[Approved] Growing NEAR Protocol Gen Z audience by creating new short clips, repurposing NEAR’s exciting content to short clips and consistent posting for 30 day

Hi NEAR community :wave:,

I’m excited to share this proposal with you to grow NEAR’s Gen Z audience on short-form platforms.

Personal-wise ( Pooria ): Content Creator for more than a year, creating about Web3 x AI x Creator Economy. LinkedIn to begin with and expanded to short-video platforms like TikTok, IG Reels, YouTube shorts, Pinterest Pins, Lenstube, and Snapchat spotlight.

Collaborated with NEAR Canada and held a local meetup for +25 people in Vancouver, presented NEAR in 15 minute presentation, and onboarded them by directing them to create a .near wallet and joining NEAR Hacks.

Community-wise: Pooria and Bahar co-founded BeeHouse DAO to build a community of Web3 creators living digitally: learning, collaborating, and creating meaningful content for the space.

BeeLoud is the podcast where we recorded everything in public.

And Nectar our recent portfolio company is a Web 3 Protocol/Creator-first service that solves the biggest problem of content today: indigestible, long, and often boring long conversations turned into byte-sized, viral clips.

Right now, Nectar is working with Across Protocol and onboarding x3 Web 3 media a month.

:link: Links

Web 3 Media portfolio

Twitter Space Audiogram for Across Protocol

Podcast clip on Instagram for Decrypt

Lens Protocol UGC for TikTok (>450k view in a day)

Metadads collab NFT project promo


What
Growing NEAR’s Gen Z audience on TikTok, IG Reels, and YouTube Shorts

Why:

NEAR protocol’s official account has zero short videos and zero audience on the short video platform of the young generation with over 1.5 billion active users, TikTok.

Despite the good quality of content of NEARCon and Events Long videos on NEAR’s YouTube channel, these videos are not accessible or digestible because of the length of up to 8 hours and lack of professional editing.

This has been a lost opportunity for NEAR Protocol.

But not anymore we want to change that.

How:

1 - By repurposing NEAR’s existing YouTube channel long videos to short, engaging clips optimized for TikTok

2 - Recording and editing new short videos for TikTok. Such as, explanatory videos and short interviews with previous hackathon winners, presenting NEAR projects and dApps, highlighting founders and community members…

Goal:

Our goal is to grow the NEAR audience primarily on TikTok and cross-posting to IG reels and YouTube Shorts by consistently posting a combination of repurposed videos and new content optimized for short-form video platforms

Duration:
Community building and growing audience on TikTok requires consistent posting of optimized content.

For now, we can post for one month, analyze, then apply the feedback for the following month.

KPIs:
Following growth rate: 2% - 7%

Average Comment per post: 2-5
Average engagement rate by views per post:3%-7%
Average watch rate: 10%-17%

Number of views per follower: 10% - 50%

The total number of published videos: 7-10 per week

Number of new NEAR wallets: 5 - 25

Number of new and engaged NEAR community members: 5 - 25

Deliverables

1) Repurposed short clips optimized for TikTok, IG Reels and Shorts

Quantity: 20

Plan: Repurposing up to 5 hours of content from NEARCON 2022 like this into 20 short videos (20s - 3 min), including -

Watching and analyzing 5 hours of content at least once, taking notes and highlighting key shareable moments, combining different segments for a uniform story flow, transcribing, adding subtitles, background music/sfx, graphics, jump cuts, and transitions…

Cost: $50 per short clip

$50 x 20 = $1000

Content → Video → Clips → $1,000

  1. New content optimized for TikTok, IG Reels and Shorts

Quantity: 10

Plan: Researching, scripting, interviewing, and editing 10 new short videos with a duration of 20s - 3 min including the following

x2 NEAR’s projects/dApps (Pulsar Finance, @Hack-a-Chain, Human guild,NEAR Social widgets…)
x2 NEAR’s projects founders/hackathon winners interview
x2 What problem does NEAR solve (explanatory)?
x2 NEAR’s opportunities to get involved (community, devs, grants…)
x1 NEAR’s journey (how did it start, community stories, NEARCON highlights…)

Cost: $200 per video

$200 x 10= $2000

Content → Video → new clips → $2,000

  1. TikTok Account Management

Quantity: for 30 short video post

Plan: Caption and hashtag creation, content scheduling, engaging with accounts, responding to DMs and comments.

