every so often.
I also think moving forward that there should be a condition on any grant awarded by MF or O1 to developers in the future that they publish weekly/bi-weekly or monthly updates (whatever is the most appropriate).
@Drea_MinaFoundation@RHT313 The following three discussions on this forum are all extremely good examples that could be developed into a thread of short summaries, and then at the final tweet point to the original links on MinaResearch.
If the main Mina Protocol twitter handle could tweet one thread in each of the next three weeks, I can guarantee you the army of Mina community members (led by generals like @Pete and @cryptocaptain ) will retweet them to all corners of the world, and these will very likely draw in developers that wasn’t aware of Mina’s tech. In fact, the potential collaboration on the DAO voting idea happened in this way organically on Twitter. @joseandro sorry to bother you but would you consider writing your two ideas into threads in the next couple of weeks please?
You can use a tool like this https://getchirrapp.com/ to break down content into multiple tweets, just copy the text in there and connect to your twitter account. It should split it up into multiple tweets.
It might be you don’t need to put the entire thread onto Twitter just a few tasty teasers to entice people onto the forum and into the conversation…
Love the ideas here! There’s definitely potential here to spur the imaginations of more community members with updates of the like. I’ve gone ahead and shared this with my team and have also drafted some ideas to get some going. @joseandro - happy to help you on that thread. I’ll ping ya!
There are brilliant ideas in this thread and I encourage you all to share more as they come. Thanks again for your passion and continuous support of Mina. Mina Foundation is more than happy to support your ideas, but please know that you are empowered to act on your own ideas as well
