Corporate social responsibility is an important part of operating in any sector. As much as your business wants to make a profit from the people it serves, there is also the expectation that you give back in some way and help this community. Engaging in blockchain philanthropy can also be a gold mine for public relations that can earn you goodwill that will last for years.
While you should certainly do philanthropic acts with the good of others in mind, here are a few steps to get some good PR mileage from these efforts.
Publicize Your Blockchain Philanthropy
This goes without saying, but any act of blockchain philanthropy you undertake that the public doesn’t know about cannot be used to earn you any goodwill. As such, you should come up with a plan to publicize these acts even as you decide to engage in them. Say you decide to donate some money to a worthy cause following a recent natural disaster.
Rather than doing it and not informing the public, you can take steps to publicize this effort, whether via a blog post, a social media post, a video, and so on. This is especially true if other companies in your space are getting involved in this effort. The last thing you want is to have also contributed but appear to have been nonchalant due to a lack of publicity.
Strike A Balance And Be Tactful
While, as we said in our previous post, it is important to publicize your blockchain philanthropy efforts, some caution needs to be taken. Specifically, you shouldn’t publicize every single act of goodwill you undertake, as these will stretch your resources and can come off as disingenuous to the public. Instead, have a comprehensive list of all the philanthropic activities you’ve undertaken and decide which ones you want the public to know about. Ideally, this should be the most significant of your efforts, as smaller acts of charity can be left unpublicized.
If you still want to report on these smaller acts, you can put together a year-end report of your blockchain philanthropy that will cover everything. Also, it is worth being very careful how you craft the PRs and other publicity materials regarding the blockchain philanthropy. While you want to highlight what you’ve done, you don’t want to come off as excessively boastful or smug. A good idea would be to look at announcements from other companies in your field and see how they craft their PRs.
Put Your Name On It
One way to consistently generate helpful PR from your blockchain philanthropy is to create initiatives that can bear your company name. You could, for example, donate crypto learning equipment to underprivileged youth and call it a day. But a smarter idea would be to create a blockchain learning initiative named after your company that periodically gives these resources out. This means that you can have a consistent source of positive publicity and immortalize your company in this way. The same philosophy applies to creating visual evidence of your company’s goodwill.
There’s a reason why companies hold press releases where giant checks with their logos or given out. They could always make a money transfer, but it’s easier to generate publicity by holding an in-person event. So, try to schedule as many photo ops as you can and distribute these widely on your social media platforms.
If your company becomes a patron of a particular charity or goodwill organization, make sure your logos are featured at their events and displayed prominently on their websites. The philosophy is that whenever your company has invested in a philanthropic effort, it should be named and displayed in some way.
Partner with public figures
We’ve talked in the past about how influencer and celebrity marketing can take your blockchain PR to the next level. But the same can also be done for your blockchain philanthropy. If your company starts a charity initiative, consider bringing on a celebrity spokesperson for it. This will not only generate more attention from said celebrity’s audience, but your company will also benefit from the positive association with them.
As we’ve noted in the past, make sure that there is brand synergy between you and the celebrity. For example, you might want to choose someone who is known to be interested in tech or is very future-oriented. Besides this, do your due diligence to make sure they do not have any controversies surrounding them that can harm your efforts.
Do Spontaneous Acts Of Philanthropy
While some of the more structured ways to engage in blockchain philanthropy include setting up scholarships and making annual donations, you can also engage in small acts of spontaneous charity that can earn you goodwill from your community. For example, the company behind the Stanley Cup bought a woman a new car in 2023 after hers got burnt. This earned the company a lot of positive feedback from the community and helped to boost its profile.
As a company in the crypto space, there is ample opportunity to do this as well. You could, for example, randomly airdrop customers tokens or respond to people touching on their financial hardships online. While they should obviously not be done to excess, spontaneously doing nice things for people on a public platform like Twitter/X will likely make you an industry favorite and draw more attention to you in the long run.
Conclusion
Blockchain philanthropy is not just a way to make the world better but can be a valuable source of pr and goodwill. As we’ve noted in this article, leveraging blockchain PR essentially means drumming up as much publicity as you can about it within reason.
Letting the public know what good you have done, teaming up with appropriate public figures, having your name and logo featured, and a few unplanned acts of philanthropy will go a long way to shape your business’s public image as a socially conscious and forward-thinking enterprise.