High quality videos will be provided for foundation and other projects’ social if they want to post it on their channels

*As the channel is not available for community members to work with, we can use the dedicated Web 3 channel on TikTok (@NEARGenZ)

Cost: $500

Social Media → TikTok → $500

Total cost → $3500 USD

pooria.near

@marketingdao-council @Dacha @cryptocredit @Klint @satojandro @so608

Note: We were aiming to grow NEAR’s official TikTok account. However, as that’s not available for community-use, we can use our dedicated account to build NEAR’s Gen Z Audience on TikTok.

All the repurposed videos and short videos that will be made can be posted on NEAR’s Twitter, YouTube Shorts, and IG reels by NEAR Foundation’s Marketing team or we can also help with cross-posting them.

11 Likes

@satojandro give this a look

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Super interesting, looks like something that can bring a good visibility for NEAR with a low budget.

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Cool! Supporting with both hands! Would love WOTA project to participate!

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Hi @pooriaarab

I’m all for repurposing content but the price points are too high for what amounts to exporting, setting in-points, out-points, and re-exporting.

Do you have examples of the “new optimized content?”

Near doesn’t give access to their channels for third parties to republish, so you can remove that part of the proposal.

Either way, if you’ve got a plan for how to distribute the bite-sized pieces of content (outside of Near’s official channels), please elaborate.

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Hey :wave: thanks for contacting me, I would like to work with you to promote Near P2P.

To be sure that I understand right, you are creating the TikTok content for Lens Protocol ?

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Hey @Klint :wave:,

Thx for your message.

  1. I’d like to add that ‘repurposing content’ cannot be summed to:

exporting, setting-in/out points [not sure what it is], and re-exporting.

At least that’s not the ‘repurposing’ we do, for a lack of a better word - we chose that.

  1. Saying is repurposing is just exporting and re-exporting, is like saying

-Creating videos is opening your camera app and pressing record
-Opening up your code editor and typing code

The abstraction takes away the details, the creativity, and nuance of it.

  1. Chatted briefly with @David_NEAR about using NEAR’s TikTok channel as distribution and mentioned it’ll be in the near (lol) future as the foundation will expand to that channel.

And these series of videos could serve as a trial run and when it performs well, could chat more.

  1. NEAR has a wide library of long videos from NEARCon, tutorials, and more…

Those serve as good starting point for reach - particularly as the content has gone through several loops for approval.

  1. For distribution, we anticipated the official channel might not be available, so we’ll be using TikTok channel for our community /working group/

In addition the repurposed and created content, will be shared on our partners’ distribution channels and the projects we’ll make content for (including the NEAR projects like hackachain, WOTA, Amber, NEARP2P, and more…)

These not only include TikTok, YouTube, but also other channels like Twitter and communities telegram groups that would reach a combined reach of +50,00 followers.

Also, the high-quality content will be provided and shared with foundation’s social team if they also want to post it on YouTube Shorts, IG reels, or twitter.

  1. Learned more about avenues we could empower content creation within the NEAR community after chatting with @satojandro and chatted about the differences between ‘technical’ and ‘creative’ abilities to make content - as he described it.

We not only want to make content to bring more Gen Z into NEAR but also explore ways to help others make content.

  1. Lastly, the proposal in lines with the strategic objectives set for a) primary funding is for content about NEAR and then the projects on NEAR.

