Between April 2022 and November 2022, in the midst of a bear market in the wider crypto environment, Gentry Media was commissioned to look after a Discord Community for a client called Mysten Labs. At the beginning of the commission, Mysten had 12k users in their Discord, and the users were not fully integrated into the community. Over the following months we grew that Discord from 12k to 35k, 35k to 50k, 50k to 100k, and 100k to 200k +. At that point our job was complete, and we were able to move on to do the same with others.

This is how we did it !

The first thing that we did is set the scope of the project and conduct an audit of the current state of our client’s project. This meant that we assessed the company’s entire online presence. This comprised of the following :

Twitter

Instagram

Discord

Blogs

Press & Editorial

Project Team

Once we had a good snapshot of where the client is across their social media channels, we asked the client what their business needs are. Are they optimizing for growth or for engagement ? And how does each channel feed into their wider strategy ? After this preliminary stage of becoming aware of our clients goals and how those goals feed into their wider business strategy and bottom line, we then created a roundup of comparable companies to help focus around a specific target market.

Our client will typically help us establish that matrix of comparative companies, and we analyze their existing assets to (Twitter, Instagram, Discord, Press & Editorial) to see the best in class standards for comparable companies in the space. This is all factored into the strategy and execution that we end up pursuing over time.

After we’ve established the audit, gained an understanding of our clients wants, needs and competitors, and have conducted an analysis of our client’s assets online and offline and branded assets, then we arrive at the *fun* part — where we use all our collected data to draft up a proposal scope of work and some initial high impact ideas for next steps.

Following our initial client meeting and brainstorming session, Gentry Media will typically send a project proposal with a scope of work and an initial plan of action for how to help get the client from their current to their desired state.

This will typically be discussed and confirmed with the client ahead of beginning the project, and the timeframe of the retainer and the associated fees are disclosed.

The first thing we do with a client is establish an event driven content calendar. With Mysten Labs for instance, we created a weekly AMA series. This series enabled Mysten to build their community in real time and created a space for followers and supporters of the product to speak to the company’s founders.

From there, we would brainstorm AMA topics a month in advance so that there was time to prepare for it, and then we would create graphic assets to bee shared across social media.

Typically these topics ranged from collaborating with early builders in the ecosystem and similar thinkers to help really establish a tone of voice in the field. The key once again was to maintain consistency and host that event each week.

We then repurposed that content across editorial blogs and the like. This created an interlinked web of content, that would all redirect to Discord. It also allowed for the creation of additional assets and resources that community members could consume in their own time.

We maintained and grew transparency and engagement between the project and its audience through a Discord moderation program. Through the program we have a range of talented discord moderators that stoke interest and engagement in the project 24/7 (enabled by different time zones).

We then ensured high levels of transparency and security within those communities by having the right level of authentication settings and preventing bad actors from entering the community.

We rolled out a series of competitions and contests that would help create further engagement and excitement among fans. These included validator programs, and a moderator program for our client. These forms of gamification created additional headlines and chatter within those communities, which ended up growing the larger community also.

Finally, we worked with the internal project teams to ensure that their announcements and associated press resulted in further community growth. This included optimizing their press announcements to lead back to their social media accounts, and priming the internal communities to help share the content and excitement around those announcements too.

We have a range of testimonials from our clients and results driven for clients. For one, we grew Mysten Lab’s discord from 12k to 300k in 6 months with these methods. The proof is in the following testimonial from Mysten’s head of marketing — Jennifer Kye.

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