# Notes on Community Structure and Marketing
A brief guide on marketing principles and community outreach as it applies to Webaverse

## The Three Steps
The whole of marketing and community theory can essentially be distilled into three primary areas of focus, all that will change from business to business is the depth and prioritization within them. They are:

- **Define** - Getting a clear idea of the target market, company goals, and mission statement
- **Attract** - Getting the word out, targeting specific markets, and bringing people to the commmunity or brand
- **Incentivize** - Calls to action, pointing people toward whatever it is you want from them, and providing what they want from you

Let's look at these three steps as they apply to Webaverse.

## Define
There are three things that need to be defined for Webaverse:

### Who is the ideal member or contributor?
In marketing slang, this is referred to as the 'target audience', but that's sort of vague and impersonal. It's much easier to think of a specific person who meets the criteria for what you want out of your community. In fact, by far the easiest way to do this is to literally define an *actual person* who you know. Someone who, if you could make 1000 clones of them and populate the community that way, would skyrocket Webaverse to success with their engaged contributions and support.

By defining an existing person and using them as a metric, you've essentially 'shortcut' the marketing research and testing. Any decisions or sticking points can just be met with, "What would [Person X] be interested in here?" or, "What would make [Person X] interested in this project?" Additionally, if you know them well, you can straight-up ask them and save a lot of time A/B testing. It's not perfect, but it's a very fast 80/20 solution.

### What is the Mission Statement, or 'Elevator Pitch"?'
The term 'Elevator Pitch' comes from the idea that you're in an elevator and a wealthy investor walks in and asks you what you are working on. You have 5 floors to sell them on your idea, about 60 seconds. What do you say?

A mission statement is usually an even more condensed version - a sentence or two that encapsulates what Webaverse is and why people should care.

Having either of these will work - both is better, but they are deceptively tricky to come up with. **A few guidelines for making elevator pitches and mission statements:**
- Ideally, it is something that will exite both contributors and consumers. For webaverse, the current goal is more to build a community than to sell a product, so if you only target one, it should be the contributors. What's the project, why is it exciting, why should they be excited about it?
- Try to avoid 'buzzwords'. "We are an interconnected blockchain protocol focused on metaverse interoperability as it applies to virtual spaces" is a lot less compelling than, "We want to connect all of the virtual worlds together with an interesting storyline, an immersive world to explore, and technology that will allow digital goods to be persistent throughout the web. And we want to do that natively in the browser, so there will be no download; *it's plug-and-play!*"
- Don't try to cram too much into it. The goal is just to get someone in the target demographic interested enough in the project to join the community and poke around the docs, not to perfectly encapsulate every aspect of Webaverse.

**In the context of this doc's approach, you should be thingking, "What would make [Person X] interested enough in Webaverse to come check it out?"**

### What is the specific goal or goals, short-term?
These are really just for the you and the team, they don't need to be pretty or well-spoken, since they won't be public. By clearly defining goals, it gives a sort of roadmap to guide decisions. For startups and smaller companies, it's better to have short-term goals because they allow you to leverage the flexibility that's innate in smaller teams. Large companies may have a 1, 3, and 5-year plan. Smaller or faster moving ones should focus on 6 month, 1 year, and 2 year.

For startups, and specifically for Webaverse, I'd suggest 1-week, 1-month, and 3-month goals. This will allow for a massive amount of flexibility without sacrificing the guidance of having a roadmap.

These should be applicable specifically in the context of the marketing campaign. An example would be:
- 1 Week: 1 new active contributor
- 1 Month: 6 new active contributors
- 3 Months: 20 new active contributors

The goals should be clear and simple, and can apply to any part of the campaign. So for example, an alternate set of goals could be:

- 1 Week: Featured on at least one blog/podcast
- 1 Month: 100 new members in the Discord
- 3 Months: 5 new contributors, 3 different blog/podcast features, 2 influencer posts, and 100 more members.

### The defining step is actually the most important of the three, take your time with it.

## Attract
Once the goals, ideal contributor, and mission statements are defined, we'll put that information into use by getting the word out. A few things to consider:

### There should be a consistent message.
This will usually be either the mission statement or elevator pitch, but what's most important is that it's consistent across the marketing approach. If someone reads of Webaverse as an NFT platform on a blog, then there's a podcast where they hear that it's a game with a story, and on socials it's a way to connect virtual spaces, it comes across as confusing rather than compelling.

Slight tweaks to it across platforms to make it more applicable to their communities are fine, but the overall message should be consistent and concise.

