Guide to Social-Fi | The Web3 Social Revolution

What is Social-Fi?

Social-Fi can be described as the ‘lobby phase’ for your project — it’s the crucial period between a product announcement and its official launch. This phase, akin to a pre-party, is where excitement and anticipation are built, creating essential buzz around the product. By engaging users during this time, Social-Fi platforms can effectively lay the groundwork for a successful launch, ensuring that the community is eager and ready to participate from day one.

Users complete tasks or ‘Quests’ often evolving around social activities such as engaging with a social media post or joining a specific community, but Social-Fi can be so much more than this…

What Makes a Great Social-Fi Campaign?

At Avark we’ve been behind our fair share of Social-Fi campaigns, we’ve pulled together our top tips of what works and what doesn’t.

Our Top 5 Tips for Launching a Great Social-Fi Campaign

1) Think of a killer concept that works for your brand and product

The success and visibility of your Social-Fi campaign all hinges on a killer concept, not only does the concept need to have the potential to go viral, but it needs to work for your brand.

Be creative here and think big, a Social-Fi campaign is your chance to put your brand on a pedestal for all to see, what do you want to be remembered for?

When coming up with your concept, you want to think of a theme that ties your brand into the story, here are some points and questions to consider when developing the concept for your Social-Fi campaign:

• Are there any themes that we can pull from our brand and product to create a truly unique campaign? Building an NFT Football Trading Card Game? Think about how you could incorporate Football into your campaign (Goals, League Tables, Divisions etc).
• Can we use the Social-Fi experience to educate users on our core offering? For example, could we dedicate a quest to learning about how our product works?

Build Gamification into the concept from the start…

A great Social-Fi campaign will not only create much needed attention and eyes on your project in the Web3 space, but also build you a community of engaged users ready to interact with your platform. You are incentivising users, so think about what you want them to do and the value you can reap from that.

2) Build Gamification into the concept

Gamification should be at the heart of your campaign to engage users and encourage active participation in your Social-Fi campaign.

But how do you actually include gamification into your Social-Fi campaign? Here are a couple of ideas:

Points System

Any Social-Fi campaign should include a form of points system to incentive users on actions within the campaign.

This points system can be tied into any ‘Quests’ – think carefully about how you want to reward different activities. For example, a referral is likely to be much more valuable for your project than a user simply liking a Tweet or joining your Telegram community. You can use your points system to incentive the actions that really matter to your project to get the most out of your campaign.

Be clear with users about the value of these points. Do they relate to the amount of tokens users will receive in your token airdrop? Exclusive access to a club/membership?

Referral Mechanics

Getting the referral mechanics right can make or break your Social-Fi campaign.

The compound effect of referral’s makes it one of the most powerful things that users can do to help increase the visibility of your project and campaign.

Because of this its crucial you get the mechanics right, consider:

• What rewards will users get for referring a user?
• What counts as a referral? There will always be users who try to ‘game’ the system, signing up fake accounts to try and reap the benefits.
• Can users enjoy more benefits the more users they refer? Is there a way to really incentivise these ‘Super Users’?
• Where do KOL/Influencers (Key Opinion Leaders) fit into your referral mechanics? They could be referring thousands to your platform in a single Tweet, think about if you need a different strategy to manage these users.

Leaderboards

Leaderboards allow you to bring a competitive nature to your campaign. Incentivise your userbase to compete and climb the leaderboard and you’ll have the fiery competition that you need to keep users coming back to your platform daily to track their position on the leaderboard.

To really supercharge your leaderboard, consider adding in tiers, so the user always has something to aim for.

Share regular updates on the leaderboard across your community on public channels, reminding users to come and check back in!

Consider what you want to rank your leaderboard by, you may want to reward users for different sorts of behaviour such as referrals or total points earned etc.

Finally make sure users know why they want to climb the leaderboard, how can they expect to be rewarded?

 

Ranks, Levels, Tiers

Everyone wants to level up… Creating some form of rank, level or tier structure can allow users to compete against each other for these statuses that they can flex in your community or on social media.

The idea is that users are motivated to earn more points within your ecosystem due to the new things that they can unlock!
This always gives users something to work towards while on your platform, so they can become the best of the best.

Consider ways in which you can incentive users and tie these elements into your community, for example:

• Could you have a dedicated area/channel in your community for the different ranks that users unlock?
• Could you give these users dedicated roles within your community so it’s part of their identity within your community?

