The success and growth of Steemit - My perspective on how we get there
The success and growth of Steemit
Let's start by asking the right questions
First, we would need to define what would count as the success of Steemit? Some people say that if the value of Steem will reach 10$ it will be it. Okay, then what would allow Steem value to go up?
Belief
The first thing that pops to my mind is belief and I think that we can all agree that it may be the most important aspect of the success of anything. Most people who use Steemit believe in it one way or another. Whether you create content to be rewarded for it or just sharing your ideas with the world, you need to believe that there will be someone out there willing to read it.
That brings me to my next point!
Content Consumers
It seems like most of the focus is directed to the content creators. The idea of a platform which allows you to share your own original content and be paid if people like it!? Amazing!
But there's one problem - While it may motivate the content creator, it won't have too much effect on the content consumer.
Before anyone jumps in and says "But there are curation rewards" - I think we would agree that not only do they not pay much (if you have low SP), it also motivates people to try and find successful posts rather than supporting content they like, it becomes a job. And yes, you are right, every content creator is also a content consumer, but most of the people are consumers and not creators, we could simply get into Facebook and see it.
With that in mind, what could we do to bring more content consumers to Steemit?
Motivation of content consumers
The idea of content consumers getting paid for liking content is nice but in reality... not that easy. Good news is people consume content anyway, we all consume content every day and we never get paid for it. We even pay for it sometimes!
That fact alone is enough for me to believe that people want to consume content. For me, that means that if a person will see Steemit as a "legit" source of content he will use the platform. But how can we make Steemit largely accepted by the world as a "legit" source of content? What would make people move from Reddit and Facebook to Steemit?
What about bringing their content to steemit?
Influential people and groups
Think about it for a second, if your favorite content creator would start creating content on Steemit, wouldn't that bring many of his fans to join Steemit? If for example, the most watched youtuber Pewdiepie (I think), decided to join Steemit and create exclusive content. That would bring thousands if not tens of thousands of new users to Steemit. Not only that, it will create a snowball effect of creators asking "what is this new thing called Steemit "X" joined?" and exponentially bring more users.
"Won't it be harder for us bloggers to shine when there would be influential people on Steemit?"
My friend asked me this when I told him about the idea. And after thinking for a second I answered back, wouldn't they come anyway if Steemit proves to be promising?
But how would we bring those influential people to Steemit?
Get Steemit into the consciousness of people
Most of the people I talked with about Steemit haven't heard about it until I mentioned it. Actually, I hadn't heard about Steemit until my friend introduced me to it.
"How could it be? Such a great idea that could change the internet... and no one I talk to knows about it!?" I thought to myself. Bringing influential people to Steemit... that's a great idea! But how would we bring influential people to Steemit when no one even heard about Steemit!? We need to get Steemit to the consciousness of people, or in other words, we need the world to know about Steemit!
How much attention can we get? Get ready for some math!
Let's assume that Steemit has 40,000 active users (I couldn't find any valid statistic). If after this post only 25% of those 40,000 would bring 2 people to join Steemit that would be 20,000 new users joining Steemit, 20,000 new users who could promote Steemit to their friends. That's a lot! but not enough to get the attention of people. Let's have a look at social media then.
The average person has 338 friends on Facebook - Let's take this number and multiply it by the 25% of active users. If those people will decide to share Steemit with their Facebook friends that would be 3,380,000!!! Even if we cut this number to 10% it will still be 338,000 people who the post reaches to. I don't know how many of those people will join Steemit but that could be a big number of people who will learn about Steemit! And that will be the beginning of getting Steemit into the consciousness of people. The amount of marketing power a big amount of people have is huge.
The power of making Steemit known to the world is first of all in the hand of its users! But how would an individual explain about Steemit to his friends?
Explaining Steemit to friends
A few days ago the "Steem Growth Forum" aired on MSP (Minnow Support Project server on Discord). My friend @rodeo670 was on the show and he shared his own experience trying to explain Steemit to his friends. He said that it wasn't easy to explain to them what Steemit was to people, and even after getting on Steemit they were really confused. Not only I had the same experience with some people, I was confused about Steemit myself when joining. That means we have to find a better way as a community to explain Steemit to other people.
And then I had an idea, the way I learned about Bitcoin, block-chain and a lot of other stuff. An animated video which explains Steemit in a simple way with animation. Actually, every time I have a problem understanding something I go to Youtube and search for an easy explanation video! Most of the times I find one, and they really do help me to understand it. The information is much easier to process when it's animated and played in front of us in the form of pictures. You get it explain in both visual and audio aspects, it is more interesting which may keep you watching, and more friendly to anyone who is getting bored easily.
