My amazing team and I just launched a site called Newconomy. On the surface, it’s a news site focusing on the new crypto-economy, with daily market reports on how cryptocoins are trending in the marketplace, how blockchain is being used to track the digital rights management of Sony’s creative assets, and all the people that drive the industry and the prices and market caps of the crypto-economy.
If You Build It, So What?
Marketing in 2018 isn’t as simple as having a Twitter and Facebook account. If you’re in tech, it probably also means having a reddit and Telegram channel as well. And, if you’re in the very competitive crypto news space, you’ll need to make certain you don’t end up just becoming a parrot or magpie of other people’s news and reporting. You’ll quickly need to develop your own strategy to get as close to your professional community of choice as possible. While Dan and I were able to get the ball rolling community-adjacent during the preparation of the site, before our soft launch on September 10, once we had a shiny, beautifully designed, and developed site provided by some of the most innovative and creative designers and developers I’ve been able to work with, we used Twitter and Facebook as a platform to get out there and personally introduce ourselves, person-by-person and project-by-project. A main reason to make that connection is to invite them into the fold and get them involved in the Newconomy community.
Interviews are an Excellent Way of Introduction
We’ve been doing a lot of video interviews in support of this. No, we haven’t been pimping ourselves and our expertise to be interviewed by others, we have been inviting as many interesting people in the space to participate in either one-on-one video interviews or video panel discussions. One of the best things about video interviews is because you can extend your publication’s reach from just the world of Google textual search to the second most important search engine on planet earth (sorry Bing): YouTube. Cross-pollinating content onto YouTube while still publishing these video interviews on the Newconomy site with supporting notes, quotes, background information, bios, company and project profiles, and linking, and extend the value, access, and lifespan of the article well past the churn that happens when your site publishes over ten articles-per-day.
Don’t Just Sit Back, Get Involved!
One of the most important aspects of interviewing and covering the most important people in the fintech, cryptocurrency, and blockchain space–aside from offering amazing content to the readers of Newconomy–is that highly-influential people associated with world-changing projects are either people with tens or hundreds of thousands of followers and a very loud bullhorn; or, equally valuable, the person you interview could very well be an influencer of influencers.
Interviewees Will Become Your Promoters
Either way, if you write a good article and if you really get them, their project, and what they’re about, then they’ll probably share their–your–interview with everyone around them. Bonus, they might even share the interview in the media/clippings section of their personal and professional website and maybe even on their LinkedIn profile. Building trust and reputation this way–instead of being just a link-building aggregation bottom-feeder–does take a lot of work but is totally worth it.
Being a Publication is Only the Start
The next step in the Newconomy is the community. The Newconomy site is actually designed to be a cryptobank. Every member of the Newconomy website is given their own crypto wallet. And each member–including writers and readers and contributors–can earn fractional Bitcoin, called Satoshis, which they can use to tip other members of the site or buy things like tickets to one of our future conferences or training modules or classes or any of the other value-added things that we’re planning to add to what Newconomy offers.
Origin Story
I hope you’ve noticed that I’ve cut my hours down here at Biznology to once-a-month. I’ve been super-busy as Gerr.is has been contracted full-time to prepare, launch, manage, and maintain. Along with my business partner, Dan Krueger, we took on and launched Newconomy on September 10 with 50 articles. I wrote the first-50 from August 10-September 10. We now have a team of writers and we publish upwards of 10 articles-per-weekday and 4 articles on weekend days.
Much More than a Newspaper
Newconomy is also a cryptobank and an online community for people who span from beginner to industry expert in their shared interest in financial tech (fintech), blockchain, cryptocurrencies, cryptobanking, and the future of business–and not only crypto but how platforms like decentralized autonomous organizations (DAO) could change business forever, removing middle managers, lawyers, and managers in the same way Bitcoin has been able to foil borders, banks, and brokers but decentralizing and disintermediating money.
