January 31, 2023: How To Win Frens and Influence Degens 👥🤝
Everything I've learned about digital content creation
At the outset of 2022, a lot of new voices appeared on Substack, Twitter, et al. A part of me secretly hoped they’d put me out of the job so I could focus on early retirement as the zhu-percycle ripped and we all got wealthy.
Instead, everybody lost all their money. Some voices dried up. Some stuck it out. Then AI threatened to send writers to early retirement, until some people realized its content proved decidedly below mid. So I’m still plugging away, yer faithful servant until we hit the first ten billy.
At any rate, it’s 2023. Markets are inching up slightly. Maybe some aspiring new content creators are getting to work securing eyeballs today, so they have their audiences locked in by the time we see a proper bull market.
To this audience, here is everything I’ve learned on the subject (at least, everything that pops to mind):
Convex Benefits
Consider Daily Content
Broadcasting vs Narrowcasting
Seek Engagement
Be Wrong
Tag, Tag, Tag
Start Yesterday
Post is loosely paywalled, in that I’ll provide access to anybody who publicly sends me a link of a project you’re working on…
Let me preface all this with a fun fact — I knew absolutely nothing about content creation when I started this Substack. It was literally a sideshow, trying to drive attention to an analytics website in the vein of DefiLlama.
This is background for the first point…
Convex Benefits
Before Convex Finance was but a twinkle in C2TP’s eye, I started using the phrase “convex benefits” in a different fashion — to refer to any process, habit or system that might have the capability of realizing multiple different benefits. That is, instead of doing X to achieve Y, you do X because it might achieve A, B, C, D, and E. It’s not clear if any one benefit will hit, but you can open a few potential pathways to success.
When committing to a daily Curve newsletter, I thought it could yield the following “convex benefits”:
Learning about DeFi and how to yield farm safely
Tighten relations with Curve community
Get attention onto Curve Market Cap project, or future projects
Become a better writer
Build skills at social media/videography which could be transferable anywhere within the eyeball economy
In actuality, I got most of these benefits and a whole slew of different benefits I didn’t even expect. So it worked out pretty well in this case.
I bring this up not to boast, but to say that you should primarily jump into the game if you have reason to believe it could bring you upside in many domains. This in itself carries a few “convex benefits”:
If you successfully stick with your program, you will grow as a person.
If you greedily anticipate significant upside, you’ll have more grit to stick to your program when life gets in the way.
Consider Daily Content
Granted, it’s a lot tougher to churn out a newsletter near daily. It’s little wonder that people stick to once or more per week.
However, a 7x per week newsletter has more than 7x the benefits. The whole is way more than the sum of its parts. If you can figure out a way to work it into your daily schedule, you’ll find it more than rewarding.
By way of example, consider the following accounts who all started Substacks later than me. All have committed to provide daily content on a broad range of DeFi topics. All have rocketed to success in a crowded field:
They all found a way to become extraordinarily successful, and the cost was just about a year of time. Good content, delivered daily, gets results!
Broadcasting vs Narrowcasting
Using the above trio as a case study, let’s compare and contrast their approach with the Curve Market Cap approach. They’re pretty much the same frequency (though I’ve moved to loafing off on weekends), but the key difference is they focus on DeFi broadly, while we focus narrowly on Curve — broadcasting versus narrowcasting.
I’d argue there’s neither a right nor wrong answer to which is better. But if your metric is getting the most followers, then objectively broadcasting is the smarter idea. Don’t limit yourself to one protocol or subject. Cast your net as far and wide and lean into whatever sticks. Much more audience available for cryptocurrency broadly than just one subject.
Yet as successful as this talented trio have proven, I’d still argue you should strongly consider narrowcasting. In terms of total addressable audience, you won’t get as many followers — that’s a given. Yet if you can accept a lower ceiling, you can reap real benefits.
For starters, it’s a lot easier to get attention within a smaller niche than it is to gain attention among the broader subset of the entirety of cryptocurrency. A blog about cryptocurrency has to be exceptional to stand out against crowded competition, as the aforementioned trio nailed. Yet a blog about a specific niche is much easier to win.
When starting to build an audience, you can’t underestimate the value of being welcomed to post in relevant Discord and Telegram groups. As you keep chopping wood, you’ll forge extremely strong engagement within your community, along with great connections.
Relative to broadcasting, you’ll also likely see opportunities come at you quicker if you choose the right niche. You may well find the community asks you to contribute in a greater fashion within your community (as I have had the pleasure of doing via Curve coding tutorials). The Frax Flywheel Podcast focused on Frax and has seen community grants flow quickly their direction. I’m sure the broadcasters also have a wide variety of interesting opportunities given their talents, but I’d still wager the doors open quicker to narrowcasters.
