We're entering the 3rd phase of the Creator Economy where Creators will become their own businesses. Creators discovered they can now BE the brand, BE the product, and they could do for them what they were doing for others. Creators can now build a direct relationship with their 'fans' and create their own economy thanks to Social Tokens.
If you're a creator not familiar with Crypto, but you would like to learn more about how it can help you, here's a good starting point.
Coinvise is the most trusted & simple to use platform for creating social tokens and building incentives around them.
First things first, what are Social Tokens, and why would I want to create mine?
Social Tokens are virtual currencies that live on a blockchain. Put simply, your Social Token will allow you to create an open economy around your project. Anyone will be able to participate in your projects with your $NAME Token. Just as you need to convert your USD in EUR when going to Europe, fans will need to convert their USD in the Creator's social tokens to get involved in its economy/project.
But why, as a creator, would you want to create a virtual currency (aka Social Token)?
By creating a Social Token, you'll gain ownership over your content and have an easier way to collaborate with your community. What Social Tokens allow you, in the end, is unlocking different experiences with your fans. You have control over the means and the production of your content throughout the process. You don't rely on platforms anymore. While, in Web2, creators needed to funnel people into their game (convincing people to follow them on YouTube, for example,) web3 allows new ways of collaboration to create a game and grow together. Instead of limiting the access (paywall in front of an article or a video), Web3 encourages collaboration and opens access to anyone wanting to build and share the upside. It's a complete paradigm shift. It's no more the Creator and its fan, but more a whole community driven by a leader around a common project.
In the end, it's all about community participation. For example, Forefront, the premier social token community creating and curating resources and spaces to help tokenized communities thrive, rewards its community by giving them bounties. As curating resources is not a small task, creating a Social Token to incentivize everyone to help makes sense. The Forefront's leaders have gathered a strong community and motivated their members to send daily great resources toward becoming** **the leading platform for insight across the social token community.
Every audience will turn into a community, and every fan will turn into a partner. With Social tokens, you'll have the power to incentivize anyone to help you achieve broader goals, meet new people and collaborate with others. You'll finally have a direct relationship with your fans and create new kinds of experiences instead of relying on centralized platforms that can potentially ban your content at any time.
Concretely, what could I do with my Token if I decide to create one?
Social tokens are best used when they scale or incentivize coordination and engagement between communities. Incentives are ideal when it's mutually beneficial to you and your community. You also have to understand that Crypto and social tokens are still early, and we're only scratching the surface of what's possible. There are new experimentations with Social Tokens every week, and everyone's trying to push this space forward as we go.
Here are some use cases you could use your Social Token for :
- Allow your fans to invest in you early. Having equity in an individual is much more than speculation. It's more about participation and how anyone can participate in helping grow and share the upside. It incentivizes people around a common goal. By believing in you early and helping you, community members will get a slice of your revenue once you've become more famous. In exchange for a portion of your future payments, you'll get their help and some money to start.
- Create bounties to incentivize the community to help you grow (rating a podcast on Apple Podcast, writing a review on Amazon in exchange for X $NAME token, etc...).
- Crowdfund through an NFT (NFT stands for Non-Fungible Token, which means you'll be the only owner of this specific piece). You can sell an NFT such as a unique autographed book, a YouTube video, or a piece of art and fund your future projects. Again, your community will get ownership over the project and will be incentivized to hype it up.
- Create premium experiences. By holding enough $NAME tokens, certain community members could have access to special perks (the first chapters of a writer's next book in advance, access to a private Discord server, or redeem for one hour of your time, for example).
- Collaborate easily with other creators. By creating a Creator DAO with its Social Token, you'll be able to collaborate with other creators and build more significant projects together. If you're interested in learning more about a Creator DAO, we recommend you read this article. (TLDR; It's highly complex today for creators to collaborate as they don't have the right tools to do it nor the experience, but Web3 and Social Tokens will re-invent the way people collaborate).
These are examples of things you could do today if you mint (create) your Token, but we're always looking for new ways to push the boundaries, and we would be happy to help you with every creative idea you may have to use your Social Token.
Ok, that seems interesting. Now, what steps should I follow if I want to create my Social Token?
First, you have to understand that creating a Social Token is not complicated even for non-tech people. The difficulty is to get it accepted. How do you foster a strong community around your project? How do you share your vision? You don't need Technical skills but social ones.
If you already have a strong community and a clear idea of a project that would need strong collaboration between community members, an excellent first step would be to create a Crypto Wallet (here's an easy tutorial) and read more about the specifies of creating a Social Token here. Once you understand better the implication of creating a Social Token, you can make yours in less than 5 mins, thanks to this tutorial. Again, it's crucial to understand that core use cases that drive successful interaction around them and incentives are ideal when mutually beneficial to you and your community.
The usual path communities are following are :
- Create a small group and gather strong engagement around a common goal.
- Create a Social token on Coinvise (tutorial here).
- Crowdfund the project and pool liquidity for their Token (If you're not familiar with Liquidity Pooling you can further read here).
- Design great bounties to incentivize members to participate (As examples - here are Forefront's bounties).
- Collaborate with other projects to grow bigger.
I'm interested now. You just said a good first step would be to create a Crypto Wallet. What's that?
A Crypto Wallet allows you to send/request cryptocurrencies, visualize how much Crypto you have, and serves as your unique decentralized identity.
The same way you have banking information that you share with anyone that wants to send you money, a Crypto wallet creates and stores your Private & Public Keys (a series of numbers similar to your banking information) that allows you to send and receive money on the Blockchain.
You'll use your Public Key as Banking information, while your Private Key will serve to verify and validate the transactions on the Blockchain.
Your Crypto wallet also serves as your unique decentralized identity. With it, you can sign up to websites and prove your identity in one click.
For example, on Coinvise, by signing up with your Crypto Wallet (sharing with us your Public Key), we'll be able to verify "on-chain" that you're indeed the person trying to sign up on Coinvise and, therefore, let you airdrop (send) your Social Tokens, create an NFT or bounties. We'll also use your Crypto Wallet to send you your Social Tokens and NFTs if you're making any.
Conclusion
At that point, you should be more familiar with what a Social Token is, how it can be beneficial for you as a creator and how to create one. We know how overwhelming learning about crypto can be, so if you have any specific questions, please join our Discord and reach out to EliotC#2942. If you want to learn more, check out our FAQ and dig more into our Wiki 😉.