New PR Rules for Web3 with Samantha Yap

all right good morning everyone thanks so much for coming out to my talk I know uh some of you might have been out at parties last night so it's great to see you guys here it's already 10 20. um I'm Samantha I'm the founder of Yap Global we're a PR agency that specializes in helping crypto and web free companies tell their stories and today I'm going to be talking to you about the new PR rules for web3 today after this talk you will walk away with five key tips on how you can up your PR game and raise more awareness about your project or your team's project and so I'm excited to get straight into the rules that I'll share today before I begin let me share a little bit more about Yap Global so our mission is to be the bridge between quality journalism and emerging crypto and web3 organizations I used to be a journalist before founding Yap Global five years ago and I'd like to say that Yap Global is a combination of my passion for crypto and storytelling with um the the five years of growing Yap Global I've seen so many different protocols and projects that have started and grew and now have large marketing and and PR teams and so it's really rewarding and exciting to see all the all the projects that we've supported um across the few years and so yeah through this I'll be sharing the lessons that we've learned along the way the vision behind Yak Global is a media landscape shaped by trustworthy and meaningful narratives which make sense of crypto web free technology so that's just a little bit about what we want the media landscape in the world to look like with yeah global we're a team of crypto translators I know we're all here at ethereum Denver but crypto and web3 does need some translation especially to to mainstream journalists if we want more people to onboard onto this industry we need to be able to communicate what people do we're also Global PR strategists so we've got a team across the world I'm headquartered in London but we've got team in South Africa I've got Layla over here from Yap level and we've also got team in the US in Singapore and in Malaysia were also storytellers uh that's very important part about tpr it's all about the story and and and how you pitch and angle your story um and there's so many ways to spin a story so it's really important uh skill and uh we like to think we're crypto Savvy because we spend every day keeping up with what's happening um what's being developed and also just being at the conference here just seeing all the tech and all the development happening even in the midst of a crypto bear Market which is super exciting to see so let's get straight into it rule number one know the difference between marketing PR and Community Building it's actually amazing how many people just mold everything together and think that it's you know it's just one big marketing operation there's actually different purposes and nuances to each part of the the marketing function of a team but today I'm going to be focusing a lot more on the pr side because PR is um a lot of it is being strategic with your messaging and also earning your coverage with marketing there's a lot more um that you can control especially you know the design if you're putting a blog post out or or Twitter thread or a social media content you can control that but with PR a lot of it is educating journalists about what you're doing and also positioning the story at the right time and in the right way as well so um I think Richard Branson said this that a um a front page story a front page story uh in in a in a newspaper is far more valuable than than an ad um so yeah PR is having to earn um your way into a media publication and it's it's often more effective in building trust and credibility for your brand and then in web 3 there's another element there's a community building side so if you think about it Amazon web service or Facebook never had to um appease a community of token holders when they were building and they they grew their organizations but today dials like ens get coin even Lido they have token holders that they would need to communicate to as well and that's the extra Dimension to web 3 that we need to Grapple with and and and gain skills to make sure that we're communicating to them as well and engaging them when working on a full marketing you know function of an organization so I want to go through two examples so here's an example of a Lido V2 upgrade announcement um so you can see um on the on the left there's the marketing materials again as I share this is what you can control this is the design the graphics all that is is all all well and good but it's the pr that's you know the most effective way of telling your story educating people about what you know your new upgrade entails for them and also um yeah it's a way to raise awareness in in in in the most trustworthy way because people do read coindesk you know the Block it's a fight for example to get their information and get their up-to-date news on what's Happening and then there's a community building aspect so there's you know this is in the can be in the form of community calls as well as events another example that we've helped is gnosis safe's Rebrand again on the left you see the um you know the the design the graphics of the whole Rebrand um but then in the middle it's the pr so it's it's making sure that you're we're finding the right journalists that that care about this story that um think it's really important that they share it with their audience and making sure that they um cover you know this strategic fundraise as well as a Rebrand um and again it builds trust and credibility for your brand um and then the community building side which is you know your community calls um you know and this is a dashboard for the community and that's another way of engaging the community so that's rule number one rule number two keep up with crypto Twitter so I think crypto Twitter is a a dimension to the crypto and web3 World um that's actually very impactful and influential when it comes to PR a lot of journalists do spot the Trends they find Scoops they find stories just by you know scrolling through Twitter and I think it's really important that Twitter you know it's still an effective Tool uh in in finding out what's what's the top story of the day um even of the hour because maybe there's you know a story that's been tipped off or a rumor that's been tipped off um and you know that's where journalists really start to investigate you know what's going on um but Twitter is also a really good tool to engage your community so I like to use I like to share this example of ens's endowment voting um period so we work with ens labs and so it was really fascinating to to watch this unfold on crypto Twitter and see it impact um you know PR coverage about this vote so um I started with an announcement uh often you know because people who are a part of these Dao sometimes there's they're voting for so many different proposals it's often hard to get everyone's attention so Twitter has become kind of a tool and I like to say also um in the you know more of the D5 trading World um crypto Twitter is kind of like a live Bloomberg chat room that is public for everyone to see so what's on there is quite influential so let me let me explain why so here's