Monica Tartau opens the AMA:

Hello everyone,

Welcome to the first dedicated Marketing AMA!

I will start by saying that the whole Marketing team is incredibly proud of this year’s edition of Lisk.js and we are super happy that our efforts resulted in such a positive reception both from the community and internally.

I am looking forward to answering any questions. A few highlights from the past week include:

• Lisk.js 2021 Livestream
• The new Lisk Grant Program
• Upcoming Online Hackathon, HackOnLisk

I’m ready for your questions!

Jk: One of the challenges that faced Lisk is Marketing. What are your plans for marketing to increase adoption (not awareness) without Core 3.0 going to Mainnet later this year. I know it can be a challenge but just wanted to hear your thoughts.

Monica: Thank you for the question. As you probably know already, this year we decided to really start focusing more on the marketing efforts and we did start doing so. Currently our main efforts go towards increasing the number of developers joining our community and number of applications being built with the Lisk SDK. Until now we really focused on organizing Lisk.js 2021 which was a great success. We did not only focus on the content of the event, but we also tried to attract as many developers and blockchain enthusiasts as possible. We did that through different channels; blog posts, sponsored articles, paid promotion and many more. Next big milestone for us is HackOnLisk, our online hackathon which aims to attract developers to build blockchain applications. This will definitely be an important step in driving adoption of Lisk.

MarkfromMiami: Many of us have noticed that even in a down market Lisk hasn't performed as well as most alt coins. The lack of price action seems to imply that the interest in Lisk is severely lacking. I've heard Max previously mentioned a 10 year budgeting plan with the BTC that remains, however I doubt the project will last that long if it continues to perform like this and not regain the interest and following it used to have. Could we maybe try some of the following to increase project awareness over the next few months?

Youtube reviews - Blockchain Partnerships - Articles - Increase the number of platforms Lisk is traded on. - Comparison Articles - Elaborate a bit on interoperability plans - Increase the number of followers on Twitter

Thanks for the read, been a holder since 2016 and I hope to continue for awhile!

Monica: This is definitely a valid point. However, we can only comment on our marketing efforts and not the price of the token. We do acknowledge that our audience is not only developers but also blockchain enthusiasts and for that we consistently make an effort to reach out to different platforms.

For Lisk.js in specific, we had sponsored articles on websites such as Cointelegraph and Coindesk. Additionally we were also featured on some popular YouTube channels such as Chico Crypto. We will continue to do this in the near future as we maintain these media partnerships.

For the comparisons, this is definitely something we are looking to do and to highlight more often to showcase the benefits of Lisk.

For social media growth we are at this moment in time planning multiple campaigns and a variety of contests to increase this number. Please note however that our focus remains on attracting as many developers to build with Lisk SDK as possible.

Siilver_fox84: Hey Monica, have you considered YouTube influencers e.g. BitboyCrypto, CoinBureau, etc to expand lisk’s marketing efforts?

Monica: We are actually considering influencers. Our focus for the future will be on developer influencers but we will not exclude other broader alternatives if relevant. Especially if these are community favourites. Would love to hear your suggestions and look into it in the future. For Lisk.js specifically we have been in touch with several influencers (general blockchain audience and developer-focused). It is definitely a challenge to find the right influencers to showcase Lisk's ecosystem, but we are sure that we will manage to work with some relevant ones long-term.

Jewish: Lisk has a working product but lacks developers that use it. There is no network effect like eth is currently enjoying. What are the plans for the marketing team to help alleviate this?

Monica: That's a great question. We have actually just announced the new Lisk Grant Program and our Online Hackathon, HackOnLisk (submissions open later today). Both are initiatives we plan to focus our efforts on. We will make sure to reach as many developers as possible and increase the number of applications as we go. Our ultimate aim is to see production-ready applications and to get more people building with the Lisk SDK, developing our ecosystem even further.