Badges and Collector Cards

Collecting has long been a part of the Web3 space, even before the rise of NFTs.

Your Social-Fi campaign could capitalise on this love of collection through the introduction of badges and collector cards. Similar to ranks/levels, badges and collector cards can become a flex for users to show off in your community and across their socials.

Consider if these elements could even become NFTs that the user can mint after achieving a certain status within your campaign. This can help to create a lasting impression of your project in the users wallet that users will come back to.

Pump those socials

As a Web3 project your social channels will be one of your most important Marketing tools.

A well-executed Social-Fi campaign will allow you to generate strong engagement across all your social channels. This engagement doesn’t just have to be in the form of users liking a tweet, or joining a Discord server.

Think about ways you can get users really adding value to your community and social channels. For example, can you create some form of social quest that drives User Generated Content? We’ve seen projects that have incentivised users to even compose the best song about their project!

3) Incentives

You can cover all of the gamification features above, but without clear incentives for users to participate your campaign won’t gather the momentum it deserves.

First you need to think long term – what is the overall aim of the campaign? Examples of longer term incentives include:

• Airdrop Allocations: Distribute your project tokens based on the points users accumulate throughout their engagement with the platform. Users take part in your platform as they know the more they engage, the bigger airdrop they are likely to receive.
• Private/Presale Round: Allowing users to participate in an early round token sale, giving them early access to new tokens before release to the general public. Users take part in your platform as they believe they can make a good investment in your project at this early stage.

However you also need to consider more short term incentives, what is going to keep users coming back to your campaign every week or even day?

Daily Rewards: Can you implement a system where users need to come back everyday to participate in some form of activity or engagement? OnChain Summer (by Coinbase) allows users to spin the wheel every single day, allowing them the chance to earn up to $100 or the opportunity to pick up points in their campaign.

4) Timing

In the fast-paced Web3 environment, timing is crucial. Market sentiment can shift rapidly, creating a sense of urgency to launch at the optimal moment. Here’s how to leverage timing effectively:

• Market Readiness: Ensure your product is ready to launch whenever the market conditions are favourable. This means building when the market may not look great. This allows you the time you need to get the campaign right, the last thing you want to do is to start building when the market is in full swing and you should be capitalising on the engagement already.
• Product Readiness: During your Social-Fi campaign you should be building the foundations for your community. It’s crucial that you can drive all these users you’ve gathered into the next step for your project, that might be users signing up for the BETA of your product, purchasing your project token, or something else. Whatever it is, make sure you don’t lose those participants and convert them into true users of your product. To do this your product needs to be ready to go at the end of the campaign

5) Collaboration with the Right Partners

Our final tip for launching a successful Social-Fi campaign is to get the right partners onboard. Partners on your Social-Fi campaign should have done all this before and be able to offer a deeper level of knowledge to help you avoid falling into common pitfalls and fill the gaps you might have in your team.

• 🎨 Product Design Specialists: Speak to a Design Agency that has designed Social-Fi campaigns before and understands the importance of Gamification to keep users coming back to your platform. This combined with the visual identity of your platform will be what helps generate the initial excitement around your campaign.
• 💻 Development Teams: When it comes to development there are a few different elements to consider. To really make an impact with users, consider implementing animations on the front-end of your campaign. On the back-end, ensure you test your project in terms of your points and quests system. It’s crucial to consider the scaling of your product, it may work with the 50 users in your team, but will it work with 50,000? Your development team should be able to support you with this.
• 📣 Marketing Professionals: Effective marketing strategies are vital for reaching your target audience, creating awareness, and driving participation. This includes digital marketing, social media strategies, and content marketing.
• 🤳 Key Opinion Leaders (KOLs): Influencers and industry experts can amplify your message, reach a wider audience, and add credibility to your campaign. Collaborate with KOLs to promote your platform and engage with their followers.
• 📄 Legal Advisors: Ensuring compliance with regulations is essential, especially in the evolving landscape of Web3. Legal advisors help navigate the complexities of token launches, staking mechanisms, and user rewards.

By incorporating these tips and collaborating with the right partners, you can create a dynamic, engaging, and rewarding Social-Fi campaign that attracts users and fosters a loyal, active community.

Looking for help with your next Social-Fi campaign? Get in touch with our team to chat through your concept.