On growing an NFT community.

As we march closer to our mint (date still TBD at this time), the hard part of growing the community starts to become the full focus.

In researching the space, it seems there are a few ways to supercharge your discord / community growth.

1. Promoter growth: There are plenty of twitter accounts out there that will promote your NFT to their hundreds of thousands of followers. But let’s be honest, if you use these people, you’re probably wanting to sell out as priority one. These types of promos will bring in people who are into the project because it’s either early (read: presale list) or they’re hoping to get in early on the secondary and profit quickly.
2. Twitter/Invite contests: Everyone on NFT twitter knows these. It’s the “were giving away presale list access” or “were giving away this {other_desireable_nft} to someone who likes, retweets, tags 3 friends, sings a song”. This again just turns into people joining because they’re hoping to win something else, and probably don’t even know what the project you’re building really does.

There’s gotta be a better way to grow your community without these massively annoying tactics.

I (James) have to chat about my experience with Adam Bomb Squad from The Hundreds. I’ve been a Hundreds fan for over a decade, so I knew the brand knew how to actually build and execute on a project. But more importantly, I knew that Bobby Hundreds (Founder of Hundreds) knew how to build community, watching him do it for over 18 years in the streetwear space.

When I first joined in the NFT space, I kept seeing everyone talk about joining the Discord, where it’s THE place to be (I saw it as a place to get in and get on the presale list, honestly).

I had actually joined the Hundreds Discord post minting, and wasn’t sure what to expect. I had used Discord a handful of times for gaming with friends, but that’s about it.

What I experienced in there was something incredible. Now this might date me, but if you remember the days of message boards and how fun (AND tight knit) those communities felt, that’s how this Discord felt. I actually wanted to come back and see how these people were doing. I’ve seen impromptu meetups, people sharing goods, heck even members recovering stolen NFTs for each other, it’s been something else.

I’ve shared a lot of information about Down 2 Earth with the Bomb Squad and have gotten a ton of great encouraging feedback, it’s what kept me going at times when imposter syndrome starts to kick in on these things.

This brings us to how we’ve been thinking of doing pre-sale access for our project, and I feel like the method in which we do this will work for us, and how we see our project. Down 2 Earth isn’t a get rich quick rug or anything like that. We want to find like minded people in the NFT space who want to give back to the earth, and maybe meet some new friends along the way to hike a mountain, or enjoy the outdoors with.

That being said, we don’t want to do the usual invite spamming or promoter buy-in, unless they’re actually interested in the cause, or have similar efforts in play.

We’re now pretty heavy in quite a few communities on Discord that have shown me love and support for our project, so why shouldn’t those communities get the opportunity to get in on the pre-sale list. At least we know that the members who join Down 2 Earth are people who are excited for the project. We also do realize that these people in these projects might be just joining for the presale and flip, but that’s okay, their other members have done them goodwill.

We’ll have a bit larger presale list but we want our supporters to be able to join in with us, stress-free.

The projects we’re giving presale slots for are:

• Adam Bomb Squad: As stated above, the community has been more than amazing to the Down 2 Earth project.
• LizardLab: Momo and their team have built an amazing community as well as a killer text adventure game in their Discord, and their contract is one we base a lot of our work off of, as they care SO much about gas efficiency.
• Waveblocks: We love Mark Hemeon and his Waveblock project. They’ve already given back to surfrider foundation, and the community is a great one.
• Ethereals: The Ethereals community is super supportive and willing to help any project. You just feel at home!
• Mulesquad: An alpha group that was born out of some zaniness that happened in the ABS Discord. Now we all take care of each other.
• Crypto Coven: We love the work that these women have done, and their Discord setup is top notch!
• Proof Collective: While this Discord isn’t open yet, we feel it’s only right to support other members who own this token. (James holds one)

Communities helping communities is what sits right with us. We’re excited to get this moving forward and set up in the Discord for everyone to take advantage of. For the record, as of writing, we have not discussed these lists with any of the owners of these communities. We’re hoping they feel the good vibes and shout us out as well!

If you have any questions of comments please hit us up on Twitter or Discord.

Be Down, Y’all.

James + Michael

Peace ✌️ and love