### Outreach
This is the part of the campaign that everyone prioritizes, but it's actually the easiest and least important. Basically, you just want to ask, "Where would [Person X] be most likely to come across this idea?" then put it there. Some common ideas:
- Relevant blogs/podcasts
- Word-Of-Mouth incentives ('Invite two friends and all three of you will unlock this special role/NFT/SILK/etc...!')
- Socials and Influencers in the target demographic
- Official Webaverse blogs, socials, channels, etc.
- Youtubers in the target demographic
- "Shotgun" or SEO approach (Things like Google search optimization of Disboard listings under relevant keywords)

### Deliver
Once the 'lines have been cast', it's important to follow through on any promises made during the campaign. Nothing will lose a potential connection faster than this. Some common promises that aren't always followed through on, and what you want to avoid if you make them:

- "Vibrant and Active Community" > It's dead/inactive
- "Currently in Beta" > Realistically in early Alpha
- "Constantly Updated" > Updated every so often

You get the idea. Just be aware of the verbage you use when you're doing your outreach and you'll be fine.

Secondarily, it's ideal for new members to have some sort of immediate feedback. This can be a personal welcome message, a role, an emoji, whatever. Just have some system for welcoming people and thanking them for their interest. It goes a long way.

## Onboard and Incentivize
Alright, the ideal people have been defined, the marketing is tailored to them, we've reached out, and people are starting to trickle in. Time to onboard them and incentivize the things that are needed. For Webaverse, the goal is active contributors, so it should be tailored to them. With good marketing, maybe 1-2 out of every 10 new members are potential contributors. With good onboarding and incentives, every single potential contributor will turn into an *active* contributor.

### Do the 'legwork' ahead of time.
Webaverse is looking for contributors for the codebase, art, idea generation, etc. So for the smoothest onboarding, there should be a 1 or 2-click solution to get someone who is interested ready to contribute. Ideally, the process should take less than an hour of their time to go from interested in helpig to having a task and working on it. A good example would be a short doc that explains the requirements and a link to a Kanban board or something along those lines with the tasks. Tasks should be sorted by type and length of completion, and should have any information needed already ready to go. This saves time answering DM's and explaining things, just try to lay it out as clearly as possible.

**An example would be an art task, let's say the Silk Fountain task.**
For that task, it should have relevant lore, any visual references needed, a link to what SILK is and why it's relevant, any technical requirements, and a list of specific deliverables. Ideally it'd also be sorted into the "Art" tasks, and marked with relative difficulty, relative skillsets, time to complete, etc... - whatever metric/metrics make the most sense to you and the structure of the task list.

This can be structured in any way; that's just an example. The takeaway is that you want to design the tasks as if there will be no further instruction - the contributor should be able to pick up their 'welcome packet' and have everything they need.

### There should be clear goals/criteria for tasks.
A contributor wants to hop in, have a clear goal, and get it done. Think of it like a quest in a videogame - the most annoying RPG quests are the ones that are unclear, tedious, or unneccessarily time-consuming.

### There should be immediate positive feedback.
People are fundamentally monkeys; we press the button, we want a banana. The more immediate and positive the feedback is, the more likely a contributor will do it again in the future. Any promised incentives should be delivered as close to the completion time as possible, and if there are adjustments needed they should be framed in a positive light. If a contribution doesn't meet requirements but it's obvious that the contributor has tried their best, maybe they can team up with someone on the dev team to bring it to finish, or maybe they just get the reward and their contributions are added to the reference material while the task stays open.

If a task is binary (i.e. with code, it either works or it doesn't), the requirements to receive the reward should be very clearly stated in the goals, and it should be stated that all requirements must be met to receive the incentive. This ties back in with there being clear goals for tasks and delivering on promises. In general, you'll only have unhappy contributors if they feel that they delivered and were not rewarded. As long as the goals are extremely clear, most people will be happy to revise as needed to hit them, even if they are stringent. Again, think of an RPG quest.

### Incentives - Why will they contribute?
Incentives don't have to be monetary, in fact most of the stronger incentives are socially driven. **What would [Person X] want in return for their contribution?**

Some ideas, by no means an exhaustive list:

- Exclusive in-game NFT's or cosmetics only given to contributors
- Extra customization ability, extra inventory space, etc...
- In-game feature (see Founder's Hall below)
- Access to Contributor lounges in-game or in other platforms, contributor chats on Discord, etc...
- Special Contributor role in Discord that's displayed at or near the top of the role list
- SILK rewards
- Contests/Competitions
- Voting rights (DAO)
- Personal recognition from founding members/dev team/ etc...
- Personal thanks
- Entry to lotteries/giveaways/airdrops

You get the idea. The takeaway is that incentives don't even have to be tangible - for the right person, the simple ability to list their contribution in their resume, or an invitation to a monthly contributor meetup may be enough. Focus on providing value specifically to [Person X], and they will give value back.

### Founder's Hall
An idea that came up while compiling this, tying the value proposition of Webaverse to the marketing plan.

What if we designed a grand Hall that stood at the very start of the Street? The Origin Tablets could be either inside it or right outside, and the Street could extend from the door. Inside, there may be a huge wall with the names of contributors inscribed on it, maybe even statues of the avatars of primary contributors. There could also be personal spaces for top contributors to be able to decorate/flex, or areas for monetary contributors and sponsors to display their branding.

Think like a giant memorial dedicated to the people who went out of their way to make Webaverse a reality, forever enshrined on the blockchain and in the lore of the world.