Op-Ed: Bear market goals should focus on keeping your community engaged and informed, being a beacon for support and relationships.
Crypto is no stranger to bear markets; the last few years have seen significant drawdown in valuations in this relatively new industry. Experienced web3 builders expect and sometimes even welcome bear markets, as they have the ability to “trim the fat” of the ecosystem and return attention from hyped use cases to core fundamentals.
For many communities, however, bear markets are tough periods of disillusionment and slowed growth. It’s easy to give into this disillusion, but it’s also vital to recognize just how powerful a tokenized community can be in these periods in terms of support, knowledge-sharing and positivity. Here are five strategies to help communities thrive, especially during a bear market.
1. Roll Out a Content Calendar. Communities respond to consistency. Following the energy of a bull market, the crash can feel severe and discouraging to community members. A consistent content calendar provides the community with regular events, meetings and discussions to look forward to. This calendar should be carefully planned to provide a good balance of education, announcements, entertainment and community-building activities to attract various personas of community members. Depending on your project, these events can include developer office hours, safety and security talks, community feedback sessions, AMAs, sessions with external experts, and trending web3 topics.
2. Involve Members. People join communities for a variety of reasons, but they typically stay in them because they’ve found connection and alignment. During a bear market, it’s more important than ever to create experiences for members to mix and mingle. Whether it’s learning opportunities, multi-player games or open forums, testing out a variety of ways for individuals to build connections can help strengthen your community. Consider quizzes, contests and games that are managed within Discord and provide members with rewards (like POAPs) and points based on participation and success.
3. Grow Community-Born Leaders. There are some better strategies for growing strong communities like identifying, training and growing leaders from within. Community-born leaders have a special sense of insight into the community, and often hold a unique reputation among the rest of the members. Additionally, by involving members in leadership, the project gains valuable insight into what the community needs and wants. Bear markets are especially strong times to elevate these leaders, because you know who has stuck around through thick and thin.
4. Help Build Reputation. Bear markets are opportunities to identify your most loyal community members and provide them with additional value. There are many ways to do this, including tipping, NFT badges, Discord roles and verifiable credentials. These acknowledgements create a positive environment where community members know that their contributions are appreciated, and most importantly shareable. This type of relationship between community members and protocol is core to web3, and allows those individuals to ‘take’ their reputation with them.
5. Maintain a Positive Environment. It’s common to feel down in the bear market, but communities can be the wellsprings of positivity. Light-hearted activities and a collaborative communication style can go a long way in enhancing morale. Enjoyable events like meetups, game nights, and meme contests give your community a way to decompress and enjoy each others’ company and spread good vibes.
Your goals during a bear market won’t look exactly like your goals during a bull market. Bear market goals should focus on keeping your community engaged and informed, being a beacon for support and relationships. Remember that a strong community can weather the storm, while preparing for the next bull market.
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Collab.Land is a full-service automated member management system for tokenized communities. Community admins and creators set up conditions for membership and Collab.Land verifies that members meet and maintain those conditions. In 2023, Collab.Land became a community-governed DAO and launched a mini app marketplace where communities can customize their members' experiences with a variety of web3 tools.
The company is widely recognized as the creator of token gating and has been safely serving web3 communities for three years, with more than eight million wallet connections and is used by more than 50,000 active communities across Discord, Telegram, and token-gated websites.
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Anjali Young is the Co-Founder of Collab.Land, an automated member management system for tokenized communities. Over 50,000 projects use Collab.Land as their primary tool for community management including Adidas, World of Women, Pudgy Penguins, Doodles, BankLessDAO, and more. Anjali has a 30+ year history with online communities as a creator, member, and in leadership. She has also worked as a lawyer, adjunct professor, and early tech startup employee. In addition to her interest in community and web3 onboarding, she has a passion for NFTs and the artists who create them. Anjali is one of only a handful of web3 leaders to have received recognition from Salesforce, and is listed as one of its Web3 Advisory Board Members. She also co-produced the very first documentary series focused on web3 communities, called Let’s Form Group.
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