I’ve said this to all projects I’ve worked with and I’m going to say it again: regional community = loyal community. Of course, you don’t need a regional community for a language spoken only by a few million people who’re probably not into crypto (for now, at least), but you do need regional communities for Spanish, Mandarin, Korean, Japanese, Indonesian, Hindi, French, Russian, and Turkish, and in time, you need to expand to other languages too. 

Why? It’s not only because of the language barrier, but some nations have deep crypto communities and the international news we all read doesn’t always pass through the local filter. 

Setting up a regional community

Yes, yes, we all wish it’d be as easy as just adding a new language channel to your Discord. It isn’t, though. To break through a community you’ll need support on the ground, and that support is usually obtained through influencers, crypto academies, and local news. 

Each big region has 2-5 influencers with a lot of weight. If you start stalking them on Twitter, you might even notice they get significantly more engagement than leading projects or international KOLs. And in comparison, it’s oftentimes organic. Remember, I taught you how to pick influencers, so do apply these lessons when making your lists, and always check them twice! 

The leading regional influencers generally won’t charge a fee to post about you. Heck, if you target them well, they might post threads about you before a one-on-one conversation ever takes place. Reason is that they’re always on the look-out for juicy alpha that they could share to their communities, but of course, relying on the idea that they’ll organically post about you isn’t wise. You’ll have to reach out to them. 

Follow-up to our influencer piece discussing how to do outreach coming soonish. 

Once you get your favorite foreign heavyweight to start shilling your project, you’re in for an abundance of new users on your public channels. You’ll have to help them feel welcome, so by all means, don’t start banning people for asking questions in their native language on the English groups. I’ve seen CMs do that before thinking it was spam, or simply deleting the message and responding ‘we only chat in english here’. Doing that defeats the purpose. You’ll have to go out of your way to guide them to your regional group that’s moderated by a native speaker (ideally grab that native CM before influencers start talking about you so you’re ready). As you start trending in a new regional community, lots of peeps will offer to moderate for you - so test and hire if you don’t already have someone.

Btw, when English proves to be a real barrier, you might even need to respond in the same language before you have a mod. Google Translate is your fren. 

So you’ve got a regional community - what now? 

From now on, because you have regional communities, if big enough, your content should also serve them. Sure, you don’t need to translate every piece of content you put out, but you should translate your important announcements, and have product tutorials in their native language. Never underestimate the purchasing power and support you’d get from an engaged regional community. In fact, they’ll oftentimes start talking about your project to their friends, creating a butterfly effect that leads to even more organic coverage by influencers, tags on social media, and much more. 

If treated right, regional communities grow single handedly and you won’t need to spend too much of your time attempting user acquisition in regions where the avalanche has started. 

But you still need to play ball. Here’s how: 

• Do at least 1-2 AMAs with the largest influencers/academies
• Translate your stuff in their language and get at least one mod onboard
• Consider a pooled private sale if you’re pre-token to incentivise long-term support
• Pop up in the channel yourself, as a founder/marketing lead. Don’t let the mod be the only point of contact
• Check chats for sentiment - it can change rather rapidly, and you also want to be there to check if the mod is aligned with your interests
• Answer DMs when regional community members reach out - word spreads fast. If you’re unresponsive, interest is lost
• Consider offering your largest regional communities access to your beta product - you get valuable feedback this way
• If you’re flying out to a conference, bringing the gang, and have an active community in that country, host a side event. 

Got it? Good. Now apply yourself. Oh, also hire us and stuff for best-in-class content writing, design, publishing, website building, UI/UX, and more, which are absolute prerequisites to building a regional community.