Biji
Over 800 subscribers
In our last article we shared tools that help you identify your Minimum Viable Audience on Farcaster faster.
By now you have decided that it's time for your brand to join the party on web3's new playground. But which setup should you choose?
In this article you will learn how you can set up your brand using the Farcaster Brand Triangle, consisting of personal profiles, brand profiles and brand channels. Depending on which type of brand you are we will find the right setup for you.
Let’s cover the basics.
You and your team need personal profiles. Farcaster is 100% about people. Ironically, that makes it an amazing place for your brand, especially if you are small. Treat your personal profiles as vanguards that smooth the way for your brand. Your personal profiles can experiment, engage in conversations that matter to you, build a small following and plug your brand once in a while. All without having to craft anything official from your brand. That means the easiest setup to get started is really just having a personal profile that sometimes mentions your brand.
While the people-first dynamics on Farcaster are friendly to small brands, they make your life even easier if you work for a bigger web3 brand. If you are lucky enough to be able to add one of the established names to your profile description, do it and you will get more followers fast.
Claim your brand handle. But don't start firing off announcements just yet. Even though brand profiles are technically the same as personal profiles, they don't do well on their own.
Brand profiles grow best in patches surrounded by team members and channels.
Channels and personal profiles generate the awareness and social credibility your brand needs. That's why I don't recommend a brand-only setup. When I see a brand account I will immediately try to figure out who the people behind the brand are. Connecting with people is the opportunity on Farcaster. In my view if you show up with a brand-only profile you leave too much value on the table.
Channels are like subs on Reddit. They are places for communities to nerd about topics in all forms and sizes, as in the Founders channel with 106k followers, or my Disco channel with 9 precious followers (you know what to do).
The common strategy is to use brand channels as community townhalls. Here, everything comes together: insights from the team, questions from the community, love from users, and announcements from the brand. Just like in our herocast channel (you know what to do).
Another strategy which I think is a huge opportunity is hosting channels about topics that are related to your product. Building a solution for universal basic income (UBI)? Host an UBI channel. I haven't seen brands doing that yet (ping me if you have) but I think this strategy will be big.
Now that we have covered the basics let's find the right setup for you.
Personal profile + brand channel is the go-to solution for community brands to get started without much overhead.
If you want to grow community for your web3 product but have little resources to craft brand content, this setup will give you the best ROI. You have a community. You want to nurture fans. You want them to interact? You need a channel.
Claim your brand profile but there is no pressing need to post content from it yet. Instead, use your team's personal profiles to post and share content in your channel. In fact, some of the bigger web3 brands that are still early on Farcaster follow this strategy.
Brave shows how to start small with a brand on Farcaster. They have one early adopter lukaslevert.eth on the team managing the channel and no official Brave content. You can imagine Lukas having many things to take care of in his position as a product marketer. So this setup is a great way to warm up Farcaster for them.
Another example is Polygon. They have dabbled with a brand profile months ago. Even though the brand profile is inactive at the moment, team member pgpg.eth is hosting a channel that is ready for the community to pick up conversations about Polygon anytime. Channels allow your community to grow without you having to do all the heavy lifting.
Personal profile + brand profile + brand channel is the ultimate choice if you need community and have a strategy to create brand content.
A great example is the Optimism channel. Personal profiles from team members like binji.eth or amandatyler drive traffic to the channel and add a personal touch. Fuelled by this momentum it feels natural and smooth to mix in official announcements from the Optimism brand profile.
Right, you are not Optimism. But this setup works like a charm for smaller players, too. As long as you stick to a simple plan. Check out survey app Ponder's channel with 1.1k followers. The majority of the content are (automated) product updates. At the same time the channel creates room for the founders cojo.eth and ba to join the conversation and for developers to raise questions. Low effort, max impact.
This setup promises the biggest rewards for your brand. Especially, if you are already creating content for other platforms that you can reuse for your brand profile on Farcaster.
Personal profile + brand profile is the right choice for brands whose marketing is less community driven.
You want to interact with your audience but have no need to gather them in one place? Don't waste time with a channel. Instead combine a personal with a brand profile. A great example is Fred Wilson from Union Square Ventures. He posts his personal content and sometimes plugs the USV's brand profile to give it some reach.
Other broadcasters that will benefit from this setup are news pages: Share news via the brand profile, then add personal touches via the journalists' profiles. A counter example is Decrypt. They do have a channel, but the Decrypt brand profile is the only one posting there. No community around. I'd argue that in such a case it might be worth to reconsider the channel strategy and to invest in personal profiles from their journalists instead.
Finally I want to highlight a danger zone: personal channels. Not a danger in a way that it will harm your brand but more in a way that you will sink time that you need somewhere else. There are great personal channels, like the july channel.
However, this is a difficult piece of art. First, one key is to already have a big following. July has 100k followers, the channel has 7.7k. Secondly, the channel's purpose has to resonate with others. The July channel purpose is to share "musings, thoughts & dreams". No doubt, personal channels can be a big boost for your personal brand but if you are a busy founder, marketer or community manager I recommend to go for one of the setups within the Farcaster Brand Triangle.
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Did these insights help you choose and optimize your setup? If you have feedback, questions or want to discuss your Farcaster strategy let's have a virtual ☕.
Are you a dev? Herocast is open source. Get in touch with hellno to learn how you can contribute.
– Biji