The important trick with narrowcasting is to hone in on a project you expect has upside. Preferably a project that has the capability for multiple things to get built atop it, (ie Curve), so that you always have interesting fodder for content. If you’re sharp, you may be able to find a project well outside the top 100 that you think could leap into the top 100, meaning you may even make some money in the process (not financial advice!)
I’m of course busy delving into Curve, but I’ve still kept track of a handful of niches I’d consider could be an exceptional subject of a newsletter if I was launching anew today. In no particular order:
Sidechains, particularly Arbitrum (shout out to Subli for nailing this on Optimism!)
On-chain options (notably Dopex, but could be others)
Frax is pretty well covered by Flywheel Pod… but still… Frax
Other DeFi protocols, including Curve competitors (ie Uniswap, Velodrome, Balancer) or notably interesting services like Aave, Badger, Synthetix, Liquity, et al
Staked Ethereum
Stablecoins
NFTs (likely some niche, like the financialization of NFTs)
Vyper, or other specific web3 coding languages
Artificial Intelligence
VC activity in DeFi
I’d wager any of these these could have room to run and provide loads of interesting content. Great for a daily newsletter, but could also be more periodic.
What’s nice about narrowcasting is that if you pick wrong, it would be almost trivial to pivot into a more successful niche.
Seek Engagement… and Be Wrong
Writing really is a give and take. My early efforts at this Substack were laughably bad. It only got better because I was somewhere in the vicinity of a good newsletter, and the readers pushed me towards what they wanted to read.
Engagement with readers is so valuable I still hunt it out at every opportunity. The fans are nice, but what really gets me excited is criticism. Somebody telling you why what you’re doing is stupid is worth its weight in tungsten.
For example, here’s a partial list of course corrections I’ve gotten along the way:
Nobody cares about Curve pool trading activity, just rewards
The heavily global audience has limited appetite for my midwit takes on US crypto regulatory trends
Suggestions to stop engaging with content from certain shady users
Amateurish microphone quality on videos
Nauseating fractal backgrounds on videos
Twitter posts would get more reach as threads
Lots of tips on TikTok videos before it got suppressed by the powers-that-be
As I’d highlighted yesterday, engagement happens to currently the key metric to optimize in the Musk regime of Twitter:
Adding to this analysis… I’ll argue that retweets are not useless if they come from from big accounts do seem to make a difference. After running my experiment, I noted that the best tweet I did by views over the past two weeks ripped because it got retweeted by Curve.
But the author’s primary point is taken: Twitter appears to be trying to optimize for engagement. I’m therefore urging readers to “reply” to posts they like, instead of just liking or retweeting. Feed the Twitter algorithm the content they crave. Hopefully this also ushers in a golden age of engagement for new writers.
Even then, getting engagement is very tough, especially for a small account. Here are a few other tactics that can help build engagement for small posts:
Run Polls
Include suggestive/lewd imagery
Use hashtags/cashtags on Twitter
Narrowcasting makes it easy to post within a projects forums/Discords/et al
Be willing to make mistakes in your articles so people rush to correct you
Produce really good content, it does make a difference
Tag, tag, tag
Tag, Tag, Tag
Controversial growth hack… but I’d argue in favor of tagging other accounts like crazy.
I sat through at least one uncomfortable discussion on the subject, where most people considered tagging to be something of a faux pas. Likely it’s at least partially true that some people don’t want to be on the receiving end of spam.
But I lack basic social graces, so I tagged aggressively in the early days. What I found was it worked very well, particularly for smaller accounts trying to get noticed. The response was almost entirely positive — among replies it was probably >95% positive, with very few reacting negatively. And so what… if they reveal themselves to have a bad attitude, you’re better off just blocking them and moving on.
I’ll caveat this by saying that you should be aware some people consider it rude. Be prepared to transition away from this practice as your following matures. For my sake, I more or less stopped the practice lately, instead deferring to longer threads which include links to some of the best content.
Still, most people are engagement whores and hover over their mentions tab. Provided your shout-out is seemingly thoughtful or earnest, it usually works.
For my sake, I’m in the camp that is flattered to receive tags from smaller accounts. If I’m busy, I’ll give it a quick glance, and if it doesn’t look too offensive I’ll just quickly retweet it.
Start Yesterday
Most importantly, start yesterday. If you account for two months of fumbling around like an idiot, you’ll start to hit your stride Q2. Literally nobody will remember your early whiffs. If you suck, you’ll just disappear into the dustbin with a million other accounts.
If you do it right, you’ll quickly get to a place where people start paying attention. Who knows when the next bull market will roar. It’s best to be ready ahead of time.
The cryptocurrency space is incredible and full of positive energy. It’s also filled with opportunity for everybody who steps up to participate and get directly involved. If you’re starting out, I sincerely hope you reach out to me for feedback. I’ll gladly offer you thoughts as time permits, because I want to help this great space realize its potential.