TL;DR : Social Media metrics (everything is up!), prepping for the Aurora Launch in early May, many ad campaigns (Coindesk! Unchained! The Pomp Podcast!), many partnership campaigns, more events added (33+), and sneak peek at new branding for Aurora and the Nearkats.
Supporting Creators and Communities Economy*: This is everything related to creation (NFTs, collectibles, gaming, virtual worlds, community tokens, etc) and the associated economic activity.
Open Finance: The financial layer that powers the creator economy and brings financial tools to consumers.
Open Web: powering web2-style platforms with blockchain in a hidden-blockchain way. Users interface with the login/identity but shielded from blockchain for the rest.
Progress made this week:
Wachsman PR has drafted narratives, communication plans, and outlined a list of targeted influencers that align with our initiatives.
Ads buys have been secured for April - July.
A Microsite for Creators and Communities has kicked off.
New branding has begun around a few products within Open Finance.
SEO campaigns in process for launch with Aurora.
Copy Library being created across NEAR’s ecosystem - programs, partners, and products.
Some of the new DeFi dapps on the network (Pulse, ref.finance) should be considered high priorities and would be worth amplifying across channels in coming weeks too.
A number of people are concerned about the Telegram. Appears to be a lot of paid FUDsters derailing conversation and hugely detracting from its usefulness as one of the entry points to the NEAR ecosystem.
Although telegram has lots of problems, like it or not it’s a key portal and the management of the channel right now is not presenting a very good face, and leaves a bad impression for all audiences.
Suggest we need more community members empowered with the ban hammer to address bad faith actors in the channel. Bots can also be used to help manage the conversation while easing the moderation load. I think the AVAX channel is an example of good practices here.
I don’t know who is in charge of telegram management! But I have the same opinion as you, the management level of Telegram is extremely low, and the management is annoying. A long time ago, they replied that discord is the focus of NEAR’s work. But take a look, discord is not used by anyone. The role of telegram is irreplaceable!
I hear you. I’ve taken the request to the Community Lead and we are discussing it today to see what kind of support is needed. Thanks for all the feedback.
Hi @Ragingbunyip and @victor, thank you so much for your comments! We are planning to reorganize our telegram group, giving back the ownership to the community members and organize more events/ activities there. Would love to have more involvement and contributions from active members like you both as well. Could you please ping me @eunicecyl on telegram and we can discuss further?
Big fan of the exploration happening with the NEARkat in particular. One thing I think we have failed to come to terms with in the past is that due to the fact that a meerkat is not a creature that most people are familiar with, it’s almost impossible to successfully depict one in a simplified form and to expect people to recognize it. We’ve attempted in the past to try and stay “true” to what a real meerkat looks like, but this is futile. Most people can’t even identify one from a photograph.
So, why not embrace this? Mascots have so much potential to be fun, whimsical, and applicable in many different ways. By breaking away from the need to be “true” to life, we free ourselves to be more creative. This is exactly what Simon is doing here, and I’m all for it. Who cares if no one knows what it is? It’s a NEARkat! It can be pink, or blue. It can have wild and strange proportions, and it doesn’t matter! What matters is not that it is true to a particular reference, but that it resonates with the audience, and can be easily modified, remixed, and applied in lots of different ways as the brand evolves over years to come. What matters is that it is “own-able” by the brand and by the community.
GREAT feedback. Simon has been iterating and collaborating with the working group and it’s super fun to see all the many ideas he has had for the NEARkat. Thanks!
Hi @Dacha and @vera I head up the Marketing Team at NEAR. I wanted to give some perspective on your feedback. NEAR is seeing record growth across all social media channels, the NEAR website, number of new accounts (120k this month) and engagement with NEAR dAPPs.
The Marketing Team and Community Team both engage daily and work alongside NEAR’s ecosystem at all levels. We’re currently running 10+ partnerships within the ecosystem and have quite a few working groups that include community members & partners. Note: The Marketing Team is just 4 people and do A LOT. We have 5 open positions on our team because we are growing so fast.
NEAR Foundation cannot legally discuss new listings with exchanges.There is a hard line for what the NEAR Foundation Marketing Team does/doesn’t do. I gave a 40 minute talk on this in Feb.
We are open to feedback but my ask to you is to be very specific on exactly what you mean when you say we aren’t working with community, don’t give information, and don’t discuss collaborations. I’m happy to work to make improvements but request actionable feedback.
TL;DR : Social Media metrics (everything is up!), prepping for the Aurora Launch in early May, many ad campaigns (Coindesk! Unchained! The Pomp Podcast!), many partnership campaigns, more events added (33+), and sneak peek at new branding for Aurora and the Nearkats.
Supporting Creators and Communities Economy*: This is everything related to creation (NFTs, collectibles, gaming, virtual worlds, community tokens, etc) and the associated economic activity.
Open Finance: The financial layer that powers the creator economy and brings financial tools to consumers.
Open Web: powering web2-style platforms with blockchain in a hidden-blockchain way. Users interface with the login/identity but shielded from blockchain for the rest.
Progress made this week:
Simon has been iterating and collaborating with the working group and it’s super fun to see all the many ideas he has had for the NEARkat. Thanks!
We have 5 open positions on our team because we are growing so fast.
There is a hard line for what the NEAR Foundation Marketing Team does/doesn’t do. 
. When are you going to hire a new vp of marketing?