The lives of marketers were beautiful until blockchain PR came. From running a marketing campaign without intense time pressure and insane competition, to releasing a few PR articles on a daily basis, focusing on dozens of different social media platforms and communities. All of this while looking for ways to overcome the lack of confidence people have in blockchain projects. In this article, I will tell you the untold story of how traditional PR shifted to online marketing and how the blockchain industry required its own unique strategy. Over the last three years, I have worked with dozens of blockchain companies helping them to raise millions of dollars and successfully complete their ICO/IEO/STO. Traditional PR: Traditional PR was used before the internet era. A few examples of traditional PR would be: word of mouth, telemarketers, radio, television ads, posters, banners, etc… Nowadays, traditional marketing refers to any type of promotion that has a proven success rate. Even with traditional PR seeing a decline in the last few years, it’s still a great way for companies to reach their local audience, whilst allowing larger businesses to expand their brand. Digital PR: The internet opened new ways for PR agencies to promote their clients on a scale they couldn’t imagine before. Companies could display ads at the houses of the clients, inside their computers. Sites like Google and Facebook built great platforms for marketers to promote their clients and run measurable ad campaigns. For the first time in history, a business could know that there’s a high chance of receiving a $1.2 return, on a $1 investment. In the traditional PR world, nothing is guaranteed. You could pay $100k for a commercial on TV that will get you no sales, and another commercial could generate $300k in returns. The uncertainty and the high costs of traditional PR made many businesses avoid the risks and high costs that are involved. That’s why digital PR became so popular. Many businesses who would never imagine of investing in traditional PR, suddenly started running ads campaigns on Google and Facebook. Blockchain PR: With the rise of cryptocurrencies, many new projects joined the blockchain ecosystem. The way ICOs fundraising was designed was that each project had a limited amount of time to raise funds. In addition, the largest social media platforms out there announced they wouldn’t allow ads related to cryptocurrencies on their platform. The high competition, time pressures and the ban by social media helped to shape a new PR approach: Blockchain PR. When I first got into blockchain I immediately noticed how digital PR is not 100% suitable for this industry. It felt like a combination of traditional and digital PR. Companies try to target many different social media platforms, but because of insane time pressure, they couldn’t measure the impact of their campaigns. Blockchain companies have spent enormous amounts on marketing with the sole purpose of creating a lot of buzz in the crypto community and with the hope that it will drive investors into their ICO/IEO/STO. The result: Companies were producing poor content that gave no value to the readers. The majority of the companies didn’t reach their fundraising target. After many ICOs fooled their investors and disappeared with the money the ICO bubble burst. Those actions destroyed the confidence of investors in blockchain projects. That’s when I saw an opportunity. I began working on developing unique ways to run effective blockchain PR campaigns and came up with a few conclusions: Down to Earth:  In Blockchain PR, projects need to stop talking about how great they are and how they will change the world. Instead, they should be honest with their community and investors, share with them the progress and even difficulties of the project. Distribution:  One of the advantages of the blockchain world is the number of active communities with crypto enthusiasts. On Steemit, Reddit, and BitcoinTalk companies can find thousands of potential investors and people who might care about their company. The goal is to know how to push content Blockchain PR articles in those communities in a way which wouldn’t be considered spam, whilst giving value to the community members. SEO:  Many blockchain companies fail because of a lack of understanding when it comes to SEO. When a company spends high amounts on PR they should think about three things: Does this content have a chance to be ranked? If so, in which search term? Does this content help my company to grow its brand? Does the content give value to the readers? If so, are they likely to share it? Keep in mind that Marketing is expensive and your budget is not endless. When you involve SEO strategy in your blockchain PR, you increase the chance that your content will drive traffic to your site weeks/months after the article was published.