With the recent explosion of NFTs on the market, and despite the recent cooling of the industry, there are still hundreds of NFT collections launched a month.
Technically it can be a challenge to create the JPEGs, produce the associated meta file and code the smart contract which will be used to turn your JPEGs in to NFTs.
Although this will seem like a huge obstacle, it’s nothing compared to the mountain in front of you to promote your NFT collection!
Hundreds of NFT collection promoters are doing all they can to stand out in the densely populated crowd.
Having launched an NFT collection and having been through the uphill challenges of promoting the NFTs, I can assure you it isn’t as easy as the online videos and Twitter accounts make it seem.
The chances of going viral overnight are very slim at best, but there are some methods and tactics I used, and other NFT collection owners have used, to build a following, an audience and put themselves in a strong position to launch!
The best way to promote an NFT collection is a combination of several proven strategies. These include having a website, a clever marketing campaign on Twitter, a Discord channel, visual storytelling on Instagram, using NFT influencers, Tik Tok and collaboration with other NFT Collections.
In this article I will share with you the exact step by step process I used, what worked well, what didn’t work well, what I would do again and other recommendations and methods from the creators of other successful NFT collections.
Promoting Your NFT Collection
Many NFT Collections have launched successfully over the past couple of years.
The most successful so far are Crypto Punks and Bored Ape Yacht Club. These two NFT collections had the fortune of being the first and subsequently the most famous amongst trending celebrities, which made the NFT founders millionaires in a very short amount of time.
An NFT Collection with 10,000 pieces, selling for an average of $150 each (around 0.08 ETH), would net the founders $1,500,000!
With this type of reward on offer it’s easy to see why so many NFT creators have flooded the market and why so many collections have launched recently.
Despite the different number of unique collections, almost every single founder has followed these methods in an almost blueprint templated fashion to achieve the success they have.
Let’s have a look at these methods that have worked time and time again.
Promoting an NFT Collection on Twitter
Twitter is without a doubt the social media platform of choice for discussing and promoting NFTs.
Everything NFT based happens on Twitter.
24 hours a day, 7 days a week, it’s easy to stay on top of everything that’s happening in the industry.
As hundreds of thousands of NFT buyers are on Twitter looking for the next great NFT Collection, it’s exactly where you should be!
The Twitter algorithms can be as difficult to crack as the Instagram, YouTube, Pinterest, and Facebook algorithms for promotion, but the reality is all the social media platforms look for one single thing – regular, consistent, valuable content posting.
Here is a step-by-step guide to promoting an NFT collection on Twitter:
Create a Twitter Account – Think Twice Create Once
Creating a Twitter account looks to be such an obvious step it would be forgiven for an article to overlook, but the Twitter handle, profile photo and feature image can make or break a collection!
You can change your Twitter name after it has been set up, but not your Twitter handle.
For example, you can follow NFT Niches on Twitter at @NFTNiches (please do for more great NFT valuable content). This though as well as being a shameful plug is also an example of a Twitter Handle.
The Twitter handle should be memorable and relative to your NFT Collection.
You can set up a Twitter Account from the home page of Twitter
Post Your First Tweet – After Your Research
Although you won’t want a brand-new Twitter account being empty for too long, and will be very tempted to post something, you want to be clever with every Tweet you create – including your first.
Maybe you have crafted an amazing Twitter marketing schedule and know exactly what you want to post. If you do, go right ahead!
If not, it’s wise to do your own research and start to create a NFT posting schedule.
If you are not sure where to start, look at other NFT collections and scroll back to some of the collection’s earliest tweets.
Here’s one of the first tweets from the recently successful Goblintown NFT Collection:
Not hugely insightful I know, but look back at their early posts and how they build a cult following.
It’s an amazing eye opener into what types of tweets have worked in the past and have attracted an audience, plus it can be great as inspiration for your own tweets.
Goblintown was clever, bold and just themselves. On Twitter, that works.
In the early stages you will want to set the scene and tell your story. You only have 280 characters per tweet, and it’s surprisingly how quickly these characters are used when you have a lot to say.
Creativity is the key. Short, engaging and leaving the audience wanting more is a clear sign of a winning strategy.
The Hashtag Culture
Like many social media platforms, hashtags are used to describe a post and assign it a category. It also helps other users find them.
Hashtags such as #NFT #NFTCollection and #NFTCommunity are very popular on Twitter.
Using these hashtags can usually always provide at least a few likes each post as you build your audience.
Do not overuse hashtags though. Spread them though out your post and try and not use more than 4 hashtags per post.
A sweet spot of between 2 and 3 hashtags per post usually works well.
How to Get Followers on Twitter for an NFT Collection
Likes and Retweets are a lot easier than gaining followers on Twitter.
This is because hashtags help put you in front of a small number of scrollers who will smash the like button if they see something they like, made them smile or helped them.
To gain that user as a follower you must give them a reason.
Researching many different NFT projects, they all seem to have used three main methods of increasing Twitter Followers:
- Use a promotion or giveaway, such as a whitelist or free NFT mint, and have following your Twitter account as one of the conditions of entry
- Use an influencer to promote your Twitter account or giveaway
- Be secretive and give small clues away
The first two will look obvious. Competitions have been used for many years before the internet to attract attention.
Although the term influencer seems to have only been around for a few years, celebrities and public eye figures have endorsed products and services for decades.
So, what does ‘be secretive and give small clues away’ mean?
Some collections have gained a huge number of loyal followers by being quite secretive, and only giving basic information and cryptic clues away.
The Whiskers NFT collection a good example. This NFT project gained hundreds of thousands of Twitter followers. More than enough for a 10,000 NFT sell out but did so by drip feeding exciting art together with a slowly built-up story to create interest, intrigue a following and desire.