Excited to answer any other questions/comments :grinning:

Hi Klint,

Thanks for your comment

Let me explain the process of repurposing the long videos:

Repurposing is not clipping the long videos into short pieces

It requires, re-assembling the hook and the body of the content, re-adjusting the storyline, adding relatable graphics, B-rolls, illustrations and animations, adding SFX, and different types of background music according to the content

These are just a few steps of repurposing long content into short videos that are optimized for platforms such as TikTok

You can check out our samples mentioned above

Repurposing long videos into optimized shorts for TikTok costs more time than what we mentioned in the proposal however we wanted to build a working relationship with near since this is our first proposal

Thanks

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@Klint Also the samples have been included in the proposal and you can also find more here too

This sounds like a great idea :slight_smile:

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Yup.

Created 3 TikToks and doing more within this month.

All yielded >500k views in less than 2 days with a full watch rate of >70%.

Got to note that it wasn’t a sponsored post - pure content.

Could you please fill out the form

Marketing DAO Proposal Application ?

Hi,

we submitted the form on January 4th, should we fill it out again?

@Dacha Hi,

Form was completed earlier.

Should we complete it once more?

@Dacha resubmitted the form just in case it wasn’t received.

Also a few updates:

-I’ll also be leading Bankless DAO’s TikTok video efforts (waiting for final confirmation) and creating content for NEAR Digital Collective to simplify and increase engagement in interacting with the governance and upcoming voting [chatting with James Waugh and soon Sarah]

-Over 10 NEAR projects have shown interest in getting TikTok videos about their project and have discussed with their founders/marketing leads for the past week to prepare early script and move into recording next week [just in time to meet the proposal start date]

Some of the projects include:

-WOTA
-AMBER Metaverse
-DAO HQ
-Hackachain
-NEAR P2P

Looking forward to hear from you and your feedback as well as @so608 @cryptocredit

1 Like

Hi @pooriaarab – thanks for the proposal and filling out the form.

A few questions and thoughts:

  • In general, I like the idea of cutting down and remixing existing content into new formats and packaging it up to expand NEAR’s reach. I also think this is an interesting contrast to many of the projects we have had in the past, where pushing as much content out as possible is the main objective – and I have seen that return subpar results.
  • Along those lines, creating content is only part of the battle. Can you give me some thoughts on how you are planning to engage new audiences with the content? What’s your strategy there?
  • I think the channels the content goes live on are pretty crucial to the success. Can you clarify for me whether the channels you’re planning to use (as NEAR’s official accounts are still in discussion) are yours or those of ecosystem projects? Or both?
  • If funded, would you be willing to open up submissions or a form of interest to community members so they can submit/request that their content be considered for repurposing?
  • Note that we have recently paused on funding middlemen projects, so there may be some thoughts from other council members about how to structure this project.

Thanks!

@so608 Hey :wave:,

Thanks for the comment.

In general, I like the idea of cutting down and remixing existing content into new formats and packaging it up to expand NEAR’s reach.

That is correct.

NEAR has a HUGE library of video content (and other types) that are thorough but somewhat lengthy. And using that ‘verified’ content allows us to extract short, shareable, and noteworthy content.

Can you give me some thoughts on how you are planning to engage new audiences with the content? What’s your strategy there?

That’s the million dollar question in marketing. The answer lies in the 3Cs: content, connection, and community.

  • Content: Needs to have a good hook, right pacing/edits, relatable examples, and most importantly convey a value (so after watching a 30-60s video, the audience takeaway a meaningful point)
    This takeaway point could be how to get involved with NEAR, how to launch a dApp on NEAR, and just finding a like-minded community in the dozens of groups available to contribute in.

  • Connection: This is simply building that human connection. Making the audience feel they’re being heard and another human is on the other side of the video.
    This happens through meaningful comments, engaging with their posts, and making them feel seen.

