Crypto Marketing with Ty Smith
When To Hire A Community Manager? Web3 Marketing 101 | Episode 60
About this episode
Ty Smith walks through the basics of community management for crypto and NFT projects: what the role covers, when a founder should stop doing it themselves, and how to hire for it. A community manager runs the Discord or Telegram, manages moderators, builds community strategy, and acts as the go-between for the team and its members, handling everything from answering questions to running AMAs and giveaways.
The core argument is about delegation. Crypto moves fast, and if a founder is spending more time moderating chats and answering community questions than building the product, that is a problem. Ty says founders need to stay focused on shipping the best product possible and get community management off their plate as soon as it starts eating into product time.
He closes with the practical side: hiring a contractor off Upwork or scouted from other communities runs $3,000 to $5,000 a month, while hiring an agency like Coinbound costs $5,000 to $10,000 a month but includes strategy, moderator setup, and event coordination as part of the package.
Key takeaways
- Delegate community management once you're spending more time answering Discord and Telegram questions than building your product.
- A community manager's core job is moderation, strategy, and acting as liaison between the team and the community.
- Use AMAs, giveaways, and events as tools a community manager coordinates to keep members engaged.
- Find contractor community managers on Upwork or by scouting active people in other crypto Discord and Telegram servers.
- Budget $3,000 to $5,000 per month for an experienced individual contractor.
- Budget $5,000 to $10,000 per month for an agency, which typically bundles in basic moderation.
- Prioritize keeping founders and execs focused on product, not day to day community chat.
Questions this episode answers
What does a community manager do in a crypto or Web3 project?
They manage Discord and Telegram moderators, build the community strategy, and act as the liaison between the team and the community. They also keep members engaged by answering questions, sharing news and announcements, and coordinating AMAs, giveaways, and other events.
When should a crypto founder hire a community manager?
Ty says the telltale sign is when you, as founder or executive, are spending more time answering community questions and moderating chats than actually building your product. At that point you need to delegate community management so you can keep building and shipping.
How much does a crypto community manager cost?
An individual contractor with some experience typically runs $3,000 to $5,000 per month. Going through an agency like Coinbound costs more, around $5,000 to $10,000 per month, but includes basic level moderation across Telegram and Discord.
Should I hire a freelance community manager or use an agency?
Freelance contractors are cheaper and easy to find on Upwork or by scouting active people in other Discord and Telegram communities, since many already manage multiple communities at once. Agencies cost more but handle strategy, moderator setup, and event hosting as a full package.
Full transcriptShow
Ty Smith0:04
What's up guys, I'm Ty Smith, founder of Coinbound, leading crypto and NFT marketing agency. Today we are going through when it is time to hire a community manager. So we will quickly discuss what a community manager does, signs it's time to hire a community manager, and what it should cost you to do so.
Ty Smith0:16
So, number one, what does a community manager do? So, community manager in the world of crypto does basically everything that comes to management of a Discord or Telegram community. So things like manage moderators, create strategy for the community, they basically act as the liaison between your team and the community. So they're kind of the point contact for the team to communicate things down to the community and the community to communicate things up to the team regarding concerns, desires, things like that.
Ty Smith0:37
They keep the community excited and engaged, so they'll answer questions, share news, share announcements, set up the community in a way that fosters engagement and communication. And then the third thing is they'll coordinate things like AMAs, giveaways, kind of events that excite the community.
Ty Smith1:17
Signs that it's time to hire a community manager for your crypto project. The telltale sign of this is when you, as a founder or executive of a crypto team, are spending more time communicating with your community than you are actually building your product, that is an issue. You do not have time to be doing the doing for crypto companies. They move very, very quickly, and you need to be gas on the pedal at all times building your product, making sure it's the best product in the market.
Ty Smith1:36
And while it can sometimes be difficult to delegate, especially something like community management, which is very important, you have to. You have to be able to build your product as quickly as possible and get it out the door and then get new users using it. So, if you're spending too much time talking to your community, if you're moderating, if you're acting as the person who is the primary person answering questions in Discord or Telegram, you need to get a community manager ASAP.
Ty Smith2:17
All right, so there's a couple ways you can hire a community manager. You can do like individual people that are just kind of contractors. That's one way to do it. It's easier to find these people on places like Upwork or just kind of looking through other Discord or Telegram communities and finding people, because typically they can do multiple ones at the same time.
Ty Smith2:28
The other way to go through is through an agency. So, an agency like Coinbound, we specialize in doing exactly that for our clients. They come to us, they say, 'Look, we're building something awesome. We don't have time to manage our communities. You guys are kind of the pros at it. Will you manage our community for us, set us up with moderators, do our strategy for community, host events, do everything that needs to be done for managing our community?' And it's something that we confidently say we do pretty damn well.
Ty Smith3:11
Pricing is different if you're going to do option one versus option two. If you're going to go through an individual person, like an individual contractor, it's going to be less expensive. You should probably expect to pay between like $3,000 and $5,000 per month for a decent community manager who has some experience. And then if you're going to go through an agency like Coinbound or tons of other crypto marketing agencies, I would say expect to pay between like $5,000 and $10,000 for a community manager plus basic level moderation in your Telegram and/or Discord.
Ty Smith3:27
All right, that is going to wrap this one up. Hopefully everyone's having a good time in this crypto market. It's relatively bearish but still a super profitable one, and communities are a super exciting thing to both build and manage. So, if you found any value in this episode, please reach out on Twitter. We've been doing a ton of, we've been getting a ton of DMs on Twitter lately from people that have been enjoying the podcast, and it's always exciting to hear that. And then subscribe on YouTube. All right, we will catch you on the next one. Bye.
