Note: This transcript was automatically generated by artificial intelligence (AI) and therefore typos may be present.
Rob McNealy
Today we’re talking to Jonathan Keim of CryptoCurrencyWire. And this is going to be one of my fun topics because I love talking about marketing. So let’s welcome the show. Jonathan, how are you today?
Jonathan Keim
I’m doing super good. So glad to be here.
Rob McNealy
Well, I appreciate you coming on the show today. So let’s get into this. So tell me a little bit about you. How did you get into working in this space?
Jonathan Keim
So it started with a love for the under Technology and when I realized that our larger investor brand network was really an ideal bridge to connect a very large segment of the mainstream audiences, to crypto and all the different things that allows us not been allowed before, whether it’s through technological challenges or you know, just orders whatever form they may take.
Rob McNealy
So, what would you What were you doing before this? How did you kind of get into the space in general, not just crypto, but you know, on the communication side of things, what was your background?
Jonathan Keim
So personally, it was actually computer repair. So working with technology was normal thing and I was studying to go to university or I was planning to I depends on how I guess I tell the story. There’s so much that went on in that year, but essentially, I decided Did not to go to the university because I was promoted to communications director. It was something that just kind of fell in my lap, but not because seeds weren’t planted. I’ve been trading stocks since I was 15 and a half. And I reached out to an organization with plans to sell some data. But instead, they offered me a job and things just took off so fast. And so in a way, with so many different similarities between crypto and equities market, it’s really meshing that previous background with what I do and communications, Investor Relations and public relations.
Rob McNealy
Well, you know, it’s interesting that you point out that, and I think this is something that’s changing, at least from you know, when I was your age, is that you know, used to be when I was growing up, is that people used to say how to go to college to get a good job. And that mantra was beat into me, you know, in the 80s and 90s when I was, you know, a student and I think a lot Lot of people get stuck in that. And then when I was growing up, there was actually a stigma about, you know, doing anything that if you can’t basically you couldn’t be successful if you didn’t have that little piece of paper. And it’s interesting as I got older is I find that so there’s so many success stories. And in fact, I find a lot more success stories don’t come out of that typical academic route. And that’s what I like hearing stories about, like what you’re doing and your path a little bit is that, you know, the quote, unquote, former traditional way to success really never was, and it’s interesting to me, just the more and more people I talked to, is that no, that’s not the path I took, and it’s worked out really well. So I’m glad we’re starting to break that kind of stereotype down. So tell me a little bit about your project. What do you what do you guys do?
Jonathan Keim
Sure. So cryptocurrency wire is just one out of 40 plus brands, and depending on who are servicing, we do different things. So I guess that’s always a difficult question to answer, I usually find out a little bit about who’s asking and then kind of go from there. But for the benefit of the show, it’s probably be a good idea to give a pretty broad overview. So starting with cryptocurrency wire, but we really do is allow crypto and blockchain brands to reach a lot of people without the challenges that you have faced with traditional marketing like Facebook ads. A lot of those gets shut down. With our underlying network wire. We can take a story and get it out on USA Today. Market Watch Dow Jones Factiva, lots of financial portals, but also lots of more consumer oriented news portals like Apple news. So you’re getting that direct reach to a very broad audience. But then on the crypto side, we have a very large following where the official Newswire of many of the largest conferences in the US and Canada and even in some of the International ones. So when we go to these conferences, if we’re not helping the enthusiasts, through help, I don’t know, again, it’s so hard to explain everything that we do. But for those that want the latest news and don’t want to depend on a reporter or get it, no second hand relate, and we’re great for getting that information to him very quickly, directly from those who are putting out the news. So it’s word for word accurate. But then also, for the innovators that have a message that they need to get out. They need that awareness to make sure that technology matters. We can put it in the hands of those crypto enthusiasts that will care about it, and then also inform the broader public as many of these technologies will affect them as well.
Rob McNealy
So it sounds like you perform a pretty standard, you know, public relations role. Do you think that you are a PR firm or do you think you are in lieu of a PR firm, so say I was a crypto project. Would you say that I would work with you if I wanted to do my own PR? Or would you say that I would tell my PR company to go use you guys?
Jonathan Keim
Yeah, the PR company would use us. The term that I’ve come up with is syndicated communications. So in addition to putting out the article in one place, it would go out to over 5000 different destinations. It’s syndicated. We don’t focus so much on earned media, although we do have about 400 crypto friendly journalists and reporters that we distribute the news to they could cover it. It’s not really that calculated effort with lots of personal relationships. And, you know, personally, that makes me feel a lot better. Because when you’re selling a service without guaranteed results, traditionally have, you know, a segment of unhappy customers because the story won’t take hold. Particularly in crypto, it’s getting harder and harder to get your story across. But since we have pre existing relationships with USA Today, Apple news and those other organizations that I mentioned, it’ll automatically post, not just when you have an announcement, but also in between your press releases, we can put out articles and editorial content to keep engagement and steady awareness in those different channels.
