#337: My Presentation on Content + GTM for the Octant Accelerator
💡 Tips, observations, and notes for builders and operators
Earlier today, I covered a session on Content Growth and GTM case studies to the inaugural cohort of the Octant Accelerator.
What is Octant?
Octant is a public goods funding ecosystem created by the Golem Foundation. Golem has a treasury of 100k ETH (~$250 million 🤯), which was accumulated by a crowdfunding effort back in 2016. That 100k ETH is staked and a portion of the yield (like interest earned from a bank account) is then donated to public goods projects.
Octant community members can acquire GLM and stake it, also earning yield. That yield can be claimed by the user, or it can be donated. If the yield is donated, Octant provides additional funding to the projects via a quadratic funding approach.
The Octant Accelerator
There are a lot of great grant and funding programs in crypto. After all, the most pressing need is financial support. However, once that need is satisfied, what these projects and builders need is operational + execution-oriented support.
We all know the saying ‘build it and they will come’ isn’t true. Teams need to make an effort to build an audience, acquire users, and retain them.
That’s how the Octant Accelerator came to be, providing non-financial resources to these projects. The month-long program consists of 33 sessions, bringing in a slate of all-star guests (I’m like 3rd string) to cover various topics such as BD, branding, growth, and more along with hands-on execution-focused efforts to help each project reach their goals.
The Content Growth + GTM case studies session I led was slated for 90 minutes and ultimately lasted 2 hours thanks to my incessant yapping. The session took some topics I’ve shared on the blog in the past along with additional content I haven’t mentioned before.
Shout out to Mashal from going from idea to execution with this program so quickly! I hope to see more Octant Accelerator cohorts in the future 💪
Also, if you want to check out what projects participatd, check out the demo day next week.
Content Growth
Content channels based on role and strengths
When plotting content channels across different factors, we get a different sense of clarity on the role(s) they play when it comes to growth.
On the X-axis, some channels are meant to be more retention-focused (eg: newsletters) while others are focused on expanding the audience, leading to more awareness and acquisition.
On the Y-axis, we look at these channels and the ‘ownership’ of the audience. What’s the likelihood that my content will reach the end user/follower/subscriber? If I want to move my followers to another platform, how easy would it be to do that?
This plotting provides a rough idea of where each of these channels fit, and there’s a lot of nuance. The reality is each channel doesn’t squarely fit in a quadrant. For example, YouTube has certain features like subscribing to a channel that make it more retentive and more of an owned audience. You can turn on notifications for certain accounts on X as well.
Despite this, plotting out channels helps teams understand where the gaps and opportunities are to create content that covers all the bases. Individual channels try to be one size fits all, but the reality is you have to be multi-channel with your content.
Repurposing content
The concept of repurposing is more nuanced, as there are two types of repurposing
Across channels (same medium)
With my written content, I repackage and share it across different text-first channels. Makes sense and simple to do. This is table stakes.
Across mediums
A great example of this is video-to-text. Podcasters record their episodes and use tools to create transcripts, summaries, and highlights for their newsletter. Two examples of this are Kaloh and Lenny’s Newsletter.
These examples do both types of repurposing:
Red boxes: Repurposing the podcast across other podcast channels that support voice and/or video.
Green boxes: Repurposing across mediums, from video to text
With both types of repurposing approaches, each individual piece of content lives multiple ‘lives’.
Why is repurposing across mediums something to consider?
Each person learns and retains information differently. Although I enjoy listening to podcasts, I’m a terrible auditory learner. Don’t ask me about song lyrics, I’m ass.
Repurposing across mediums obviously helps with growth and distribution, but there’s a deeper physiological reason for this that’s related to learning affinities.
This is a good nudge for me to start a podcast. Hopefully sooner than later 😂
Combinations and permutations of founder x brand content
Creating good content is hard to do. Fortunately, there are ways to extend the impact and reach of a piece of content on social that I believe is underexplored. The Deform team does a good job with this.
For example, with DeForm’s post about Abstract’s community campaign, each team member quote posted the original DeForm announcement in a different way.
Albert quote posted in all caps, pure excitement lol
Kei has a more measured tone with his quote post, and tags the Pudgy Penguins and Abstract accounts
Catherine has a longer post, and quote posts a different post from the same announcement thread
In Catherine’s announcement of Deform’s happy hour at ETH SF this week, we see more founder x brand interactions, and this one is 3 layers deep.
Catherine makes the original post
DeForm brand account quote posts
Albert reposts the quote post
With 3 people and 1 brand account, these types of interactions can be mixed and matched with low effort while feeling fresh:
Order of the interactions
Quote posting vs. reposting
If a thread, quote posting/reposting a different part of the thread
Each team member making the same message, but with their personal voice
Tagging vs. not tagging other accounts
Leveraging replies to amplify (not done in the above examples)
GTM Case Studies
Abstract: Positioning in a sea of L2’s
In a world with 1384462 Layer 2’s, it’s hard to differentiate. Abstract is aware of that and makes it abundantly clear what they’re about.
What is Abstract?
Polymarket preparing for the post-election hangover
Polymarket is hitting, daily, weekly, and monthly highs as the US presidential election approaches.
But what happens after Election Day? There will inevitably be a hangover (volume and other KPIs will drop), but the question is how bad of a hangover will it be?
The Polymarket team is quietly preparing themselves for the post-election environment, with the main focus on sports. We can tell because there’s only one categorically focused Polymarket account currently: Polymarket Sports.
Also, Sports is the first category listed on the category tab, even ahead of Politics.
This is in addition to a potential airdrop and community-created markets. Maybe the hangover the following morning won’t be as bad as some think, we’ll see 🥴
That’s an overview of some of the highlights from the presentation. Check out the whole thing for some other nuggets.
See you Thursday!