[Grant Application] ICX Comics: a visual tutorials and ICON blockchain promotion in social media

1. Title

ICX Comics: a visual tutorials and ICON blockchain promotion in social media

2. Project Category

Community Activities
Ambassador activities, public relations, meetups, educational content and activities, and web community development and management

3. Project Description

This proposal aims to recommend strategies to create ICON tutorials and promote it in social media. The unique format will help to attract more new potential users to the ICON ecosystem.

We have already developed one comic “Why you have to stake ICON?” - https://twitter.com/ICXcomics/status/1224636264118394881 and created Twitter (ICXcomics), Instagram (ICXcomics), Medium (ICXcomics) & Reddit accounts for the ICX Comics.

This proposal centers on publications one visual tutorial (ICX Comic) every two weeks. Every comic translates or explains the ICON’s technical documentation, developments, news and other to a compelling visual narrative. We think a comics that can be adapted to multiple formats, even animated scenes or fully animated videos could provide the perfect channel to reach a broader audience, the younger generation and those who prefer visual information platforms such as YouTube or Instagram over text-based ones like Medium and Twitter where the ICON community has already doubled up its presence.

For every comic, we plan to run a promotional campaign on social media:

  • In Twitter, the best way to catch new users - run targeted ads, a choice audiences with special keywords.
  • In Medium - create a long read with deep explanation, visual examples, and tutorials
  • In Instagram - targeted ads in stories, more fun and more interaction users in such great tools like Instagram stories.

As all comics have a specific format - large pictures with text - we will create a web site where all users will be able to look at all comics in a big resolution. The web site will be in ICON`s style and to keep users on the site longer we will add tutorials and more information about Icon blockchain.

Icon’s developers are doing amazing work and creating new exciting solutions with the Korean market, DID, Dapps, etc. But there’s much more to be done and this means more coding hands are always desired. To bring more people into the project, we need to reach further.

Instagram is becoming the most used social media platform. Moreover, YouTube is the preferred social network by the younger generation.

According to the latest stats published by the Pew Research Center about social media usage, Facebook (69%) and YouTube (73%) are the most widely used online platforms among U.S. adults. Instagram is used by 37% but has shown the most growth in the last 3 years. Twitter is lagging behind with just 22% and has declined since 2018. Among 18-to-24-year-old Instagram’s popularity has reached 75% and YouTube is leading the way with 90%. Twitter usage among this age group is at 44%.

Social media presence on Instagram, Twitter, Reddit, and most messaging platforms is a must. The ICX comics and its derivatives present an opportunity to widen the ICON’s reach and explore how visual communication can help explain cryptocurrencies, blockchain technology and how decentralized governance works.

What does the community get?

A web site with information about ICON, ICON`s tutorials and every two weeks comic. We will also coordinate translations, designs, work towards expanding the comic towards new formats as needed and distribute the comic in every social media platform we can. We are planning to publish on Twitter, Instagram, Medium, Reddit, messaging platforms like Telegram and promote it.

We have already developed comics about:

  • Why you have to stake ICON?

We will develop several comics explaining issues like:

  • How to get started with an ICON?
  • How to choose and vote for the best P-Reps?
  • Inside ICON. Consensus, SCORE, BSI
  • All that you were afraid to ask about ICON
  • Build Dapps on ICON Blockchain
  • ICONstitution and Governance
  • How to work with ICON Products (ICONex, ICON Tracker, DID, ICONick)
  • Roadmap and ICON plans

P.S. The community can suggest or add ideas to Theme for visual tutorials - ICX Comics

Between weekly comics publications, we plan to publish a variety of information directly related to the ICON blockchain, you can find an example of such posts on our Twitter account - ICXcomics

Our first comic collected 28 400 impressions on Twitter, more than 500 profile visits and 97 followers without promotion.

4. Project Duration

Comfortable time for creating one visual tutorial (one comic) will be near 5-7 days, so as we mentioned before - better to post new comics every one-two weeks. We plan to create 8 comics.

