We all know ultra-rich guys can swan about in faded, ripped jeans and a free t-shirt they picked up somewhere, while you expect the Wall St types to be wearing $500 prada shoes in a smart casual ensemble.
What’s the difference? One relies on first impressions on a daily basis: the other simply has too much money, has obtained so much personal and professional power they cannot be convinced to care anymore.
Startups are the Wall St intern in this analogy. They don’t yet have the money to look the part but it’s important people look at them and see potential. So it’s about dressing nice, presenting well overall and making it clear that they mean business.
Of course you have to start at the beginning, the first point of contact, which is generally the website. A Wall St intern may have picked out a couple two piece suits to look like he’s prepared for the finance game. You should have invested in a website that looks the part, too.
Sloppy writing and 2000s-era design will turn people off a project very quickly indeed. You could have the best idea on the planet and be let down by a website which screams to prospective users “I don’t know what I am doing”.
Social media meanwhile isn’t necessarily where you will gain the most leads, but it does provide another crucial point of contact to re-engage with existing followers. Being active on Twitter gives you standing in the community, perhaps you can attract customers with pithy one-liners and overall commentary on Crypto Twitter.
Instagram moreover is a visual tool and should be used as such, to show at a glance what is going on with the project.
If you have an executive team with glittering accomplishments, PhDs, decades of experience then great. Their LinkedIn will show up on the first page of Google and lends great credibility to the project.
However, one thing that sets someone apart from the pack is thought leadership. Because the executive then demonstrates they have good insight into the industry as a whole and this impresses upon the user that this is a person who knows how to navigate crypto.
Let’s face it, people can be highly skeptical of new projects claiming to revolutionize the field. Crafting the first impression is of paramount importance to attracting, convincing and instilling confidence into the customer.
If you are a verified expert, trusted by reliable media outlets to write at great length on a topic, then suddenly you become a lot more credible.