As you know already, I started at Lisk as Events Manager and events are still my biggest passion, I get my motivation and energy seeing people gathering, networking, and learning. Last year was definitely very challenging, but I must say I have grown so much trying to shift the focus from in-person events to an online presence. Once I became Marketing Lead for Lisk, my biggest goal was to focus on our online community, on growing it through content pieces, Lisk Builders program, online events etc. I am very proud of what we have achieved in the current times. Now that things are very slowly going back to "normality", we will definitely consider more in-person gatherings (Lisk Center Berlin is waiting to receive guests). I will always love to see faces during events.

Peter Nobels: Can you tell us a bit more about the goals Lisk Marketing is aiming to achieve?

Monica: As mentioned above, essentially our goals are still the same. To attract as many developers to build real-world, production-ready, blockchain applications using the Lisk SDK. To achieve this, these are a few things we are continuously work on:

• Promotion of our products and generally Lisk project
• Provide developer support
• Incentivize valuable blockchain applications to be part of the Lisk platform

Of course, we are also working hard to not only attract developers into our ecosystem, but we also want to increase the awareness of the Lisk project within a broader audience.

Decaijo: Why does Lisk only develop and not market?

Monica: We, as Marketing team, are doing our best to promote Lisk and we are incredibly proud of what the team has achieved in the past year amid all our constraints.

Recently, Lisk and our annual blockchain developer event was featured on CoinPost Japan, Cointelegraph, The Block, News BTC, BTC-Echo, WeAreDevelopers, Cointelegraph China, BeInCrypto, AltcoinBuzz, BlockGeeks, Chico Crypto’s Youtube Channel, Hackernoon and many many more.

Pufpuf91: Live Twitch or YouTube it could have been easier for AMA maybe

Monica: We actually thought about Twitch before. YouTube is definitely a channel we will be using more and more in the upcoming months. Not only for video content, but also for live AMA. As mentioned already, the next monthly AMA with Max will take place next week on YouTube. Let's see how you guys like it (Definitely easier than typing all the answers )

UZAMARU:I believe that Lisk is proceeding with projects based on a "product-oriented" approach, where development is driven by the foundation's policies and technologies, but from a marketing perspective, I think it will be necessary to adopt a "market-oriented" approach in the future. What does the Lisk marketing team think about this?

Monica: Definitely true, however as you might have seen already for both HackOnLisk and the new Lisk Grant Program we did analyzed the current market needs and proposed a list of suggested categories we wish people to focus on when developing with Lisk. These include: Lending, Stablecoins, NFT marketplaces, Collectibles, Prediction markets, Social media networks, DAOs, Oracles.

DynamicPegClub: Was it worth hiring Wachsman? We had only like 300 live youtube viewers for js and only a few hundred likes for js tweet? How much did we pay wachsman? I suggest you get the community to vote on best marketing strategies for future events.

Monica: Wachsman is currently helping us with all our PR activities and communications (articles, media alerts, press releases, interviews, podcasts, support overall with our communication strategy). They are supporting us in properly implementing our marketing strategy, as well as advising us where needed. We definitely see the benefits of working with them and we are very happy to have them on our side also for the upcoming hackathon as media partners. Without Wachsman, it would have been much harder to reach out to diverse media outlets, influencers, to gather partners, judges, etc.

MariusMarius: Any plans to start writing articles on Medium again? Most of the crypto are doing it,i don't see why it's so hard for Lisk to do it

Monica: Although medium is great as a platform, we felt that by focusing solely on the Lisk blog would ultimately attract all traffic to our website which is our main entry point to Lisk and our products. Also for SEO reasons we preferred to use our blog. In addition to this, having all content hosted in one place reduces significantly our work load.

I think the key here is make sure that our content is being shared outside our community as well. Therefore, we already started working with Hackernoon (as you might have seen already). We are now building our own page on Hackernoon by publishing our blog posts there to increase visibility and to make sure we share all the great content with a broader audience.

Steve G: Blockchain is once again a hot topic. Lots of giants starting pilot projects and working with consulting firms to get things going. Are there any efforts on how Lisk can be introduced to the big 5.

Monica: We think of ourselves as the gateway into blockchain which allows for an easy access to blockchain. As Marketing Lead, our current efforts are exactly to share and promote this sentiment which aligns with our main goal as a company.

