I’m not an expert by any means, but I have been absorbing as much as I can from the NFT scene for the last few months, sold more than ten myself, and have been able to learn from various mistakes I’ve made along the way. One of the most difficult aspects of getting into the NFT space for me was realizing that I had to approach marketing from a whole new perspective, switching from the more familiar facebook and instagram to mediums I had not ever used (and frankly, disliked): Twitter and Clubhouse. Again, I’m no expert in these things, but at least I can see what I did wrong in the beginning and what I wish someone would have told me. Although these two mediums can seem foreign and unpalatable at first, I believe there are certain ways to maximize your efforts while avoiding certain pitfalls on both platforms- starting with Twitter:
1. Get all the basics out of the way
Profile picture, succinct but informative bio (maybe with an emoticon or two?), linktree(very important) or other link you want to highlight at the moment, cover image, and a “pinned tweet” that shows the best of your current work or something that you want to make sure everyone sees when they visit your profile. All these are basic, customizable options for the top of your profile, and if you don’t make an effort to change all of them, then you might come across as low-effort and therefore dismissable.
2. All about the interactions
While facebook and instagram provide a way for people to view your content, Twitter is less about content and more about the interactions you have with people. If you actually scroll down someone’s profile it could actually be downright difficult to find what they themselves have posted among the posts from other people they have retweeted. This might feel awkward to someone who is accustomed to Facebook and Instagram, and it helps to think of Twitter as more of the “rate” or “rhythm” of content rather than the content itself. By that I mean, it matters much more how you interact with other people’s content than what you have on your page (as long as you have the basics in #1 covered). Unless your posts have mind-numbingly incredible content, it is very unlikely that anyone will visit your profile if you don’t actively interact with others.
And in the arsenal of Twitter interactions, there are really only three tools: commenting, retweeting, and quote retweet. If you really want to be as active as possible, I would suggest using all three strategically. Find artists and figures that you like and look up to, and comment on the posts that you like + quote retweet those same posts to your profile with some words of your own. Even if you are a total unknown, the person is sure to appreciate the extra attention and effort you put into their post, and is that much more likely to check out your profile and give you a follow. And use your best judgement! Sometimes a simple re-tweet is a good way to show silent support here and there as well.
3. Follows vs. Followers
This is a bit of a controversial one, but it is generally frowned upon when the ratio of follows to followers is unreasonably high (for example, following 2000 people, and having 20 followers). The reason is that if a person is authentically building up a profile and community with natural interaction as I described in the previous post, they are very likely to get reciprocal follows as well. Thus, when people see a large ratio like that it can give the feeling of someone who is indiscriminately following large quantities of people before building an actual community, or perhaps a bot- in either case this is not a good look. That being said, there is plenty of grey area here and if you have more follows than followers but genuinely want to follow a new profile you like, it would be silly to not do so based upon the numerical appearance as well. Just use the numbers as a gauge of how you are doing in the community!
4. Avoid Shill Threads
This is one of the most tempting things to do when you’re new to the NFT world– especially after seeing huge threads of hundreds of artists shilling their work to someone who seems to be a collector with nearly unlimited funds; our herd mentality dictates that we should immediately post in as many such threads as possible. This is simply put, the wrong thing to do– because the majority of these threads are literally scams that are preying on the desperation of new artists to gather more follows.
If a person is claiming to be a collector and you are tempted to post in one of those threads, just do a very simple check- 1. Do they have any links to their collection in their profile? 2. If not, scroll down their page and see if there is any mention of them buying work. The first thing most collectors do after buying is sharing the artwork on their Twitter feed, or retweeting the enthusiastic and grateful post of the artist who sold the work.
If you can’t find either of these things, then you can be sure that the thread will not be worth posting in (and especially if it’s accompanied by a screenshot of how much ETH they have in their wallet). Participating in these threads is not only a waste of energy and demoralizing, but they will also make you look desperate to actual collectors who might be following you, since they might see every time you post in a fake thread pop up on their feed as well.
5. Etiquette with Collectors
The second most tempting thing to do when first entering twitter as a new NFT artist is to DM collectors who seem like they might like your work. I’ve made this mistake plenty of times (and of course heard nothing back in most cases) until I learned from people in Clubhouse that this is absolutely the wrong thing to do. The reason is because even the “small” collectors get hundreds of copy/paste messages from artists who are sending them impersonal messages, begging to buy their art. I myself have received these messages from people who send me links to work that I have absolutely no interest in (despite their claims that I would definitely be interested). If you feel absolutely compelled to message a collector, just treat them as a human being first and establish a connection and relationship before sending a link to your work. This is the least bit of courtesy you can show and likely something that you yourself would appreciate when you start getting messages from new, unknown artists.
Next in the NFT Marketing Basics series: Clubhouse!