People were tirelessly trying to get on to the Whitelist for the project.
If you want to see how a NFT Collection Twitter account can gain thousands of thousands of followers?
Just look at the Whiskers NFT Twitter Account, scroll down to their first post and spend some time watching how they did it.
Building an NFT Community on Discord
For those in the marketing world, the best way to think of Discord is with an analogy.
Discord to Twitter is what an email list is to a website.
People visit a website and then will disappear again once they have the information they need, maybe never to return.
Rather than lose the visitor altogether many websites implement a marketing funnel by way of a newsletter signup, or freebie if the user parts with their email address.
This allows the website owner to reconnect, and ultimately market their website again and again to the same visitor.
Discord can do the same. It’s an amazing tool to build, grow and nurture an NFT community.
Often NFT Collections will place links to their Discord channel on their Twitter account, with whitelist competitions and prizes for verified Discord members who become active in the community.
The Twitter account becomes the funnel in to Discord where it’s easier to communicate with your followers and share within the community.
Discord can be essential when it comes to promoting an NFT collection as Discord members can be encouraged to invite their friends to the Discord channel and spread the word.
As Discord allows proper two-way communication with your audience, rather than just post tweets at them, it allows you to be more personable and represent your NFT brand much better.
Here are some essential tips for building an NFT community:
- You cannot do it alone. You need moderators and people actively messaging and managing the Discord community 24 hours a day 7 days a week
- There needs to be regular communication, announcements, and engagements to help grow the community
- Be personable but always remember you are representing the brand of your NFT Collection
- Hold competitions, giveaways and make joining your Whitelist something your audience must work towards, rather than given away freely
A Professional NFT Collection Website
A website isn’t essential to promote an NFT Collection, but it can really help.
In fact, an NFT Collection’s website is one of the least visited promotional platforms, but without a website it looks strange and can look highly suspicious.
An NFT Collection website, like NFT Crowdfunding Group, can help showcase your NFT project in a very professional way, and give at least some reassurance to potential NFT buyers that your project is not a scam.
It should include an explanation of exactly what your NFT project is, how it can benefit the user to hold one of your NFTs, what utility is, founder information etc.…
The website should contain links to all your social media platforms too.
Website builders are not a great place to build NFT websites and having been in the web development space for more years than I care to mention, I wholeheartedly recommend using a free tool like WordPress to create an NFT website – or outsource to a web designer or find a provider on work and gig platforms such as Fiverr.
The Role of Influencers in NFT Promotion
The role of influencers is almost woven into the fabric of a successful NFT launch.
Building a following on any social media platform is incredible tough, and very time consuming. It can take months to do it organically just be posting, retweeting, and joining NFT communities.
On average it takes an average person a year to grow to 10,000 Twitter Followers 100% organically.
This is where good NFT promoters can help.
They have spent the last couple of years building an audience and following. They have reach and influence (hence the term influencer) and one small tweet from them can dramatically increase your followers overnight.
It can save months and months of hard time and hard grind!
This though is where you need to be cautious. Twitter followers can be bought very easily.
Someone who may appear to be an NFT influencer may just have thousands of bot followers, and the tweet although honored will be posted out to a ghost town of invisible followers, and you will never get the boost you were looking for.
You need to look for NFT followers or speak to other successful NFT projects and see if they used any good influencers they could recommend. Word of mouth from reputable sources is very valuable in the NFT space as for every influential person there will be at least 10 or more fake accounts.
If you find an influencer you would like to reach out to, spend some time following them first and use this checklist:
- Are all their posts just promoting NFT projects – this is not a good sign
- Do they have very high engagement on their Tweets, such as comments, likes and retweets
- Do the comments they receive on Twitter posts look genuine or fake
- One-word replies, and repeated comments from different Twitter accounts is a clear sign of paid commentors
- Do they have a blue verified tick against their Twitter name?
Be vigilant and remember the rule that if something looks too good to be true, it usually is!
The Power of NFT Promotion through NFT Collaborations
One of the most successful NFT promotion methods in 2022 is to collaborate with other NFT projects.
Let me elaborate on collaborate.
With so many NFT collections being launched, it makes sense for some NFT projects to work together and help promote each other through their own following.
For example, one NFT Collection may promote another by way of giving away whitelist spots in a competition.
For the promoter this is good for their community as they are given the chance to win exclusive whitelists not offered anywhere else – and for the NFT Collection being promoted, it gives them access to a bigger audience who are encouraged to follow them on Twitter and become a member on Discord in return.
It’s a win-win.
Not all NFT projects will want to collaborate, so it may take some time to gain traction and be accepted but persevere. This can be one of the most important things you can do to grow your NFT Collection.
The more collaborations you can get the bigger a directly targeted audience you will have.
This audience are in the market for NFTs. It can’t get any more targeted than that!
You don’t just need to look for NFT Projects that haven’t yet launched, in fact the most willing NFT projects open to collaboration are those that have already launched and built their audience.
This is because they will not see you as a competing threat as they have already launched, and sold their NFTs, plus once a NFT collection launches it can be difficult to keep providing back to the community.
Offering exclusive whitelist spots or even free NFTs to their community helps keep them engaged, and encourages their NFT holders to HODL, and not get bored of the project and sell on the secondary market.
Promoting an NFT Collection in 2022 – Conclusion
Promoting an NFT collection is much more challenging this year than last year.
As tools, open-source code and software made it easier for people to get in to, as well as the NFT model being proven and millionaires being made daily, it meant a huge number of NFT creators were able to enter the market.
Combine that with the drop in the economy, falling crypto prices and the crash of Terra through UST and LUNA – it has reduced the number of buyers into the market.
By using a combination of the proven NFT promotion methods outlined in this article, you will be on your way to a sellout NFT collection!
