WEB 3 COMMUNITY
Before I proceed to lay emphasis on the process of building, maintaining and sustaining a web 3 community, it is important to define vividly what Web3 and Community Management is.
WEB 3.0
Till date, there is no internet encyclopedia that has the strict definition of web 3.0 is. However, I will try to define web 3.0 in its simplest form in comparison to web 1.0 and web 2.0 to the understanding of all.
While Web 1.0 is the first stage of the World Wide Web which only allowed the its users to read text contents without having to interact with the contents and Web 2.0 is the second stage of the development of the internet which gave room for “read-write” interactions and permitted the growth of social media and targeted advertisement;
Web 3.0 is third generation of the internet focused on making websites and applications decentralised and improving utilisation of cryptography in order to promoting full ownership to a user’s information. This will be done by using a machine-based understanding of data to provide a data-driven and Semantic Web. The ultimate goal of Web 3.0 is to create more intelligent, connected and open websites.
COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT
Community management is the management of a common resource or issue by a community through the collective action of volunteers and stakeholders. Community management strategies are frequently employed to avoid the tragedy of the commons and to encourage sustainability.
Again, I will point out the difference between community management and social media management as there are a good number of people who can barely differentiate between both.
A social media manager acts as the brand to promote the brand’s products, while the community manager acts as an average user to encourage audience engagement and provide support.
ELEMENTS OF COMMUNITY MANAGEMENT
Elements of community management refers to the essential things to be done required to guide the affairs of a community. These key elements include:
- Communication: To promote activeness, there has to be systems put in place in order to have an a lively community. Community managers have to focus on enhancing the interaction between the people promoting change that will impact positively on improving the living conditions of members.
- Problem Solving: At one point or the other, some members in communities are likely to ask for assistance on how to navigate through certain areas. A good community should have intellectuals capable of examining most problems and giving profound solutions on how to tackle them effectively.
- Networking: A good community should give room for people to connect and get to know individuals beyond their names. It should be a create place to team up with individual with same purpose to work on a project, business plan and so on.
WHAT IS A WEB 3.0 COMMUNITY?
A web3 community is simply a community where group of talented developers, content creators, critical thinkers or people with a technology based skill set meet in order to share opportunities and contribute to the community projects.
Building a thriving web 3 community will require you to build a foundation of community and after that is tackled, you can now move to a scalable online platform. I will lay emphasis on these two points.
The first step involved in building a foundation for a web 3 community is form identification. Form identification has to do with to find a few set of people who fit the community identity you envision. These set of people are likely to be your friends or peers who are sound in block chain development, DAOs, NFTs and so on.
Another thing to do is to earn trust by telling them your visions and goals about the community and asking for their opinions regarding your inputs. You should also go ahead and ask for their inputs. You could also decide to open the room for them to invite trust worthy members.
Moving to a scalable online platform might be confusing sometimes. One of the first things to do it look for communities on that platform that are almost similar to the community you want to build and examine them. Discord is a scalable platform when it comes to building communities. At this point, it is also necessary to set up the platform to some extent and add some contents so new members don’t have to ask too many questions. Then you can go ahead to facilitate interaction.
SuperteamDAO is an amazing web3 community where community members create projects collaborations to teach each other, participate on web3 hackathons and bounties and talk and share content about web3 news or web3 techs (for the developers).
Nevertheless, there are tips for building a sustainable web 3 community and I will be practical about it with screenshots from the SuperteamDAO discord server.
Recognising your group members: It is important to be observant to give shout out to people that are putting in some extra ordinary efforts in your community. For instance, it someone has been helping people with fixing their bugs, give the person a shout out on public talks for recognition. Other members of the community will be motivated to put in more efforts to do something that would make them outstanding too.
Consistency in supplying good contents: Good contents should be shared often with the community as knowledge is needed for growth. If you see any article or social media post worth reading, it should be shared. It can be both educational and entertaining contents.
Challenge your community: Some community members might be stock on the next things to work or focus on. To eliminate this dull attitude, organising quizzes and events with great rewards attached that would make them brainstorm would make community members sit up and feel energised. Bug bounties tasks could also be shared as community members could team up to solve the task.
Set rules: Any community without a set of policies governing that association is regarded as a lawless community. This is due to the fact that people have no restrictions in what they post, say or do. If you are using discord to build a community, there should be a separate channel stating rules that should be abided by and the consequences that would come for compromising on those rules.
Award people roles: Writer, Moderator, Designer and so on are different roles that could be attached to an individual in a community. Discord allows for such customisation. This will help in identifying individuals that are skilled and in addition, community members who have difficulties in certain areas would locate a community member proficient in the areas where they have problems. This will also help when you are not online at the moment to assist them.
Ask for tips: The feedback from the community is essential. It helps you know what to do to know the events to introduce and those that didn’t interest the community members and suggestions on how to improve the community members’ activeness. Doing this will give your members the impression of being heard.
CONCLUSION
There are very few web 3.0 communities at the moment and yet to be saturated. Building a sustainable web 3.0 community with the help of the strategies and tips shared above is a fantastic idea.
However, by carrying out a community management strategy in your online community, you’ll be able to create a sound atmosphere for your “potential” customers who would patronise you when you launch your softwares/products based on your trust and consistency level over time, fans, employees, and followers to collaborate, provide you with feedback, bond and learn.
