Balancer Forum Post - September
Hey everyone, here is a general update on the efforts made to further Balancer’s marketing for the month of September.
Our major focus for marketing was to give adequate space and attention for communication regarding the linear pool vulnerability / DNS exploit. To foster a sense of trust and transparency our usual rhythm for content was pushed to the side to make sure that social media channels were kept clear for relevant comms concerning the exploits.
Exploits aside we also tried to maintain a baseline level of activity to stay engaged with the broader DeFi environment while remaining conscious of the impact/sensitivity required to navigate the adversities associated with the exploits.
General Strategy
As outlined in our previous posts, there are 4 major focus areas in our strategy which are as follows:
Social Media
Core Growth Pillars
Brand Development
Long-Term Initiatives
Social Media
Our objective on social media is to showcase Balancer’s prominent position in the DeFi ecosystem and enhance the brand’s relevance. We aim to achieve this by educating users about our core growth strategies, fostering meaningful connections within the ecosystem, fine-tuning our visual identity, crafting compelling content, and curating campaigns with key partners.
As mentioned above the typical cadence for content was greatly reduced over the month to give ample space for communication regarding vulnerabilities/exploits.
Content
Post Mortem Report:
DNS Related:
https://x.com/Balancer/status/1705250633782313431?s=20
Ecosystem Articles:
For a list of all Balancer content please see the following content library: Notion – The all-in-one workspace for your notes, tasks, wikis, and databases.
Community Contributors
The contributions from the community contributors have continued to drive value for the Balancer ecosystem over this period of adversity with weekly Balancer Reports, Gauge Updates, and the staked ETH animations.
For a list of all community contributor content please see the following content library:
X (Twitter) Analytics for September 1- 30
KPIs:
Twitter followers: The number of followers on Balancer’s Twitter account.
Tweet impressions: The number of times Balancer’s tweets are seen.
Engagement rate: The number of times Balancer’s tweets are liked, retweeted, or replied to.
Profile clicks: The number of times the profile is clicked per day.
The overall number of followers in September increased marginally by 0.2% with a cumulative total of 149,870. The number of impressions decreased by 5.8%, totaling 1,843,218 throughout the month. Tweet Engagement also decreased by 34.6 % with a total of 16,168, while the total number of profile clicks trended upward by 46.7% with a total of 7,933.
When compared to August, the number of followers increased from 149.7K to 148.8K, the overall number of tweet impressions decreased from 2.25M to 1.84M, the number of total engagements also dropped 28K to 16.1K and the number of profile clicks increased from 6.5K to 7.9K.
Despite followers remaining steady the general trend for activity on X (Twitter) was down. In order to give adequate space and respect to the vulnerabilities our usual cadence for post frequency was reduced which undoubtedly had an impact on KPI metrics. Engagement levels were still on the higher side when compared to the average however this was due to the release comms surrounding the DNS exploit.
Core Growth Pillars
The following narratives have been outlined as highly relevant to Balancer’s success:
LSTs
Ve8020
Boosted Pools
Building on Balancer
Over the past 6 months, our marketing efforts have been centered on educating users about the key benefits/unique PMF of Balancer’s LST technology, the major benefits of the 8020 model, and why Balancer is primed to facilitate development through its Build On Balancer initiative.
In September the primary focus was to maintain a sense of relevancy for these narratives by continuing to push content towards our users. Again due to the exploits, our planned cadence for content in this regard was reduced.
Budget Breakdown
In the interest of both clarity and transparency, we have outlined a budget breakdown for the marketing expenditure for the month of September.
During this period our marketing efforts consisted of 2 FT contributors working at 100% as well as 3 PT contributors working at 25-50%.
As our team is small, our contributors work across several disciplines; Jedi and Naly (FT) work on the overall marketing strategy, content curation, and social media management. Vee (PT) works on brand development and visual design. Skly (PT) specializes in smart contract development and assists with technically focused articles. Jeff (PT) works on BD and partnership coordination.
Additionally, outside of the active contributions this month, the Beethoven X DAO has access to several contributors whose expertise ranges from financial accountants, quantitative analysts, and engineers to DeFi social scientists with PhDs that we will tap into as and when needed, all scoped within the above budget.
Closing Notes
September was unfortunate in the sense that while recovering from the previous exploit towards the end of August, Balancer was again exposed to a DNS attack during the middle of the month. Consequently, the major focus was to mitigate the downstream effects of these events on user’s perception of trust in the protocol. To manage this our strategy was to focus on maintaining a clear approach to communication with transparency as a priority. Naturally, our planned content calendar needed to be adjusted, however as the situation has settled we have since resumed our efforts to showcase Balancer as a leading player in DeFi and will transition to a more aggressive marketing strategy as Q4 begins.