Project Duration - 3 months

5. Project Milestones

Milestone 1
Web site creation: 20 man-hours
Comic#1 - How to get started with an ICON?: 24 man-hours
Comic#2 - How to choose and vote for the best P-Reps?: 24 man-hours

Milestone 2
Comic#3 - Inside ICON. Consensus, SCORE, BSI: 24 man-hours
Comic#4 - All that you were afraid to ask about ICON: 24 man-hours
Comic#5 - Build Dapps on ICON Blockchain: 24 man-hours

Milestone 3
Comic#6 - ICONstitution and Governance: 24 man-hours
Comic#7 - How to work with ICON Products (ICONex, ICON Tracker, DID, ICONick): 24 man-hours
Comic#8 - Roadmap and ICON plans: 24 man-hours

6. Funding Amount Requested

Each comic involves research, scripting, storyboarding, digital and graphic design, distribution in social media and promotional campaign. While the workload differs from comic to comic it could be rounded to:

Research: 3 man-hours ($20 per hour); $60
Scripting: 2 man-hour ($20 per hour); $40
Storyboarding: 2 man-hours ($20 per hour); $40
Digital and illustration design (+adapting): 12 man-hours ($35 per hour); $420
Posting on social networks: 1 man-hour ($20 per hour); $20
Customization ads campaign (banners and ads examples creation): 1 man-hour ($20 per hour); $20

Ads budget (Targeted ads in social media) 3 man-hours; $50
Team: 1 Designer, 1 Writer, 1 SMM manager
Time: 24 man-hours
The total budget for one comic: $650

Other expenses:

Web site
Design and Frontend: 20 man-hours ($30 per hour); $600

Total project budget - $650 * 8 = $5200 + $600 = $5800 (=13 909 ICX; 1 ICX = $0.417 )

7. Official Team Name

Product design for blockchain companies

8. Team Contact Information

Telegram - t.me/geek_block

Twitter (ICXcomics),
Instagram (ICXcomics),
Medium (ICXcomics)
Reddit (ICXcomics)

9. Public Address

hx2a33427cf358a7d02d15098106123bd450909c04

Hi team :slight_smile:

Like the proposal gone through, as you said you will be using Targetted ads to reach out the audience om social media.

Have seen your comic post on Twitter. Can you illustrate how much was the reach after Targetted ads on this post ? Any numbers specific about this ad (whether you run any ad for that post or not)?

Hello, thank you for your comment
For the first comic that we posted as a test, we don’t launch the targeted ads campaign.
We create account and started our SMM activity from scratch. All our post and one comic gives incredible activity

Tweet impressions - 32 300
Profile visits - 602
Mentions - 26
Followers - 101

This result without any ads, just because pictures look cool and have an idea and scenario.

The targeted campaign can bring many more users, 50 000 - 500 000 as an example. All depends on budget and campaign settings (keywords, lists, etc)

Awesome idea, keep going guys :partying_face: :partying_face:

1 Like

Hi team:

Thank you for your response.

Orgnic figures seems pretty impressive as it’s just starting of the project.

Have used facebook ad compaigns and can say it will be very cost effective.

Keep going and growing guys. :slight_smile:

1 Like

I like these comics. Sent you a DM on telegram

1 Like

looks very cool, go on

1 Like

Thank you, my friend :innocent:

Review Result Comments

Review Result

Approved

Review Comments

In general, serializing good quality comics on social media is highly popular. The ICON Foundation believes this is a good opportunity for our community and expects a good quality outcome. ICON Foundation will only cover 3,000 USD of costs because we would like to be more involved and help with content. We encourage other P-Reps that are passionate about this project to contribute to this grant. Please include us in content development. Follow up with ricky@icon.foundation.

Reporting Period

Grant recipients should produce Periodic Reports in order to continue to receive grant funding. If the Periodic Report is showing that the initiative is not meeting expectations, the ICON Foundation has the option to halt continued funding. Please check the link (ICON Community Grant Program (“ICON CGP”)) and leave reports on this page (https://forum.icon.community/c/g/pr)

The team must submit the Periodic Report by the timeframes below (UTC):

  • 2020/03/26
  • 2020/04/25
  • 2020/05/25

Funding Amount

The ICON Foundation is going to give out $3,000 in 4 installments based on the Periodic Report. The amount of ICX will be determined and paid according to the price at 00:00 on the day of payment.

  • 2020/02/25 - $750
  • 2020/03/27 - $750
  • 2020/04/26 - $750
  • 2020/05/26 - $750
2 Likes

Thank you for your trust.

Look forward to helping on this! Thanks for your efforts!

1 Like