NFT Marketing Basics: Twitter
I’m not an expert by any means, but I have been absorbing as much as I can from the NFT scene for the last few months, sold more than ten myself, and have been able to learn from various mistakes I’ve made along the way. One of the most difficult aspects of getting into the NFT space for me was realizing that I had to approach marketing from a whole new perspective, switching from the more familiar facebook and instagram to mediums I had not ever used (and frankly, disliked): Twitter and Clubhouse. Again, I’m no expert in these things, but at least I can see what I did wrong in the beginning and what I wish someone would have told me. Although these two mediums can seem foreign and unpalatable at first, I believe there are certain ways to maximize your efforts while avoiding certain pitfalls on both platforms- starting with Twitter:
1. Get all the basics out of the way
Profile picture, succinct but informative bio (maybe with an emoticon or two?), linktree (very important) or other link you want to highlight at the moment, cover image, and a “pinned tweet” that shows the best of your current work or something that you want to make sure everyone sees when they visit your profile. All these are basic, customizable options for the top of your profile, and if you don’t make an effort to change all of them, then you might come across as low-effort and therefore dismissable.
2. All about the interactions
While facebook and instagram provide a way for people to view your content, Twitter is less about content and more about the interactions you have with people. If you actually scroll down someone’s profile it could actually be downright difficult to find what they themselves have posted among the posts from other people they have retweeted. This might feel awkward to someone who is accustomed to Facebook and Instagram, and it helps to think of Twitter as more of the “rate” or “rhythm” of content rather than the content itself. By that I mean, it matters much more how you interact with other people’s content than what you have on your page (as long as you have the basics in #1 covered). Unless your posts have mind-numbingly incredible content, it is very unlikely that anyone will visit your profile if you don’t actively interact with others.
And in the arsenal of Twitter interactions, there are really only three tools: commenting, retweeting, and quote retweet. If you really want to be as active as possible, I would suggest using all three strategically. Find artists and figures that you like and look up to, and comment on the posts that you like + quote retweet those same posts to your profile with some words of your own. Even if you are a total unknown, the person is sure to appreciate the extra attention and effort you put into their post, and is that much more likely to check out your profile and give you a follow. And use your best judgement! Sometimes a simple re-tweet is a good way to show silent support here and there as well.
3. Follows vs. Followers
This is a bit of a controversial one, but it is generally frowned upon when the ratio of follows to followers is unreasonably high (for example, following 2000 people, and having 20 followers). The reason is that if a person is authentically building up a profile and community with natural interaction as I described in the previous post, they are very likely to get reciprocal follows as well. Thus, when people see a large ratio like that it can give the feeling of someone who is indiscriminately following large quantities of people before building an actual community, or perhaps a bot- in either case this is not a good look. That being said, there is plenty of grey area here and if you have more follows than followers but genuinely want to follow a new profile you like, it would be silly to not do so based upon the numerical appearance as well. Just use the numbers as a gauge of how you are doing in the community!
4. Avoid Shill Threads
This is one of the most tempting things to do when you’re new to the NFT world– especially after seeing huge threads of hundreds of artists shilling their work to someone who seems to be a collector with nearly unlimited funds; our herd mentality dictates that we should immediately post in as many such threads as possible. This is simply put, the wrong thing to do– because the majority of these threads are literally scams that are preying on the desperation of new artists to gather more follows.
If a person is claiming to be a collector and you are tempted to post in one of those threads, just do a very simple check- 1. Do they have any links to their collection in their profile? 2. If not, scroll down their page and see if there is any mention of them buying work. The first thing most collectors do after buying is sharing the artwork on their Twitter feed, or retweeting the enthusiastic and grateful post of the artist who sold the work.
If you can’t find either of these things, then you can be sure that the thread will not be worth posting in (and especially if it’s accompanied by a screenshot of how much ETH they have in their wallet). Participating in these threads is not only a waste of energy and demoralizing, but they will also make you look desperate to actual collectors who might be following you, since they might see every time you post in a fake thread pop up on their feed as well.
5. Etiquette with Collectors
The second most tempting thing to do when first entering twitter as a new NFT artist is to DM collectors who seem like they might like your work. I’ve made this mistake plenty of times (and of course heard nothing back in most cases) until I learned from people in Clubhouse that this is absolutely the wrong thing to do. The reason is because even the “small” collectors get hundreds of copy/paste messages from artists who are sending them impersonal messages, begging to buy their art. I myself have received these messages from people who send me links to work that I have absolutely no interest in (despite their claims that I would definitely be interested). If you feel absolutely compelled to message a collector, just treat them as a human being first and establish a connection and relationship before sending a link to your work. This is the least bit of courtesy you can show and likely something that you yourself would appreciate when you start getting messages from new, unknown artists.
Next in the NFT Marketing Basics series: Clubhouse!
One reply to “NFT Marketing Basics: Twitter”
LAYLAY
Thank you!