Tl;dr
To build out virality in your Web3 products you need to:
Build virality into your product if possible. Make sharing inherent to the usage of the product, so that in order to achieve goals, people have to (or want to) use it with others.
Build a product which offers a great user experience.
Make it easy for people to share in an unobtrusive manner.
Use CTAs. Remind them to share if they are enjoying the product.
Virality is the fancy word marketers have given to what happens when a lot of users share your product (yes, exactly like when a tweet or a TikTok goes viral). Virality is what happens when you successfully turn users into marketers and evangelists who go on to tell other people about your product and urge them to use it.
My favourite example of users becoming product marketers is Spotify. Spotify has a few ways of getting users to share Spotify with the rest of the world. Every year the Spotify Wrapped event gets everyone talking to others about Spotify. Shared playlists and shared remote listening sessions make you want to drag your friends on. (Tl;dr Music is a shared experience and Spotify capitalises on that majorly).
Virality is a word that you get to hear often in marketing circles. Everyone talks about examples like Dropbox and Loom and how they used virality to fuel the growth of their products. And with good reason, who doesn't want people telling others about their product and growing off those referrals? It’s a low-cost, high-ROI way of growing your business.
So, how about Web3? Today I’ve been thinking about Web3 products and how to incorporate virality into Web3, and these are a few thoughts so far.
Bad Web3 “Virality”
First, a problem. There’s one virality method we use a lot in Web3 even if we may not recognise it as such, airdrops. Typically, when a new protocol/app/service launches, they incentivise early users to do things like make social media posts about them in exchange for the chance of winning some future airdrop of tokens.
A particularly common form of this is the meme contest. Just about every early-stage Web3 product community I’ve ever been a part of has had some version of a meme contest. Users create memes, share them on social media (typically Twitter), and the winners get some monetary reward.
Although immensely popular in Web3 and although it gets you eyeballs (and usually for maybe $300), the more I think about it, the more I realise that this is a bad viral strategy, and I wonder what the effectiveness of those campaigns have been so far.
There are many problems with this approach but they all stem from the same root: virality only works if it is powered by (satisfied) users as opposed to financially incentivised people.
Here are a couple of problems with airdropping:
People who join for financial incentives may have no intention of using your product long-term. They’re just in it one time for the money.
This kind of sharing is rarely done within the context of your product. When I send someone a link to a song on Spotify I like, it’s because I’ve enjoyed using the product and now want someone else to enjoy it with me. When people show up with #(insert protocol) tweets on Twitter, I have no idea what the product is or why I should use it.
Following from 2 above is that having seen so many so-called “shillers” in the Web3 space, most people now block them out. I get almost one unsolicited tweet a day linking me to some NFT project but I know the type and I never give the project a second glance.
And finally, 3 above means that the shillers and airdrop hunters probably exist in some kind of bubble of their own to some extent. So maybe all your airdrop money buys you is more airdrop hunters and not actual users.
Good (Web3) Virality
Unlike the airdrop guys, you really want people to share your product after using it because they enjoy using it and they want others to use it too. A good example of this is the decentralised social network Farcaster.
Since I joined Farcaster, one of the things I’ve been struck by the most is how great an experience it is, and how you almost immediately want to share it. And so you find that most people join Farcaster because (like me), someone mentioned how great it was and gave them an invite.
You also get your users to write essays (which are basically sales pitches) like this one about your product telling people how great it is and making them want to join.
Another example is Rainbow Wallet. I don’t think I’ve seen any Web3 wallet’s users publicly laud their experience while using a wallet like Rainbow Wallet. And because using wallets is such a bad experience, tweets like the one below can be all it takes to convince someone to at least give Rainbow Wallet a try.
Some Suggestions For Building Virality Into Your Product
1. It’s a product design problem.
The thing about virality is that it’s not first a marketing technique, it’s something that has to be built into the product from the word go.
What do Loom, Dropbox, Slack, and Spotify all have in common for example? Simple they’re built to incentivise sharing. Sometimes that happens directly (you share files with Dropbox, videos with Loom, and Slack is designed for teams so you have to share to get the other team members on board). And sometimes indirectly (you don’t need to share music with Spotify but you want to because it enhances the experience).
From the get go you should be designing sharing mechanisms into your product. Especially if your product is one that doesn't inherently need users to collaborate with other users to achieve their goals.
Two examples of Web3 products that are well positioned like this are PartyDAO and Dework.
PartyDAO is a tool for letting groups of people perform activities on Ethereum together, naturally, this isn’t something you can use alone, you have to invite others.
Dework is a productivity tool for Web3 teams enabling them to collaborate and track progress on tasks in one place. Again, this is inherently a tool that has to be used by multiple people instead of one person.
2. User Experience
Think about the two Web3 examples I gave above (Farcaster and Rainbow Wallet if you’ve forgotten). Why do their users tell others about them? You don’t have to share your experience using a wallet in order to use it. No, people talk about them because they had a great experience while using them.
It’s kind of like Spotify, telling the world about the best wallet experience you’ve had completes the experience in a way.
There is no magic bullet around this, if people have great experience using your product, they are likely to talk to others about it, so go out of your way to make sure your product has great UX. The good news here is that the UX of Web3 is so bad right now that even slight improvements will likely generate a lot of buzz no matter your product category (wallet, defi, nft marketplace, whatever).
In fact, we are at the level where Web3 UX is so bad that great user experience can be a moat for your Web3 product. Spare nothing on that front.
3. Enable People To Share Easily
Think about sharing a video with Loom, the process doesn’t get in the way of using the product at all. Or sharing a file with Dropbox. Or sharing a link to a Spotify song.
These are all easy processes and in some ways (Loom with video for example), directly tied to how the product is to be used. Similarly, you should build a way for people to easily share your product without interrupting their use of the product.
A big part of this is figuring out what to get people to share. Typically it has to be something core to the product (Loom — Video, Dropbox — Files, Spotify — Songs, Slack — Shared Workspace, and so on).
4. Remind People To Share (Use CTAs Folks)
You can also include calls to action at appropriate points during the process of using your product. I’ve put this last because like 3 above, it needs to be done in a way that doesn’t impede a user while they’re doing something.
For example, if you’re a wallet, you could include a CTA after every successful transaction asking the user to share something about your wallet on Twitter. But what if they’re trying to make multiple transactions and your CTA is just getting in the way of proceeding to the next transaction?
Include CTAs but they need to be both visible and unobtrusive, and typically show up when users have had success using your product. Also, consider toggling the frequency of these CTA pop-ups so they don’t become frequent and are eventually ignored.
Risky, but it could be worth it, especially if users enjoy using your product, and it’s difficult to build sharing into the product inherently.
Conclusion
Build virality into your product if possible. Make sharing inherent to the usage of the product, so that in order to achieve goals, people have to (or want to) use it with others.
Build a product which offers a great user experience.
Make it easy for people to share in an unobtrusive manner.
Use CTAs. Remind them to share if they are enjoying the product.
