In this article I would like to focus my attention on community rewarding features, that every project can bring up to the table. What is the best balance? between rewards, community members gained and value received from them? I would love to compare it to the airdrop and bounty programs that we can think of as an alternative.
Airdrops
Airdrop is a very well known method how to attract more people into your project. Thanks to airdrop your community numbers will boost, but for what cost? In modern world there are mostly bots and some people that have no interest in the project what so ever they are only here for the money. This way the true community members are not rewarded as they should be. On top of this big airdrop can ruin tokenomics a little. You are basically giving free money for empty likes on Facebook, twitter or other social media.
Pros:
- Fast exposure for the
- Easy to
Cons:
- Zero value added to the project just empty
- People are there just for free money, no interest in promoting the
- Can ruin
Bounty programs
When I first joined crypto and even now most of the bounty programs are just super messy for me. I can’t find the info and over all bounty is very chaotic. However it’s better than an airdrop since users are getting rewarded for value added, but we have few problems here. Bounty hunters not all of them of course, but some of them are just scammers copy/pasting translations or retweeting with 5000 fake followers. The real value added with 5000 fake and 50 real followers is real low. Full potential of a community members is not unlocked since what do we know what can they do the best? Marketing? Stickers? Memes? Translation?
Videos? Ideas? Projects don’t really now.
Pros:
- They will get done what they
- some value added from the
Cons:
- Fake followers, fake
- Not letting people do what they are best in. Only performing required
Social mining
Social mining is fixing a few important problems.
- A) Properly rewarding users work
- B) The distribution has a decentralized manner
- C) Getting rid of free riders
- D) Everyone can “freestyle” community will judge if it’s adding value or not and act on
- E) Rewarding actual community members not only bounty hunters or spammers
The main problem of social mining in my eyes is to build a user base since to get dedicated community members is hard, but we have an example of the projects that are using social mining. Ferrum network that launches their social mining just recently is having over 300 active users and for a new project, it’s not bad. If we look at LTO Network they have few thousands of active users, but they are using social mining for 6 months now this gives us a perspective that ever times all users that will recognize project as a good one will join social mining since free-riding in the project that is using social mining is not an option.
But lets ask the team members why did they decide for social mining.
Q: Why did you decided for social mining and what are you looking to get from it?
Social mining is a next-generation, community-driven, marketing tool for organic growth. At Ferrum, we always look to embrace community-based initiatives. What better way than to put the community in control of the content creation and rewards? This is what social mining does. It puts the community in the driver’s seat and moves us ever closer to that decentralized ideal — an organization that is by and for the community.
Ian Friend | COO at Ferrum Network
We believe that a community brings a lot of value, which is why it is the most important part of every cryptocurrency project. As LTO Network team, we do not just publish updates. We involve the community in growing the ecosystem: network usage, marketing, developing the solutions and tools together
Conclusion:
Social mining can be a very good tool for your project and community. You will reward the dedicated users that are creating value that is boosting the project. On the other hand some projects can see it useless and go with normal airdrop, bounty or other unexplored option. One is for sure you need to take care of your community. Will it be the new trend? How the platform will develop? Only time will show.