  • Community: This is solidifying that rapport by inviting them to the community. A telegram groupchat for Gen Z to discuss all NEAR related: how to build on NEAR, ways to contribute to different guilds, and building their own community or regional hubs.

Can you clarify for me whether the channels you’re planning to use (as NEAR’s official accounts are still in discussion) are yours or those of ecosystem projects? Or both?

I’ve chatted briefly with David from the Foundation about using NEAR’s official accounts. As @Klint had mentioned, using their channels is not possible right now. BUT based on our chat, they’re open to seeing the results from this and considering that to put more focus on short videos.

It seems like TikTok is in their plans for this year.

We will be publishing the videos on our platform primarily on TikTok.*

*Moreover, the content created here both the repurposed and new clips will be provided in high quality to both the Foundation and NEAR projects being featured. They are free to share it on their channels.

We will try to coordinate as much as possible to find a format that would work best for the NEAR community and that the foundation now - or sometime in the future - would consider sharing on their socials (as long as it meets their branding guidelines.

If funded, would you be willing to open up submissions or a form of interest to community members so they can submit/request that their content be considered for repurposing?

Yes. In a way we have been doing that already. I’ve spoken to over a dozen NEAR founders in the past 1-2 weeks and many have shown interest in targeting Gen Z via short videos.

One problem is that not many of them like the Foundation have a library of video content. So, it cannot be repurposed directly.

BUT, we’ve been perfecting a content creation workflow to repurpose Twitter spaces, Mirror/Medium articles, and pretty much other forms of content into short videos. And that seems more applicable to NEAR projects.

Note that we have recently paused on funding middlemen projects, so there may be some thoughts from other council members about how to structure this project.

I’ve attached 2 diagrams here. One is our proposal with visual aids and the other is how our proposal aligns with Marketing DAO’s core focus.

Primary focus for month 1:

  • We are building a community: This is a NEAR Gen Z-focused community onboarded through the medium they interact with best - short videos on short-form platforms (particularly TikTok) and porting them over to a Telegram groupchat.

  • We are not a “middleman” project: The primary scope of this proposal is to build the NEAR Gen Z community in the long run starting with a mixed strategy of repurposed and new clips.

Month 2 and onwards possible focuses:

These depend on the feedback we get from the NEAR community at-large and the audience which could mean pursuing only one or a mixed strategy like month 1

  • Mixed strategy of repurposed clips and new clips
  • Only make repurposed clips (from NEAR protocol/foundation library)
  • Only make new clips (to onboard people into NEAR generally_
  • Repurpose or make new clips (to onboard people into SPECIFIC NEAR projects)

Looking forward to hear more feedback and about the next steps :slightly_smiling_face:

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Hi @pooriaarab thanks for your proposal - i have reviewed your work and noted the comments of fellow council.

I think your idea to take existing content and reformat it for use on TickTok is a good one. I also suggest that you consider reaching out to ‘hot projects’ currently building and promote them as well.

Noted that you have reached out to @David_NEAR to discuss the possibility to integrate with the main Near TickTok channel in the future.

Considering the amount of funding requested, i am happy to support and, if approved, i look forward to seeing your results.

1 Like

Hey :wave:,

Thanks for your feedback.

Looking forward to get started as soon as possible :rocket:

Hi @pooriaarab – thanks for the detailed reply to my questions – I appreciate the thoughtful response and also transparency around the things you are still trying to figure out as you go (always a part of content/marketing, right!).

I’d be happy to support this for a month and see how it goes. If approved (you still need one more council member to support), then you will need to submit a report after the first month so we can touch base and review what’s happened before future requests.

One thought for you – there are already SO MANY groups in various places (Discord, Telegram, Twitter), and in my view the ecosystem and communications around things are very fragmented even though the community itself is quite tightknit in many ways. I don’t have the answer here, but I do think that in the future content creators who can successfully demonstrate that they’ve created connection and opened up throughlines of communication among all the decentralized places people hang out.

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