The days when the project's social networks consisted of company news and FAQs with pictures are long gone. Forget the "What is Bitcoin" topics in the content plan, your community already knows all that. It's time for interactivity, challenges, contests, research, and memes - tools that allow you to engage your audience in the life of the platform. People follow startup news if it's useful, and interesting.

The main social network for discussing DeFi and cryptocurrency-related topics today is Twitter. The level of engagement and immersion into the field here is higher than on other platforms. Therefore the basic SMM kit of the DeFi startup is Twitter, Telegram, Facebook, and Reddit. The rest is experimentation.

The same applies to threading on popular forums: Bitcointalk, Cryptotalk, Cryptocointalk, and others. It's not enough just to create a thread and share the company's news: be friendly, participate in discussions, and involve the forum audience in interaction with your representatives. Be prepared to work with negativity: the crypto community, in general, is quite toxic and perceives every new project as a scam until you prove otherwise.

The main task of promoting a crypto project on forums is to generate targeted traffic, build a loyal community and gain link mass. And if attracting new users is quite enough just to buy media advertising on the target areas, then for other tasks you will have to create an affiliate thread with the brand.

And this is where the first circle of hell begins.
Do not even try to create new threads without first reading the rules of the forum. If the thread is affiliated with a brand or if you offer a service - be kind enough to pay for the creation of a commercial topic. Otherwise, you will get banned. Fortunately, this is not the case everywhere. Smaller platforms allow you to post threads without additional fees. But on the largest forums the priority is to make money - so be prepared to pay for literally every possible action.

Here is an example: a popular forum about Internet marketing, Searchengines, with traffic of 760,000 users per month. All the commercial topics on copywriting, placing external links, and even the exchange of crypto are in the category "Exchange and sale". And you will be charged $250 for creating a thread for 6 months. Do you want to anchor a thread at the top of the category? Be kind for another $250 per month. Need to edit a published post more than 24 hours after publication? Another $75.

Let's assume you were still able to select forums where you don't have to pay and show your ID to create threads. If your task is just to gain link mass, publish news in your branch and relax. But if you need traffic - the topic will have to be pinned. The fact that the popular forums, with the live audience, new threads are drowning in the abundance of posts and remain without attention. So if you set a goal to form a community within one platform - pay for the pinning.

In general, the bigger the forum, the higher the price tag - it's like everywhere else. And if you'll decide to pin a thread - hire a fierce community manager. After all, you are going into the second circle of hell.

As soon as your topic comes to the attention of the forum community, be prepared for toxicity. People who write something on forums nowadays - are usually either fanatics or trolls. And we do not know what is worse: when a meticulous forum owner wants to check all your documentation - or when a lazy user just says that you are an asshole. But it is necessary to work out absolutely all the negativity.

To create a positive brand image on forums, many companies resort to gray marketing tools. In a nutshell, it comes down to imitating community activity from purchased or new accounts. On average, it costs $2-$5 to market a message.

There is an important nuance here: first, the real forum community is quick to spot these spam accounts. And we're not just talking about the obvious "Great product, I used it yesterday, I recommend it to everyone," but also about more sophisticated scenarios where several people are playing a dialogue about how great the product is. And because of such mistakes, you can be accused of manipulation, deceit, and fraud. And such a stain on your reputation, believe us, is not something any project wants.

So think ten times and adequately assess the tasks you set for the brand presence on the forums. If you just want link mass, it's a good tool, not much different from advertising articles or media mentions. But if you need users, perhaps trying to win the hearts of a toxic community, better trust this promotion method to professionals.