Building deeper connects in life and on BitClout
How it started?
Let me be honest. I was a little bit skeptical when I joined BitClout on April 1st this year. That’s a great day to join a platform that was being tagged by almost everyone as a scam, isn’t it? Any search of BitClout on YouTube at the time and even today to a lesser degree has videos calling BitClout a scam, even though most of the concerns (open source, no exchange, echo chamber) have now been addressed or are being addressed by the BitClout Core Team and the active user community.
I looked around and the first thing I noticed was that it cost money to really engage on the platform since at the time, the only discussion was about investment and speculating on creators/influencers. That seemed a bit suspect to me because most platforms pay to acquire users and here was a platform asking users to pay up, up front and the worst part, it didn’t even have a great user experience.
Hesitantly, I signed up and created my profile — @randhir on BitClout and became active only 10–15 days later. Soon after, I met and started interacting with crypto enthusiasts, entrepreneurs and techies and a few weeks later artists, celebs and influencers as well. Most of the deeper interactions were interestingly not on BitClout, but on Telegram, WhatsApp and Discord Groups as well as Clubhouse Rooms. 100+ days later, I have to admit that joining BitClout has been among the most interesting 100 days of my life (irrespective of whether BitClout takes off and succeeds or it doesn’t).
Over the last 100+ days, I have built deep connections with some of the most talented people I’ve known ever. The best part of course is that many of these people have become and will remain best friends for life, mentors who will continue to inspire and motivate me and potential future business partners.
Success in life is really about the connections you make, isn’t it?
One thing that I have learnt especially over the last 8+ years as an entrepreneur is that success in life (personal and professional) is about the connections you make and the friendships & relationships you build and to a limited extent the connections you inherit too. We, as human beings are social animals, and we connect and engage more deeply with people that we feel belong to our tribe.
Where do we usually build these connections?
Social media networks / online platforms and tools are great resources to build those connections beyond your immediate neighborhood or city. This has been accentuated further due to the pandemic where global travel has been severely hit and events that happen are mostly virtual.
Some of the resources that can be used to build these connections include the following:
- Social Media Platforms — Twitter, Facebook, Instagram & Web 3.0 platforms like BitClout
- WhatsApp / Telegram / Discord / Facebook Groups where you connect with likeminded people and build deeper connections
- Clubhouse Rooms have now become a new space for people to engage in discussions with people interested in similar topics
- Platforms built for your niche (e.g., Medium/Sub-Stack Blogs, Entrepreneurship Forums, Spotify feeds, Instagram, etc.)
How to build deeper connections?
The key to building deep connections with like-minded people for me is to be authentic and deeply and genuinely care about people. Identify the kind of people that will help you grow as an individual (both professionally and personally) and engage with them, deeply — get to know them, understand what drives and motivates them and do what you can to help them.
For me, writing and entrepreneurship are two of my passions, although the latter has taken precedence over the former in the last 8 years. So, when I joined BitClout.com, I sought out and met many great people with similar interests. I eventually connected and spent time with many fellow entrepreneurs and more recently bloggers / writers that motivated me to start writing here again. A bonus of course was all the great artists (musicians, designers, NFT artists and celebs / influencers that I saw on TV and looked up to) that I ended up meeting and even becoming friends with. Well, the art around me even motivated me to start sketching — I’d not done that since I was a kid and the feedback to that has been great and more importantly, my kids have suddenly taken a greater interest to sketching too.
Any fakery in the engagement from either side will come through quickly and if you are engaging to give, you will build some deep connections. If you aren’t careful enough, you might have a few bad experiences though (people who will try to misuse your desire to connect, make false promises, and try to cheat you) and you must keep an eye out for it. This is especially so in new-age platforms like BitClout, where there’s money at stake and where there’s money, there will be scammers.
How I made many friends for life on BitClout?
On BitClout, I built the deepest connections on Telegram / Discord Groups and 1:1 / Group Calls in Clubhouse / Zoom. Especially given that it was a new platform where there were many fake accounts / false claims / scams that were cropping up every day and also given the poor engagement on the platform itself partially due to the bots and partially the platform UX itself, meeting people in a call, seeing them, hearing their “real” stories and speaking to them meant that we at least knew that there was a legit person on the other side and we had a common aspiration and goal to work together and make this platform successful.
While in normal life, speaking to a real person may not be a big thing, a single deep conversation with a person from BitClout on a call and getting to know someone, created a unique connection. Given that we were all passionate about the platform and wanted it to succeed — BitClout united us as a cult / religion that we were together invested into. Obviously, it also meant that the other person is not a BOT, or a scammer and we could safely invest (literally) in them (both the coin and the person).
Do you want to build these connects too?
Here are my recommended steps:
- Create an account on BitClout.com. Follow me @randhir on BitClout and DM me if you need help.
- Verify your Phone Number to get some initial money to create an account.
- Keep your Founder Rewards (% of the investment that goes to you) at or close to 100% until you’ve figured out your game.
- Share your art (smart use of words is also art), conceptualize, build and mint your NFTs and engage with people and of course have fun while you are at it and you’ll soon get a decent following on the platform.
- Put in a good base amount ($100 to $300) to buy enough of your coins to beat the bonding curve which rewards early buyers — this also avoid bots that buy your coin early and dump it hurting other real investors.
- Reduce your FR slowly and invite your followers to start investing in you.
- Monetize your efforts: Whether you are a developer, artist, musician, designer, content creator or just a connector/investor, enjoy the game and make money (thru NFTs, Projects for $CLOUT or Creator Coins, Diamonds, FR of Investments, etc.) while you are playing the Creator Economy game.
PS: If you need help getting onboard, reach out to me on BitClout or connect to me on Twitter or LinkedIn. See you on the other side.
