An Unlikely Project Update
We haven’t really be active on bitcointalk regarding our project updates, and we did promise full transparency. A large chunk of content in this post is going to be copy/pasted from our
Medium blog. You should follow us there, I like to think that the content that I provide on Medium is pretty damn awesome. Well, here goes!
DevelopmentOur team of developers has been very, very busy since we started working on the Soniq Project. They’re our favorite bunch of rockstars who never fail to deliver!
We promised that our Swap Platform will be up and running by June 1st and, although we got worried for a brief moment that we’re gonna flunk out on our first promise, we managed to meet this deadline. We’re all proud on this, because we know how important it is for a startup to keep their promises.
Here’s an in-depth look of what our developers managed to achieve (we’re proud of you, guys). Beware, though, lotsa boring stuff here for the non-programmer, but I promise it gets more interesting after this list:
-User register, login, edit password, password reset, and timestamp for profile creation
-Users can add and edit ETH address
-Users can join newsletter on register
-Emails are validated on user registration
-Swap statistics are live and public
-FUNK address is generated transparently with unknown private key. Pub key available on request
-Swap Platform swagger API specification is up-to-date and public
-Database has a live backup
-We’re listening for transactions from blockchain and store them in DB
-We have a procedure for database recovery from live backup
-We have a procedure for recovery from primary server failure
-We send an email on each transaction received
-Everything has been deployed to production, tested and polished
-We are continuously looking for improvements and fixing bugs when observed
-We’re preventing DDOS attacks and increasing overall security
-We’re adding more data validation upon insert and thus making the application more robust (see how they used “thus” here. Cute.)
-We’re fixing various edge-cases with our algorithm working with FUNK client
-We’re setting up the staging environment
-We’re fixing our deployment procedures and processes
-Our website is GDPR compliant
-We’re continually making minor UI improvements
-Staging environment is up and running! From now on, our updates will be much better tested and validated.
-We’re working on a big update for our algorithm for communication with the FUNK client. The biggest pending improvement will be automatic recovery from FUNK client failure. We want to be extra safe, just for you guys!
-We made some UI improvements, for overall better user experience. We want you to feel as comfy as possible on our website, as well as on our Swap Platform.
-We’re working on adding the Google Translate plugin! When we’re done (soon), you’ll be able to read the clumsy translations from Google in your own language! Expect it to show up, right in the top right corner on our website.
-We’ve improved our maintenance mode because we care about you and want your confidence. Now you can see when we’re working on something, so you don’t have to worry.
-We are working on improving our automatic emails.
-We've done some research about our new Ethereum certifications. You’ll be able to see these in action over the course of the following weeks.
MarketingMake no mistake, our marketing team were quite the busy bees too! They managed to launch our name all across the internet and they deserve a round of applause for it!
Anyway, here’s what this bunch of pros were up to:
-We made a Facebook page campaign in the form of a split-test. Essentially, the goal was to test which approach resonated better with our audience: the serious, more professional tone, or the light-hearted, witty one (can you guess which one was more fun to come up with?) Interestingly enough, the results indicate that both worked equally well on our target audience. Most peculiar, indeed…
-The second Facebook page campaign was directed at generating more “Likes’ for the sake of reach extension of our posts and with the goal of strengthening our credibility for our audience, and for you, as our community. We do, in fact, mean business! So far, this campaign has shown excellent results!
-We created another Facebook campaign (come on, you didn’t think we’d stop at two, now did you?), this one focusing on people landing on our webpage. The goal here was increased visibility, but, more importantly, getting a better understanding of people who are interested in Soniq, so that we can adapt our future marketing campaigns (we don’t want to spam people who aren’t interested in what we do).
-We reached out to the admins of a number of Facebook groups, asking for permission to post there.
We uploaded our explainer video. It is now officially live on
YouTube!
· We shared our explainer video on social networks with some success. Research has shown that videos are the best way of bringing a product closer to your audience in an online campaign. I wonder why. What is it, reading’s too hard for you? Well, if it is, you probably aren’t reading this anyway. Depressing…
We also managed to start an ad campaign with our video (using the ‘boost post’ option), despite encountering issues on account of Facebook being crypto intolerant. Phew, dodged a bullet there…
-We started setting up a larger marketing campaign going through several channels.
-We created the
Soniq’s Instagram account that is, as of now, still empty (and lonely). On Instagram, we will feature semi-regular updates from our team so that our community can get a sense of the atmosphere in our offices on a normal work day.
Expect humor whenever I’m there. Which is a lot. So expect a lot of humor.
-Additionally, we’ve reached out to several media outlets that will hopefully help us publish Soniq-related articles, just so that I can bore you to death there, too! Exciting!
We are still waiting for answers regarding this, but we do hope that this will become a logical and simple channel of communication with the crypto community.
-Oh yeah, and we’ve been keeping busy brainstorming alternative marketing methods (crypto conferences anyone?)
-Spreading the word:
Shared our mission and vision article with the world via social media, so far with awesome
feedback. But you should already know this, it’s all in our
Medium blog article here. Still not following us here? I take that as a personal insult!
-Instagram:
Our Instagram campaign also took off and we’ve slowly started adding content to our account
In order to bring you guys closer to our offices... and to our hearts. At the moment of writing this there is only a single photo posted, featuring a wise manager and a handsome, tall, long-haired dude (yours truly).
We’ve also created an office competition for the best Instagram content creators and boy, did it get us snapping away. We are considering extending this to our community in the close future, so keep an eye out!
-Research, research, research:
We’ve been testing out different approaches to marketing and trying to get as much feedback
from the community as possible. We’re sorry if we’re boring, but this is something we’ll keep doing extensively in the coming period, in order to create a product that you, as a community will fall in love with.
Of course, every interaction, suggestion and feedback is much appreciated.
-Keeping our Twitter, well, tweeting… is it “twitting”? No, I think it’s “tweeting”:
After investing a ton of time and effort, our Twitter has finally taken full swing. At the time of writing this, we’ve gotten over 1k followers that we update with our regular updates and posts. This is a great starting point for anybody trying to get in our community, without all the… you know, commitment... yuck...
-Campaign optimisation: Using different metrics we’re trying to find the optimal communication
channel to reach as many people as possible. So far, social networks have had great results,
some worse than others (looking at you, Facebook). However, all of them have felt great organic
growth in the last month, especially Twitter (who’s a good boy!)
-Updated our Bitcointalk post:
Okay, so we know that the lot from BCT needs ‘special’ attention, so we’ve basically condensed and rewritten all the updates on Medium, squeezing them into a single post. You can find this post on our
official thread.We call this plan: “No Soniq fan left behind”.
CommunityThe Swap Platform
Yep, the Soniq Swap Platform has been up and running ever since June 1st. You can keep track of the swap process on
our website! We’ve also prepared a tutorial for the Swap Platform, which you can check out
here.
Now, here’s some statistics:
-Facebook: 1,700+ likers (?), 150+ likes over the course of the previous week
-Twitter: 1,100+ followers, completely organic growth!
-Instagram: 120+ followers in a mere couple of days.
That about sums it up for now. As you can see, we’ve been very busy. I suggest you follow us on Medium for future updates and for other content that I hope you’ll find interesting. Oh, and feel free to join our community on
Discord!
