Katalyzers Spotlight: Jason (dYdX Foundation)

Jason is an OG member of the Kaito Katalyzers community. This series highlights our top power-users, showcasing their diverse backgrounds and how they utilize Kaito.

Q: Can you briefly introduce yourself and your professional background?

A: In 2018, I landed myself a role in sports marketing, where I managed socials, predominantly Twitter, for a sports TV broadcaster.

I started investing in crypto in 2019,  and spent a lot of time during that year learning the ins and outs. Eight months down the line, I met someone who had just started a crypto project and was looking for a social media manager—that’s how I began my full-time career in crypto.

Eventually I got headhunted by Binance and spent over two and a half years growing their Twitter and Facebook accounts and working with high-level partners, including Cristiano Ronaldo.

In June this year, I decided to join the dYdX Foundation team as the Senior Social Media Manager, where my role now involves a lot more than just creating content and posting on social media - I focus a lot of time onboarding and managing KOLs as well as devising marketing strategies that promote growth in other areas of the business.

Q: What metrics do you consider when evaluating social media campaigns?

A: The main metrics I focus on are impressions and engagement; however, Kaito’s market share and sentiment metrics are also crucial to follow as they help us understand how we’re performing against competitors as well as showing us how people are discussing and interacting with the brand—this ultimately helps us craft a social media strategy that caters to our audience.

Q: How does tracking metrics at DYDX differ from Binance?

A: The main difference is the amount of data that we focus on. We aim to understand exactly what content resonates with the audience and identify the most important topics. At dYdX, we’re much more calculated with our content, leveraging tools like Kaito to track competitor and brand conversations so that we can build content that falls into those categories.

Q: How has DYDX’s content strategy evolved since you started?

A: Initially, we followed a broad approach similar to what I implemented in past roles. But as we gained deeper insights into the audience and brand, the focus shifted more toward product-specific content. Now, we’re more attuned to what the audience genuinely cares about and tailor our strategy accordingly.

Q: How does DYDX promote its products? Do you rely on educational content or something more advanced?

A: It’s all about producing high-quality content that clearly outlines the unique selling points of each product. For example, on DYDX staking, users can get up to 30% APY*, so we make sure that we’re timely in highlighting these moments through high-quality informative content. We also channel our focus on educating users about what’s coming up in the pipeline for dYdX, with a main focus on the dYdX Unlimited release, which will be a huge moment for the ecosystem and will include things such as Permissionless Markets, an Affiliate Program, MegaVault, and much more. Feel free to read more about the upgrade here: https://dydx.exchange/blog/dydx-unlimited-coming-this-fall 

Q: Can you walk us through the process of designing a marketing campaign?

A: The first step is identifying the purpose of your campaign - Why are you running this campaign? What does success look like? Who is the target audience? Secondly, it would be aligning the campaign with your brand identity. Users need to see the campaign and immediately know that it’s a campaign driven by you and aligns with your key values. Lastly, you need to look at historic data to see what has performed well in the past and dial in on how you could use those levers to come up with a creative campaign that produces a high conversion rate. Executing a successful campaign isn’t easy, and brands really need to understand their audience before creating a go-to-market plan.

Q: How do you create viral content? Are there specific strategies?

A: It’s hard to predict what will go viral, but certain factors can help. A strong KOL strategy, thoughtful content structuring, and a clear value proposition are key. For example, the Cristiano Ronaldo lie detector campaign that I worked on at Binance involved careful planning and ended up performing exceptionally well. We broke down the content strategy into phases, starting with a series of high-quality teasers, which led nicely to the main content that included a clip strategy that drew the attention of users across multiple channels, most importantly TikTok and Instagram, where a large non-crypto native community were untapped.

Q: How do you choose which KOLs to work with?

A: We focus on KOLs who genuinely care about the brand and want to build long-term partnerships rather than one-time promotions. We shortlist KOLs who are relevant to the target audience—whether it’s DeFi or perp traders—and then work with them to understand how we can build a relationship that suits both the goals of dYdX and the KOL. The strength of the relationship KOLs have with their audience is a key consideration for us too. 

Q: Has the type of content that performs well on social media changed over time?

A: Absolutely. Educational content, such as threads and infographics, used to perform the best, but now we’ve seen a shift towards more creative short-form video content. It’s quite evident now that video content is taking over with TikTok and IG reels surging in popularity over the past few years, so it’s important for projects to consider short-form video over anything else when it comes to promoting their products.

Q: How do you keep your content fresh, especially with formats like threads becoming less effective?

A:  I’d say this ties back to what I mentioned earlier about understanding your audience and building out a content plan that resonates best with them. Kaito has actually been a super helpful tool in identifying these content pillars, as we can see what people are talking about the most. We also use the copilot tool to identify what people are talking about in DeFi and perps specifically - a lot of our content is tailored around the data we receive from these searches as well. Once we know what people care about, we can get creative with how we want to build it into content; for example, if there’s a certain token that has recently been listed on dYdX that the community is bullish on, we’ll focus heavily on promoting that market through a series of our best performing post types (statics, memes etc.).

Q: Are you planning to expand to platforms like TikTok and Instagram?

A: Yes, definitely. Attracting the non-crypto native audience is an important goal for dYdX, and I believe that pushing out creative, easy-to-digest content on those channels is the best way to do so. However, at the moment, we’re still very much focused on optimizing existing channels, but you can expect to see dYdX on TikTok and Instagram soon. Stay tuned!

Q: What are the biggest mistakes you see crypto brands making on social media?

A:  A big one is inconsistency. Some projects have great use cases but fall short on being consistent with their content. By that, I mean they’re either not posting enough or not posting enough of what their audience really cares about, which can lead to a disengaged community. In my opinion, social media and community are the key to success for any crypto project, and neglecting them can be detrimental. Another common mistake I see crypto brands make is post formatting and language - a lot of big crypto brands overuse emojis and write in language that can be perceived as financial advice, making the brand look unprofessional.

Q: How do you use Kaito in your day-to-day work at DYDX?

A: We spend a lot of time monitoring mindshare, not just for dYdX but for competitors and even projects listed in dYdX. We’ve set up specific categories to monitor how dYdX compares against competitors and created a category for all the tokens currently listed on dYdX so that we can monitor which tokens are the hottest and where there is opportunity for creative marketing. The co-pilot tool has also been a game changer, allowing us to get detailed insights on projects for reporting and building out the marketing strategy.

Q: How do you see crypto marketing evolving? Will it become more like traditional marketing or will crypto marketing continue to have its own niche?

A: I think crypto marketing will always be unique. It’s a very different space compared to traditional marketing. There’s a niche skill set required to truly understand the crypto audience, and I don’t see that changing. The industry is moving in a positive direction, and I believe that it will always be unique and require specialized talent to market it effectively.

Q: If you could change anything about crypto marketing, what would it be?

A: I’d like to see less focus on shilling and more emphasis on the tech and building aspects of crypto. The space is incredibly innovative, but people often get caught up in the opportunities to make a quick profit, which can often lead them to get burned pretty quickly. Shifting the narrative towards educating users about the technology as opposed to the potential gains of being an investor could make a big difference.