For this, like I said before we focus on reaching out to everyone who is looking to build blockchain applications, we support them, and we create ways to incentivize them.

Regarding reaching out to enterprises; being here in Berlin and utilizing Lisk Center Berlin, we definitely plan to host events, organize use-case specific panel discussions, and to work with our local partners to not only attract developers to use our technology, but find the most relevant use-cases for Lisk.

MarkfromMiami: If we can't find people for HackOnLisk / Lisk Grant Program, can we hire them? It takes a few good projects working successfully in the blockchain to pull more in.

Monica: Definitely. You have a point there. For HackOnLisk specifically, we are currently working together with the DevPost platform not only to host our hackathon, but also to support our marketing efforts as well as guide participants more clearly. They have a great already-existing blockchain developer community.

We also created a dedicated Discord channel here on Lisk.chat to help people find a team to participate in.

Nguyen_Moon: What is the marketing plan for Core 3.0 once it is on mainnet?

Monica: We are continuously focused on highlighting the benefits of Lisk and attracting developers and users into our ecosystem. Lisk Core 3.0.0 on mainnet is definitely a big achievement for us, therefore our focus is now shifting towards marketing this milestone. We will put all our efforts into showcasing the improvements coming up with the mainnet release.

Futurewind: Are there any plans to "seduce" existing projects of other blockchain platforms to move over to lisk?

Monica: We are super proud that we have finally published our Interoperability solution at Lisk.js 2021 and we will now focus on its implementation.

We are always thinking of initiatives to incentivize developers to use our SDK, currently our efforts going to HackOnLisk, Lisk Grant Program which are great ways to showcase Lisk and our products. These are great incentives for developers to build within the Lisk ecosystem. Developers will be able to take great ideas from Ethereum, for example, and port them over into our ecosystem.

Romcsibacsi: Is there any plan to hire developers as contractors to build apps/games on lisk? I meant apps which are useful for the public and easy to use, with a cool look.

Monica: What we plan to do is to incentivize developers to build with the Lisk SDK through different grants and developer programs. In this way, we are trying to build a diverse series of blockchain applications that we consider relevant for the Lisk ecosystem in order to have a strong platform once the interoperability solution is implemented.

LeonGreene: During my travels in 2018 and 2019 in South America I noticed crypto being very popular there but most of them never heard about Lisk. Are there any plans for marketing to focus on these parts in the world?

Monica: We have noticed that our biggest audiences correspond to locations with a higher number of JavaScript developers. Germany, Poland, and the Netherlands are a few examples. Outside Europe, we see growth in the number of people engaging and using our products from the US, Japan, Korea, and India (not by any specific order). The South American market is definitely an interesting one to explore in the future. With our marketing efforts we are trying to reach as many developers and users globally.

JesusTheHun: How do you evaluate an application internally ? Do you have a scorecard ?

Monica: As you can see on the landing page for the Lisk Grant Program, we plan to select the applicants in 4 consecutive waves. We are going to receive applications each wave and we will select the best ones that fit the requirements, as well as our expectations. As I mentioned in my presentation at Lisk.js, we are now looking at more serious blockchain applications with a strong team behind, as well as a business plan with the intention to get further funding, so the selection process will be slightly different than for the Lisk Builders program last year. This time around we decided to have a committee (consisting of both members from Lightcurve and Lisk Foundation side) responsible for carefully evaluating the submissions. After a pre-selection process, we will be analyzing the submissions together. We will then decide which applications are valuable.

Monica: That’s it for today! Thank you everyone for all these great questions. It was definitely a pleasure to chat with you here.

I am very excited for all our upcoming marketing activities. We will make sure to look further into your suggestions. Don't hesitate to reach out to me with feedback and ideas.

Additionally, I would like to take this opportunity to remind everyone that our next Monthly AMA with Max Kordek, will be hosted on his YouTube channel live, on the 2nd of June, 6pm CEST.

Make sure to subscribe so you don’t miss the opportunity to Ask Max Anything.