Web3 Community Hacks

I won’t start with the usual guides and instructions on how to build a community in general—there are countless articles and books for that. One of the most productive ones is Unfair Mindshare: A CMO's Guide to Community-Led Marketing in a Product-Led World, which provides an excellent breakdown of community building.

Instead, I’ll focus on unique approaches for WEB3:

1. Working with KOLs

KOLs in Web3/crypto and KOLs in traditional markets are two completely different stories.

• Anonymity: You never know who you’re actually dealing with.
• Audience verification: It’s not easy to figure out whether their followers are real or just bots.

Here are some tools to help with that:

1. Botometer
2. FollowerAudit
3. TwitterAudit
4. FakeFollowers by Socialbakers
5. TweetScout
6. SocialAuditor
7. Inbeat Fake Follower Checker
8. LiveDune

From my experience, I’ve frequently used tools 1 and 8. These tools have helped me avoid situations where a marketing budget would’ve been wasted.

Another way to check a KOL’s account is by analyzing their followers—look for accounts you trust that are also following them.

• There are closed influencer groups where they discuss projects and connect. How do you get into these groups? Through influencer-ambassadors. Bring established influencers onto your team—they can advise you, validate other KOLs, and help you connect to the right people for your marketing campaigns.

This structured approach has saved me time, budget, and ensured more effective results when working with KOLs in Web3.

How to Build an Influencer List for Getting Started

• Start by checking out the accounts of established, well-known companies in the market.
• Then, go to their Affiliates section on X (Twitter).
• Pull the list of influencers who already have that company’s badge.

Why this works:

1. The validation has already been done for you—you can trust these influencers are legitimate and worth collaborating with.
2. Once an influencer accepts a badge from a company, they can’t remove it themselves. Only the issuing company has the authority to revoke it.

This saves you time and ensures you’re working with verified individuals.

2. Engagement & New Followers

• Use platforms like Zealy to host interactive campaigns. This platform gets over 2.2M monthly traffic from a crypto-Web3 audience—these are all your potential followers.
• Partner with other related projects to run collaborative quests and contests on activity management platforms. Here’s a list of platforms that can help you host quests and generate leads and followers: QuestN, Zealy, Galxe, TaskOn, and others.
• Keep the volume of contests, activities, and quests very high—create new ones daily!

This strategy ensures constant engagement and steady growth of your community.

3. Promotion via Chatters

Chatters are the people who create engagement within your community. The average cost for chatters is around $300 per week for a team of 10. You won’t need to spend time searching for them—once you launch your project, your DMs will be flooded with offers.

4. Promotion via Shillers

Shillers are “agents” or specialists who spread your posts across the market. They leave comments under posts from competitors, experts, influencers, and key players in the space.

The cost for shillers is similar to chatters. In fact, chatters and shillers are often part of the same team, performing both roles.

This dual approach ensures that your project gets both engagement within your community and wider visibility across the market.

Negative Scenarios

When your community is filled only with chatters, and all conversations boil down to “GM folks,” it’s a red flag.

Here’s how to avoid this:

• Create clear and structured content plans.
• Stay on top of market trends—newsjacking is one of the best ways to stay relevant, attract new audiences, and keep your existing community engaged.

Community building is just one part of your marketing strategy. Start with the bigger picture: research, analysis, and building your overall marketing strategy. Only then should you move on to crafting your community strategy.