I don't have any experience with animating or creating videos, but I do believe that out of the 40,000 active users on Steemit there are few who could make an awesome video and I'm sure that there will be people on Steemit who would help them to find the best way to transfer the information.
🙂Thank you for reading!🙂
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Leon, Very Interesting, informative and thoughtful post...i must say!!!
I suggest you should have included ((ned's id)) to the post.
Realistically...practically and eventually...no matter what all the Steemit users suggest (including me!...I did suggested couple of improvements...but you don't even get a Hmmmm!)...
In terms of Steemit Activities, increasing userbase or even Enhancing End User experience, like navigation or ease in functionality...it all goes to the developers...and things like...Can they do it? Will they do it ? Why do they need to do it ? & When will they do it, even if they are interested to!!! All these need to be agreed to, approved and most importantly the funds for these so called minuscule changes/improvements!!! ...
Besides, I still could not understand the need of the New Logo and the reason or a purpose behind this change in Logo...rather having two!!! Old & New !!! simultaneously...
So, I believe, its will all be extremely slow and very very gradual...till that time...existing users will have to sail through...the winds of turmoil, glitches, hiccups, DDOS attacks, Transaction broadcast errors. etc. etc. etc.
I understand we are currently 450,000+, but how many Active!? I wonder!!! Its just a Transition phase and we are beta, as of now !!!
Till then, hold on tight !!! :) :) :)
Much Love!!!
Thank you so much!
I hope @ned will really take a look at my post but the probability of that happening is low :P
I wish that the creative ideas of the community will be heard and we would all organize to make steemit grow!
Much Love back at you :)
Great post Lion! I totally agree that steemit need more exposure to the world. But I also think that steemit needs to bring more changes to the whole system. Right now it's like the Windows 98, a bit improved but still more to improve. I think your idea of making animated is really doable. They should put it at the welcome page for new users. Video explaining steem dollars, steem power, power up and etc. Or change it all to just one currency name but able to be perform all these function at the same time. I don't really know why they separate it out. It's really good writing lion! Keep it up.
Thank you buddy, appreciate the time you took to read and leave a comment :)
No prob dude :) Can't leave a good post unvoted
Yes your right its nice but in reality not that easy :) .. life is not easy all we have to do is try our best and don't give up.. :)
This post is about confronting reality not making it easy :)
Thank you for the comment!
Great post, @paps! I hope someone (or a group of someones) takes your idea/suggestion and runs with it. Hopefully we can get some easy explanation videos out there soon that really break it all down and make it easily digestible and understandable.
I've thought of this as well, and to be honest that kind of thinking is what has prevented me from telling several of my Facebook friends with huge followings (such as Jake Ducey, Kurshot Akyuz, Dusty Smith, etc.) about the platform.
But you're right, wouldn't these types of people naturally find Steemit on their own anyway eventually if the platform truly succeeds and blows up? So I guess I'll make a better effort to show these big names to Steemit, so that their followers can also start to pour into the Steemit community.
Thank you for a great comment man!
yes, but you shouldn't be afraid of competition, your content is great and it will keep improving. Think of those people who will join steemit and bring many readers with them. Potential readers for your blog :D
Competition is good for business they say :P
Thank you for the support again.
Hi there!
Interesting that I just spoke with you on "believing" in the platform, haha. And early today I also had a chat with God and jahova. I guess it's all about believe in the end ;)
Let me be so free as to answer one of your questions:
What would make people move from Reddit and Facebook to Steemit?
In my opinion it's the social factor. A big difference is that on Fb you got your so called 'real' friends. On Steemit and especially on Discord, you make new friends with overlapping interests. To me Fb feels way more like showing off. I honestly never got into reddit. It just seems boring, too nerdy to me. I find it very hard to spend time on there.
Anyways, I like how your mind works. How you flow from one subject to another, ending with the idea to make an animation. That always works for me too. Since I've been a kid, I have been interested in animation/ cartoons. Unfortunately I never really got into it. Tried my hand a little on Flash and made crappy, fun stuff with Paint and Moviemaker, haha.
Good thinking overall! Keep up the good work :)
Thank you, I really appreciate the comment!
Yes, you got your real friends on facebook but for the normal person that would actually be a "block" to share things. I think that people will follow their interests at the end and the more interests cross, there's a higher chance for them to go for that thing.
