Who I am
Hi all!
I’m Joep Maenen, born and raised in Amsterdam and currently working as a freelance blockchain marketing consultant. I joined the NDC part-time in mid-January to run the social media accounts, which quickly evolved into many more tasks.
HOW I GOT HERE
I joined the NDC on invitation by Matt and Blaze. I worked with Matt during my time as head of social media at NEAR Foundation, where I worked from May 2021 until about May 2022. After NF I worked as CMO at NEARWEEK, for which we received a grant from NF a few months in.
At NEARWEEK, I managed the marketing team and worked closely with numerous NEAR ecosystem projects, helping them to communicate their story to the NEAR community.
MY BACKGROUND
During my time as a political science student, I specialized in deliberative democracy initiatives like G1000, digital movements like WikiLeaks and Anonymous and the financial system and the causes of the 2008 crisis. When I heard about Bitcoin during my studies, it immediately ‘clicked’, which led to a small investment as a poor student almost 10 years ago.
In 2016, I decided to really take the deep dive into the crypto rabbit hole, which led me to found the first Dutch crypto news website in mid-2017. After a flying start and promising growth, the 2018-2019 bear market turned out to be fatal, which nonetheless never shook my belief in the future of crypto.
After this great experience, I started as head of social media at BeInCrypto, where I managed 10 teams for the 10 different languages BeInCrypto offers. A very valuable experience that made me understand how to grow, build and sustain crypto communities, taking into account and appreciating the unique cultures and characteristics that each country/region has to offer. We grew to over 100k Telegram subscribers worldwide within one year, an experience that now helps as I develop a strategy to tell the story of the NDC and foster a strong NDC community.
After two years at BeInCrypto, I wanted to move from writing about crypto, to being actively involved in a crypto project, which was when I started my position as head of social media at NEAR Foundation. I created the Marketing Activation form (RIP) which allowed NEAR Ecosystem projects to request marketing support from NEAR Foundation and I grew the @nearprotocol account from 30k to about 400k within one year.
WHAT I DO IN THE GWG
I was initially supposed to publish content on social media but quickly realized there was a lot of work to be done to funnel our audience to the right places and build our community. Creating awareness only makes sense if there’s a clear strategy for where to send and sustain our audience further down the funnel. So we decided to spend my time first creating a marketing funnel/onboarding experience for NEAR community members.
The marketing and channel funneling can be found in this Community Pulse and more on this will be shared in the coming weeks. Once this is established, there will be more focus on generating awareness in collaboration with the NEAR Foundation, NEARWEEK and other key ecosystem projects.
Feel free to reach out with ideas or feedback for NDC’s marketing strategy, we’re aware there’s a LOT to be done on this front 