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Bitcoin is a growth hack for brands and celebrities

From Morning Brew to Paris Hilton, bitcoin and crypto in general is being used as a social media growth hack for brands and celebrities alike.

May 18, 2021

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Bitcoin is a growth hack.

Well, crypto is a growth hack. And it’s being used by brands and celebrities to bolster their social media engagement.

Since the beginning of this bull run, we’ve seen a number of major celebrities and brands engage with the Crypto Twitter community. This year to date we’ve seen:

  • Tom Brady

  • Mark Cuban

  • Elon Musk (lol)

  • Emily Ratajkowski

  • Grimes

  • Lindsay Lohan

  • Mr Beast

  • Anthony Scaramucci

  • Alexis Ohanian

  • Meek Mill

  • JK Rowling

  • Katie Perry

And that’s just to name a few. The reason for this? Social media engagement.

Did you really think Tom Brady or Emily Ratajkowski care about bitcoin? C’mon guys.

Brands have also been getting into the mix in some interesting ways. Some quick examples:

Just take a look at the engagement of all of those tweets to understand the value of attracting a grassroots, dedicated community to engage with your brand. For example, that Axe tweet received about 4,800 comments, 657 quote tweets, and over 11K likes. A post from them over the weekend has only 440 likes.

Think about it.

One of the brands that does this the best is Morning Brew, a popular newsletter with over two million subscribers. They are pretty active with the investing community on Twitter and are a brand staple in the category. I asked Toby, Morning Brew's Social Media Lead, about what he thought about bitcoin as a growth hack.

“Everything crypto related outperforms our regular content. [...] The best part is that the tweet can be positive or negative and you’re still going to get the same level of engagement. Petting the bear or provoking the bear will get me similar results so I do a little of both.“

Toby has been able to thread the needle in terms of attracting social engagement from the crypto community while avoiding being endlessly trolled by it, which can and does happen.

“When you have a community as passionate as crypto your engagement is going to skyrocket. A good parallel in the sports world is Stephen A. Smith always provoking Cowboy fans in different ways. He knows that going after a fanbase like the Cowboys is going to get him 10x the engagement versus, say, going after the Cincinnati Bengals. Same with crypto. If my goal is growth, engagement, impressions, etc. why wouldn’t you interact with a community that is among the most engaged and passionate on Twitter?”

So from a marketing perspective, Toby has identified some interesting things here:

  1. The crypto community is demographically similar to that of Morning Brew

  2. He’s taken some general rules established for MB’s Twitter and applied it to what he knows about the Crypto Twitter community

  3. He wasn’t afraid to experiment with some light trolling because he was able to present it in the on-brand, tongue-in-cheek voice that MB is known for

At the end of the day, Twitter marketing is about knowing your customer, and Toby has put on a master class in this. Just look at how quickly he’s been able to grow Morning Brew’s following.

But why do crypto people love engaging with tweets from brands and celebrities so much in the first place? There are a couple main reasons. First, well, when a high-profile person or company talks about Bitcoin, the price tends to goes up. From Cointelegraph:

Rightly or wrongly, many users judge BTC’s success by its daily market price, and that price seems more entangled than ever with social media activity.

“Absolutely,” Feng Mai, an assistant professor at Stevens Institute of Technology’s School of Business, commented to Cointelegraph. “My research has shown that Twitter posts from influencers have an immediate effect on BTC pricing.” This is for two reasons, Mai explained: “Its lack of intrinsic value compared to other financial assets, and its adopters’ demographics overlapping with social media users.”

People also just love the hype it brings to the space. Also from CoinTelegraph:

Lennard Neo, head of research at Stack Funds — a crypto index fund provider — told Cointelegraph that while social media doesn’t change BTC’s “foundational value proposition,” which remains solid, “the tweets act like accelerators.”

But everyone is approaching this money tree of social media engagement differently. Even mainstream news publications are taking a shot. I spoke about this with my friend Ziad Ramley, the Digital Director at Thomson Reuters Foundation. Reuters Foundation recently produced some high-quality informational Bitcoin content, covering the “bitcoin vs the environment” narrative that’s been floating around the last few weeks.

“I see a huge opportunity for media brands who take the conversation beyond tired stories like "Wow! Bitcoin just hit $X!" or "Is Bitcoin real?" This is a hyper-engaged, educated community that is constantly seeking information about crypto. I suspect lots of people would love more nuanced coverage of issues like reducing Bitcoin's environmental impact or the role of cryptocurrencies in addressing inequality.”

There’s a lot of power in communities as passionate as this one. It just takes the right kind of content at the right time to bring them into your camp. That’s where the nuance is for marketers.

Since this audience is so active online and is constantly seeking information about Bitcoin, tweeting about it can often lead to higher engagement and greater follower growth. However, there are two major risks:

1. People see through your attempt to growth hack and label you as inauthentic.

2. You build lots of crypto community followers in a short amount of time, but because you don't actually care about this audience you don't publish more content that appeals to them and they check out. Over the long term, this will wreck a brand's engagement rate.

Although brand risk is more pronounced than with other communities, the consensus between Toby and Ziad is that they plan to continue engaging with the Crypto Twitter community to both grow engagement and harbour productive online discussions. In Ziad’s words...

“I've said it before and I'll say it again: Any time you can attract an audience that is passionate about a topic and hungry for information on it, that's an audience you should try your hardest to serve. I think there is a huge opportunity for us to give the crypto community access to stories they won't find elsewhere.”

I think we’re going to continue to see this ongoing trend of brands, publications, and celebrities reaching out to the crypto community to grow their audience and businesses.

Well, maybe not all of them…

Who’s Hiring Marketers in Crypto?

  • PR Lead @ Luno [APPLY]

  • VP Marketing @ Amun 21Shares [APPLY]

  • Marketing Coordinator @ Gemini [APPLY]

  • Customer Growth & Retention Specialist @ Bitcoin Depot [APPLY]

  • Video Marketing Producer @ Chainalysis [APPLY]

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