Delivering an audience for the [Popular STEM] community

Here's an update on audience-building activities for the Popular STEM community.

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Introduction

As previously announced, I'd like to see the Popular STEM community become an "audience first" community. What I mean by that is that I want the community's first principle to be attracting an audience for our content creators. The reason for this is that I believe the Steem ecosystem will be most valuable for authors and investors if the content is attracting maximal human attention. This principle applies to me as a moderator, and also to the community members. If we're going to succeed or fail, we're going to do it together.

To date, I have announced several initiatives to move the community in this direction, so today I wanted to post an update on where things stand. In short, the audience building initiatives that I have announced so far include:

1. Sharing our posts on the Facebook page, Science and Technology on the Social Blockchain
2. Advertising our posts on Facebook
3. Providing 5 pinned post slots to give visibility to authors who burn rewards or promote their posts

If you are interested in Science, Technology, Engineering, or Mathematics (STEM) topics, and you'd like help building an audience for your blog, then please consider submitting your STEM-related content here.

In the spirit of, You get what you measure, today I'm going to provide an update on the Facebook aspects of the audience-building campaign. I will also introduce two new audience-building levers to attract more eyeballs for the best content in our community.

Facebook Sharing

In the last seven days, I shared 11 posts on our Facebook page. Those posts attained a total reach of 32 Facebook accounts. The post with the highest reach was The James Web Space Telescope does it again by @jorgebgt.

Accordingly, a beneficiary setting of 25% will be applied to today's post for @jorgebgt.

Facebook Advertising

This costs money out of pocket, so I can't afford to do a whole lot of it, but we are currently 19 days into an advertising buy. Overall, the boosted post has reached a total of 2,754 people and generated 332 link clicks - at a cost of $0.05 per click. This is down from $0.07 per click on day 4.

Requirements for sharing and advertising on Facebook

As previously mentioned, I'm sharing STEM posts from inside and outside the community, but our community definitely gets the first look. Frankly, I don't have much time to spend on this, so the easier it is for me to find a post, the more likely it is for that post to get shared. To be shared, posts must not be plagiarized, they must be written in English, and they should be 300 words or more. If a post has an opening summary sentence or paragraph that I can copy/paste straight into the Facebook post, that will probably increase its odds. Note that for sharing on Facebook, there is no #steemexclusive requirement.

For advertising, I will obviously be far more selective. In addition to the above requirements, the post probably needs to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 800-2,000 words on an interesting topic; it needs to be well-written in terms of grammar and spelling (in my sole judgment); and it needs to be #steemexclusive. At most, I might boost one post per month.

I am intentionally doing the Facebook shares near or after payout time in order to give the Facebook audience a reason to come to Steemit for earlier visibility of the posts.

Two new experiments

Proof of Resteem / Proof of Share

In order to provide still more eyeballs for our content creators, I'd like to introduce an incentive for people to resteem our posts - call it "proof of resteem" (POR) or to share them on Facebook (a new variant on "Proof of share" (POSH)). So, a 25% beneficiary setting will be applied to this post for @penny4thoughts to distribute rewards to people who resteem or share our posts. To be eligible, just do the following:

Proof of Resteem

1. Find a Popular STEM post that you think would interest your followers. (It can be before or after payout time)
2. Resteem that post (not this one)
3. Post a reply to this post with a link to the post that you resteemed, a screencap of the resteem on your blog, and a sentence or two describing the reason why you thought the post would interest your followers.

• Note that the replies must be posted at least 1 day before this post's payout time.

Proof of Share

1. Find a Facebook post that you think would interest your followers. (It can be before or after payout time)
2. Share that post (not this one).
3. Post a reply to this post with a link to the post that you shared, a screencap of the share on your Facebook timeline, and a sentence or two describing the reason why you thought the post would interest your followers.

• Note that the replies must be posted at least 1 day before this post's payout time.

I invite other curators to monitor these comments in order to add to the incentive for audience-growth.

Community labels in exchange for token burning

If authors in this community will burn 1 STEEM or the equivalent amount of SBD and let me know via Steem wallet transaction or tagging me in a post-reply, I will apply the label, "🔥🔥🔥" to their community profile for a period of one month. Note: These burns can be in the form of post promotion, @null beneficiary settings, or simple transfers of STEEM/SBD to @null. That amount is subject to change without notice.

Conclusion

Thank you for your attention.

In this post, I've described five initiatives to steer the Popular STEM community towards becoming an "audience first community". This includes, visibility services in the form of pinned posts for post promotion, sharing posts on Facebook, boosting posts on Facebook with advertising buys, incentives for sharing/resteeming our community's posts, and a new account label to signify inflation fighting - "🔥🔥🔥".

Edited to add: And I totally forgot to include our STEM Saturday post promotion initiative, so we actually have six audience-building initiatives under way.

If you are a STEM enthusiast, please consider contributing your STEM-related content here so we can all work together to build our audience. Also, if you have a telegram account, one of our authors - @sarahjay1 - is also sharing her content here, please consider following her and sharing her posts on telegram (however that works... ;-).

As a community, we succeed or we fail together, so let's get to work building our STEM topical audience!

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Thank you for your time and attention.

As a general rule, I up-vote comments that demonstrate "proof of reading".

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Steve Palmer is an IT professional with three decades of professional experience in data communications and information systems. He holds a bachelor's degree in mathematics, a master's degree in computer science, and a master's degree in information systems and technology management. He has been awarded 3 US patents.

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^{Pixabay license, source}

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