Rob McNealy
You mentioned earlier that you know, a lot of crypto projects and blockchain projects have a hard time getting the word out through things like Facebook. Can you elaborate a little bit on that? What do you mean when you say that?
Jonathan Keim
Yeah, so Google Facebook, many of them have outright crypto bands, or it’s very tough to get approved for any kind of marketing, surrounding you know, one of those keywords. As soon as you add that to your ad, it trips off of filter, and it may never go up.
Rob McNealy
Do you think they’re going to change that? Or do you think that’s just going to be a permanent thing? It’s kind of it’s kind of kind of interesting. To me with, you know, Libra and all that that on one side, they’re talking about building their own blockchain project, but then they’re banning advertisement from other blockchain projects. It’s almost kind of hypocritical. But that’s just me. Do you think that’s going to change? Do you have any insights on that?
Jonathan Keim
Well, I can only speculate like everyone else, but I feel for them, because a government is putting so much pressure on them to moderate the ads that they approve. And it’s almost easier just not to prove anyone than to really dig in and figure out because at the end of the day, they have employees that are tasked with the vetting process. And you know, humans make mistakes. There’s many that are new to their jobs. And it really creates a big liability for them. So I don’t really see that changing anytime soon.
Rob McNealy
So what you’re offering is really instead of trying to, you know, beat your head against the wall and try to trick or you know, persuade the the major social platforms out there to approve as you’re just saying they just don’t even bother go around and use the different network altogether that will actually get you in front of the people you want to be in front of.
Jonathan Keim
Yeah, that’s right. And I always go back to you know, why are we doing digital marketing and that is to create engagement. Now, we are very careful as far as Ico projects and other things, we don’t just let anything come through the door. So I you know, I always like to mention that, but to I forget what I was going to say, I just saw a phone call came in.
Rob McNealy
Okay, you know, it’s like, you know, Ico projects and vetting and things like that. Do you think that kind of world is dead? Are you guys still getting a lot of people you know, trying to do Icos and market them.
Jonathan Keim
We still get steady requests. We’re very well known because of all the different conferences we go to. And that signage continues in a bunch of different forms, even if you were to search For the conferences name, we would pop up. And so it’s just a steady stream of people finding out about us and wondering if we’ll work with them.
Rob McNealy
So conferences so I, you know, I organize little conferences Well, so what do you recommend for people not blockchain project for conferences? How do you suggest they market?
Jonathan Keim
So with conferences, you know, obviously, it’s going to be easier to get a crypto enthusiasts there. But you have to think beyond that if you really want to put on a strong show, especially because so many crypto and blockchain oriented conferences are going after the same target audience. And I guess that kind of reminds me with what I was going to say with digital marketing, you know, to really be successful, you have to be in front of the same people over and over and over again, and ideally in a credible way. And you know, we have a lot of different credible news organizations that are very well known, that help with making people feel comfortable. So when you stretch out beyond your target market, and they’ve never heard of you before. It sure helps a lot when they’re discovering you on sites that they are familiar with and they trust.
Rob McNealy
So instead of like crypto back alley.com, it’s not quite as authoritative I would guess, right?
Jonathan Keim
That’s exactly what I’m saying. Yes.
Rob McNealy
So what would you say, you know, a new crypto project, what would you recommend that they do first and foremost, to get the word out?
Jonathan Keim
So, we talked about this on the panel at World crypto con just a little bit. And I know that I’m going to circle the question just a little bit, but I think it’s important to have the right mindset before you even start. So I’m always looking at the restaurant that’s coming to town. You know, they do a lot of marketing before the ribbon gets cut. You know, you want to build up some You want people to be intrigued, okay, what what restaurants about to open, they should get coupons in advance, you know, all that stuff. And preparation should be done really well. And then of course, when they come, you don’t want your website to be halfway made, you don’t want coming soon sections. I understand that people want to look bigger than they are. And there are a lot of better ways of doing that, then, you know, having a bunch of curtains hanging everywhere. And and, you know, saying coming soon, but what you really want is a coordinated effort. You want to reach the same people over and over again, but in different ways. You know, if you’re always calling them, you know, that gets old, real quick, if you’re always emailing them that gets old real quick. But what you really want to do is create a system of self discovery and ongoing engagement to get the best results.
Rob McNealy
So, going forward, you know, you said that you No, like a PR firm might use you guys. So if someone comes to you and find you first before the PR firm, do you recommend a PR firm to them? Or you just say, Well, if you don’t have one you found us. That’s good. And we’ll work with you directly or do you prefer that a project might use a PR firm and act as it or you know, digital marketing agency act as kind of an intermediary between you and them?