Thank you again for the comment and the kind words :P
Excellent ideas and very positive influential educational info. I appreciate the time that you took into this article and the numbers do speak for themselves, don't they? This is a very well written post and I believe that you are right in your approach. Thank you for taking the time to spell it all out in such a simple format for anyone to understand.
Thank you so much! I'm happy you liked the post :)
I really hope that this post will motivate people to be more active in the promotion of Steemit and as more and more people do it we could rise faster (together!)
@paps I like these types of contemplative posts about the success of Steemit. I am committed to the platform and would like to see it grow over time. Regarding your first point, on the perception of the value of Steem in $ terms; it would depend on a few factors (non-exhaustive):
It would be an interesting idea for content consumers to earn some 'points' for the number of visits to the Steemit platform, the number of posts that they view, the number of posts that they share with their networks, etc. without having the pressure to create any content. They may have language issues (some read & speak better than they write), time constraints, lack of creative stamina, etc.
For an audience that is constantly distracted, video content with some gamification element may be a good way to promote Steemit to a larger audience.
Thank you for your post!
I Agree with you!
But I choose one aspect of steem price value so I could have a smooth transition to the next point and as you can see each point on this article lead to the next with a question :) You are absolutely right that the value of steem has more than one element to it and it much more complex. I rather focus on how can we affect it as a community.
Thank you for a great comment! I really appreciate it.
You are welcome! Note: I discovered your post in the Promotions channel in Steemit Chat. So it pays to promote there!
I never rule out the options! I post it everywhere.
Though none of my posts reached enough people haha
Great post @paps!
I think the biggest problem is that consumers join steem because of the fact they can earn money. Imho I think the marketing of steemit goes the wrong way... We shouldn't try to get new users by baiting them with "You can get money by upvoting". It's the content and the community that makes steemit so awesome. First time steemit was introduced to me by a good friend, he showed me some real quality content. I was fascinated by the friendly community and the quality of the content (for me it were the great artists here on steemit) and the possibility to communicate with the creators. The financial part was just a big bonus, which i didn't fully understand at the begin of my steemit experience.
As creator myself I was happy about feedbacks and votes (no matter how less they weight) that I did not get on other platforms.
But that's just my point of view! :)
Upped and resteemed.
Have a nice day!
Thank you for resteeming and upvoting! and for a great comment ^^
I agree with you, there should be something changed with the marketing, that's why I also suggest that the community will take part in it. Eventually, we are the core of this place :D
Have a great day!
Thank you for the well structured post on the topic! The last point was already on my mind for witnesses, finally i decided to add a simple reminder in my signature. But hiring some talented people for marketing activities like this combined within a strategy would be great i think. This nice "explainit" Video (a more cool version) would avoid much confusion i think. But on the other side Steemit must deliver via UI and it should be a concerted action before publish the "how easy it is" video. But to attract people now, it could help to make such pitch to overcome hesitation of people to join. I'm strong supporter for visualization, it's one of the most powerful tools to get peoples attention and educate them.
Thank you!
The idea is not easy to explain and I think that the community could use this kind of entrepreneurial spirit of people willing to make explanatory tools. I'm also sure that tools like that could get trending really easy here on steemit. Win Win for all of us :D
Absolutely!
One of the unique things about Steemit is that the roles of "content creator" and "content consumer" are dynamic and fluid.
A person who comes mostly to read will become a "content creator" with a comment, and that comment has the potential to earn rewards. This is also, at its core, a social media platform, and all of the tags that encourage participation, such as #freewrite and #colorchallenge will keep people engaged with the platform even if they mostly come to read.
There is a very human element that is often overlooked, which is that people already spend hours a day browsing social media solely because they enjoy it so much that it has become a part of their daily routine.
In my opinion, the main motivator to encourage people to switch to Steemit will always be the ability to provide a superior user experience that will make someone enjoy this platform so much that they aren't able to put it down.
Thank you for the awesome comment :D
I agree that we need to keep that superior user experience but at the same time, we shouldn't forget that people will not reach steemit by themselves. In some way, the information about this platform has to get to them.
Many of the people, same thing on Facebook, are just consuming content. Some of them participate lightly like you said and some will become active content creators like us. I think that if we treat steemit as a social media and not just a blog list, It could actually bring more activity to the site.
Btw by saying "superior user experience" you reminded me about another thing I wanted to add to the post, the visuals of the site. The site is looking like a list and not appealing in my opinion. The first thing that a person who is entering the site should say is "WOW" and the second thing is "Ohh it's really easy to navigate". But the post is too long anyway :P
Thank you for the comment and support again!
Definitely, and I completely support actively getting the word out to bring new people in!