How to use Airdrops to promote community engagement

You might have heard about the buzz regarding “Airdrops” lately. Airdropping has recently become one of the most popular methods of marketing and promotion for companies and communities all around the world. Popular  NFT Marketplaces and enterprises often tend to randomly drop massive amounts of NFTs and cryptos for free. 

But why do they do this when they can easily list them up in NFT Stores for sale?  How can you, as a community manager, utilize Airdropping to increase community engagement and promote your community? Worry not! Today we will cover up all bits and pieces related to Airdropping and how you can leverage it for your benefit.

So, what are Airdrops exactly?

If explained technically, an Airdrop translates to the process of mass distribution of digital tokens such as NFTs and cryptocurrencies to innumerable wallet addresses. This is primarily done to gain attention, spread name and in the hope to increase the size of the existing user base. Seems complicated? Let me break it down for you. Think of Airdropping as giveaways, except this is done wallet-to-wallet and involves NFTs and crypto coins instead of gifts. Artists, NFT Marketplaces, and upcoming NFT projects randomly do so to gain fans and increase engagement among their communities.

I heard there are many types of Airdrops. Is this true?

Yes, you heard it right.  But, to put it simply, there are two basic ways in which airdrops are carried out within the crypto space. Let us go through them in detail.

Cryptocurrency Airdrops

Cryptocurrency airdrops are basically free coins dropped directly into user wallets. But, first of all, why would anyone give away free coins?!?  Well, there are a few reasons….. 

• First and foremost it’s a marketing technique. Free coin giveaways are an excellent method to increase visibility and enthusiasm for any crypto-related project. Is there anything that gets people more excited than free money? We certainly can’t think of anything. 
• Not to mention, new coins with low value can suddenly see huge price swings based on the market sentiment. If thousands of enthusiastic users start raving about the coin and lobbying for it to spread on different platforms, the coin’s valuation might easily offset the cost of offering some away for free. Additionally, the method may be used to collect relevant info about prospective users. Some airdrops will have users fill out a form with their email address or some might require users to follow on Twitter. 
• The airdrop essentially becomes a way of capturing email addresses or info regarding social presence of users. All that is required is that the users have already set up cryptocurrency wallets. These wallets require to have at least some amount of cryptocurrency available in them, also known as base tokens. It can be Bitcoin, EOS, or Ethereum, or all! The more a user surfs the crypto sphere the better are his chances to find airdrops.

That’s all there is to cryptocurrency airdrops! Now coming to the next form of the airdrop.

NFT Airdrops

It’s the same! You just need to replace crypto coins with NFTs from the above discussion. But yes, gaining community engagement and user traction is harder in this case. More so, when users nowadays are getting random NFT drops from here and there. But airdropping free NFTs have been in trend now for most of them popular NFT creators, distributors, and Marketplaces. 

We metaphrase NFT Airdropping as “igniting the fuse”, before the NFT project “booms”!!

Some examples of the biggest free NFT Airdrops this year were:

• Rarible’s weekly airdrop of 75,000 tokens
• MOBOX NFT Airdrop ($1 mil worth) and likewise many previous NFT Airdrops on Binance
• PancakeSwap limited-edition 3D animated NFT airdrops
• BNBBunnies NFT Airdrop
• LOTTO Token Airdrop
• DC Comics NFT Airdrop, and millions of likewise airdrops.

How can community managers leverage through Airdrops?

Simple. Start Airdropping within your respective communities! Gather the wallet IDs of your community members, collect their email addresses, let them engage in limited Airdrop events within community channels like Discord and Telegram. Spread the name!

Once users start earning from their freely acquired NFTs, they will automatically start to engage among community events and promote your project, business, service. You just need to make sure that you are not crossing the line between promoting and pushing your NFTs. Overdropping may subsequently lead to loss of interest of users over the respective NFT project and ultimately, the community. Offer them something that will hopefully earn them profits in the future. Here are a few things that you might consider in addition to airdrops to increase community engagement.

• AMAs sessions-  “Ask-Me-Anything” sessions, where community managers answer all of the questions and queries of the community members. This helps increase the loyalty aspect of the community.
• Intra community events and giveaways- Community managers can organize events and giveaways amidst the communities (Reddit, Discord, and Telegram). This highly increases engagement and interaction among community members.
• Pre-launching airdrops for more hype- Imagine you get a ticket to your favourite movie before it even launches in your nearby theaters! How exciting will it be!! Community managers can also create hype regarding new NFT projects and launches by predropping tokens before its scheduled release.

Key Takeaway

Airdropping is a viable option for digital marketing. It is nothing more than a marketing tactic. It is up to the community managers to carry out their marketing and promotional obligations efficiently. That, in itself, seems to be the key to community engagement promotion and growth.