Jonathan Keim
Great question. So, we do work with a lot of PR firms. Like I said, we don’t generally give recommendations unless we’re asked, a lot of our clients prefer us because we don’t have a long term contract. And the fees are quite low in comparison. So if you wanted to test something out, and this is one of the best things about cryptocurrency wire used to be with our other brands, it costs 25,000 a quarter just to get admission to the ball field. And most of our clients came through referrals and repeat business so it really wasn’t that difficult. expanding into the crypto currency market and not working with a lot of those that do have lots and lots of funds. Just because we want to see a few things shake out first, get better direction from the US government. You know, we’re generally more cautious. Obviously everybody takes risks with their business. But when it comes down to, you know, us versus a PR firm with us, you’re going to get that direct reach. We’re not begging journalists, we’re not depending on anyone to get that message out there. So a lot of times they just stick with our programs, you know, they’re putting out announcements whenever they want to reach beyond the choir. And you know, if they want to do more than that, we do have syndicated articles and other things. That’s generally where we start the discussion.
Rob McNealy
So you mentioned earlier talking about, you know, when you do work was, you know, earned media that there’s no guarantees, you know, typically, and what that means to people who don’t understand marketing speak is that In a traditional situation where you’re doing public relations, you’ll hire a PR firm and they’ll do pitches. And you pay these PR firms retainer on a monthly basis, but there’s generally no guarantee, you know, and unfortunately, sometimes the PR firms get no hits, and you’re out whatever that five or 10 grand a month or whatever they’re charging you and and that’s, that’s that’s a challenge and it’s frustrating and I think you kind of you know, mentioned this earlier that sometimes you get disappointed clients when they’re not getting any play into spending a lot of money. So with you guys with cryptocurrency wire here, what can you guys offer? Is there an actual guarantee that they’re gonna get some hits?
Jonathan Keim
Sure. So, you know, whenever we’re talking guarantees, I’m always hesitant because I always want to be telling the truth. And at the end of the day, if we’re depending on Yahoo Finance for one of our downstream partners, post news, we can’t really guarantee anything because we don’t own them. However, I can For the last thousand releases we’ve done where they posted it, odds are, they’re going to post yours too, you know, unless the system goes down or this or that I don’t see any reason why they wouldn’t. So I always point back to historical results as to what to expect in the future. managing expectations is part of keeping your clients especially when you’re doing your first blast. But just to kind of step through it. What happens first is the release goes out through their voice. Then we do a crypto news break, which is coming from our voice as a third party, or simply recapping their story. We’re doing a really short version of it with a link back to their release. That goes out to our thousands of syndication partners after it goes out to the other group of partners. And then we have our social media audiences that we continue to grow through the different conferences, and we have those 400 or so crypto friendly journalists that will also send it to which can just lead into further coverage after that for the next few days.
Rob McNealy
So the is always the big question with people working in the crypto world. Do you only take fiat? Or do you take crypto?
Jonathan Keim
We must certainly take crypto all the major one coin basis, the platform that we use to do so, what we don’t do is accept crypto and the project that we’re working with.
Rob McNealy
That’s kind of tricky. Yes. So I could go either way. I think if you go and think about it, right, you like, well, we’ll work with you, but we don’t like you your project. Give us someone else’s stuff. So let’s think about that one.
Jonathan Keim
Okay, well, one thing I would say just to add some context to it, you know, we work with a lot of publicly traded companies and some of them offer stock. And it really creates a we’re just gonna say conflict of interest. But yeah, introduces multiple different challenges. And of course, if you accept it at some point You’re gonna sell it. I mean, even if it’s 20 years from now, at some point, you’re going to sell it and it just adds a lot of complications to the taxes and on and on and on.
Rob McNealy
Oh, no, I’m just giving you a hard time I remember the Ico, you know, hysteria when a project would get in there, a cerium, or whatever, for the Ico and the few projects that were smart and actually cashed out to be out before the crash actually are doing really well. And those people, those projects that did that were actually given a really hard time by the community saying, Oh, you don’t believe in crypto and blah, blah, blah. But yet all the major projects that held they hold all their crypto from their Icos lost 90% of their value. So, you know, I always just kind of think back to that when the community gets, you know, gets people you know, in a bind. So, anyways, Jonathan, where can people find out more about working with you?
Jonathan Keim
Well, probably the website would be best cryptocurrency wired.com if you want to check out the other brands and How we connect projects with investors, go to investor brand network. com. And if you’re just looking for the latest news, Twitter is my favorite. You can find us at crypto. net, wire all one word.
Rob McNealy
Jonathan, thank you so much for coming on the show today. I really do appreciate your time. And I hope you have a great holiday.
Jonathan Keim
Well, thank you so much Rob. You too.