here's a vote that started um Nick Johnson the founder of ens uh you know tweeted about this there was a Twitter spaces explaining you know the details of this vote and that got um everyone's attention even myself I didn't really know that the vote was going on until I saw this tweet um and then there's also engagement for more input so here's a example of a tweet from Griff green who was saying hey look 50 million dollars of Treasury is at stake here let's get on Twitter spaces and and chat more about you know what's what's the best vote and and and who's the best asset manager to manage ems's Treasury and then finally when the vote finished updates were shared on Twitter and then it was covered by coindesk and it was a great overview so here's an example of how crypto Twitter can influence um your story rule number three understand the media landscape so not all media are the same and sometimes you have to think about why you want to get coverage in a certain media publication sometimes we get ambitious clients that want to get on you know Financial Times or they want to get on Wall Street Journal but we always tell them it's important to be careful what you wish for um right now it's probably not a good idea to want to get on the Wall Street Journal you don't want to be investigated I mean regulation is a a hot you know crypto regulation is a Hot Topic and a trend right now and you do not want to be in the eyes of regulators if if you know perhaps you want to just play it safe and so you have to understand and and know why you want to be in a certain media publication um the the added element to web3 is obviously the crypto the crypto section and also the conferences which is for example here where it at ethereum Denver there's there's panel discussions there's forums where um there's uh topics and and discussions being had and so this is also a great form uh and and more Niche towards the web 3 and crypto industry so um yeah that's something to know and also when when thinking about communicating to um these different media Publications they also operate differently and they're also interested in different types of stories for example in the tech press uh let's take TechCrunch techcrunches mainly interested if there's a fundraise and there's a large figure or there's key investors but perhaps they're not going to get into the nitty-gritty details of ZK Tech yet um so it's just something to know the nuances of what each media publication focuses on and then to add another layer to that and what we we do is is we engage with the journalists it's just knowing in each in within each crypto public well within each publication whether it's crypto or business or mainstream there are also different beats and so it's even it gets even more niche in crypto because you know there could be a a protocol beat that could be um you know zero knowledge or regulation and uh it's important to know which journalists that you you want to pitch to rule number four is know your audience and tailor your message to them so there there are multiple different stakeholders that crypto and web3 Founders need to communicate to number one there are token holders or their Community number two they're investors um and perhaps also their Partners especially if they're working with um yeah other protocols other businesses and so you have to understand what message you you have to you know pinpoint what message you want to send what your business objectives are and then tailor your message around that um again just a continuation of knowing the media landscape and understanding different media organizations I thought I'd pull out an example of how Bitcoin has been communicated across three different type of media Publications so top one is um you know a New York Times piece that that that covered um you know what's happening in crypto at the moment they describe Bitcoin as a platform that promises on its website to build and fund open web together wired explains Bitcoin as a platform for funding open source web3 projects that have raised and distributed roughly 60 million so far and get coin sorry and coindesk um explains get coin is a crowdfunding platform for open source software so you can see there there's distinct nuances with how New York Times wired and coindesk communicates um get coin um I think wire does the best out of all this because they really do dig deep into the tech and try to understand what they're writing about but it just also shows you that depending on the journalists you're speaking to and the media publication they're going to have a different way of interpreting what you do and so it's important that you know your message and you're able to translate what you're developing for for them so again know your audience and tailor a message to them and final rule is avoid the technical jargon uh so that's a continuation of that last rule so um I like this example of you know I heard that the the Reddit collectible avatars are doing really well and actually the avatars are technically nfts but when you when Reddit announced uh this new initiative and and this drop uh they actually didn't even use the word nfts to explain it uh and actually that was the most effective in communicating what it actually is for the community so um again I think it in I mean we're here there's we've just come off the back of a a big week of building uh I think we're we're all having conversations with one another about tech and and what we're what we're building and it's very easy to get bogged down in in the tech and and and what we're we want to um build but for PR for journalists they they don't need to know all the details and so it's important to make sure that you're leaving out some of the jargon maybe it might do a better job at you know communicating to a wider audience what you're trying to do and so yeah those are the five rules rule number one know the difference between marketing and PR Community Building rule number two keep up with crypto Twitter rule number three understand the media landscape rule number four know your audience and tailor a message to them and rule number five avoid technical jargon I hope that this is helpful to you feel free to take a picture um and hopefully you can up your PR game after this and just another slide to show what success looks like you know I I picked out some of the stories that you know we've worked on as a team This was um these are pieces from Ethan for last year and The Time Magazine front cover story of vitalik was super encouraging for our whole industry and um yeah this is what success looks like and hopefully this can be um these uh pieces of coverage could feature your project and and you as well so thank you so much um here's just an overview of some of the partners we work with um there I I host a podcast uh called yavcast and we're doing a series on the story of money and so feel free to scan and subscribe and every week my team put out a newsletter that covers uh three the three top stories of crypto in that week it's very important to know uh what's top of mind for journalists so you can leverage and capitalize on it when you're you know pushing out your announcements or your your your products and so um hopefully the context will help you keep up and then feel free to follow me on Twitter and my team as well thank you