Help! Why is it so hard to recruit new active users to Steemit!
I'm banging my head against the wall here! I've finally got through to a few friends and family about steemit and got them through the account creation process, only to have them not pursue it any farther.
Months ago was my first success when I convinced my business partner Eli @ejr to make a steemit account. I spend hours with him walking him through the process, helping make his first post, navigating the platform. Heck he even has a vested interest since we're taking part in the creating the steem silver round with everyone, and we accept steem as currency on our website. I used to have to tell him exactly what was happening on the platform. Now he's starting to invest in crytocurrencies as well and I've told to come aboard here and try to get more education about everything. Not to mention most my cryptocurrency investments are coming from post payouts and money I've earned on Steemit.
Most recently I was successful in getting my cousin @jeremychalut to sign up for an account. He's been talking about blogging for longer than I've been here. He recently made huge lifestyle changes from being fat to losing like 100 lbs, experimenting with different diets, fasting, keto, paleo and now he's a vegan. He's really passionate about these things and loves sharing it with everyone. He's started meditation and he's studying frequency waves. He's got some many interests he wants to share and blog about. He made a post and a few comments but also he hasn't really started much.
(That's the photo in his first post)
My family and wife and co-workers are starting to be curious, since I've been excited about the post payouts recently, but no one is currently even considering it.
Even the other day I found out my financial advisor who's really starting to take an interest in cryptocurrencies made a steemit account and thinks steem has a promising future, but doesn't think he i's going to start blogging.
I do remember finding it hard at first, but not impossible. I've offered to hand hold all these people, walk them through everything, promote their content, help them build a following, delegate to them, help them plan their blogs and content. But nothing is helping.
I do honestly think @jeremychalut may start, but I've pretty much given up on @ejr.
What am I doing wrong?
What has worked in the past or for you guys to motivate people to get into steemit. I know @mattclark seams to have signed up almost 18 new users with his Christmas tree promotion. I'm passionate about steemit, I love the community, the people, the learning. It's been so amazing to open my eyes to the future of blockchain technology. The fact this platform and investing in cryptocurrencies could possibly help me actually achieve some financial freedom.
I want to be able to share this opportunity with people that are close to me.
I'm looking for advice and suggestions. I know it's hard to motive people, I understand that, but some like @ejr and @jeremychalut have expressed interest, their already here. How can I help them along, since nothing I'm doing so far is working. If I can help them start and show that it's works them maybe I can then finally motivate my family and other friends as well. I'm sure a few of you out there have managed to convince and help a few friends along the way.
Please leave me any advice, suggestions or tips you may have. I'd really appreciate it.
Footer by @bearone
It’s too good to be true. I’ve yet to get anyone to sign up. I get the usual questions. Where’s the money come from? It is hard initially once you sign up. There’s so much to figure out and I’m sure it’s intimidating. It was for me and still is.
I still haven't figured out where the money comes from? I found it very hard at first but you learn something new every day on steemit I think it just takes a while getting into the swing of it. And when your first few posts only make a few cents each it's disheartening but your confidence soon grows along with your account. I'm off to figure out where the money comes from I feel suddenly stupid lol, does Steem just have value because people believe it has value! :-)
Yes, the value of a currency is based solely on the support and demand and the bid/ask priced on the open market. As for where it comes from, new steem is added at a set rate everyday and distributed as post rewards, this is often refereed to as the "reward pool" and why you see constant fluctuation to post payouts as it is always re-balanced against other peoples rewards. Why some say some users are 'draining the reward pool', hope that helps.
It takes a while to sink its hooks in.
Its easy to assume I've always been like this, but around this time last year I stopped posting for 3 months.
I kept meaning to, but I got stuck on what to write; overthinking it; over thinking the permanance of the blockchain.
Each day you don't write it gets easier to go another.
I'm not sure how I'll go retaining these noobs; but I've actually found it counterproductive to hold people's hands.
Now I just tell people not to blog.
Don't blog until you can't help yourself.
The steem power delegations is to give them the buzz of giving to worthy recipients and the joy of getting some worthwhile curation rewards.
Predict what will be popular with your upvote, comment insightfully and supportively; and watch your account grow.
You have one year to use this headstart effectively
Put them in the driver's seat and they'll get interested in the road rules.
That DIY mentality is why I had them jump through some hoops instead of just handing it over.
You invest something first.
What we acquire too cheaply we esteem too lightly
Well said!
This is great advice man, I should take a less hand holding approach. I need to just go and let them be, I've handed then the tools and they will find it when they are ready.
@phelimint thanks for sharing this story, which is the story of most people on steemit. I have heard this lots of times and its really difficult to make people understand how magic are things on steemit and the steem blockchain. This is a life changer, and its changing many persons life already.
I just upvoted your post.
To help on all this, I have created an 11 chapter/posts guide, that I just started with the first chapter. In case you are interested you can check it out here. The main aim of this post/chapters is to help new visitors and new members to make their way on steemit. Your thoughts are very welcomed here.
https://steemit.com/steem/@gold84/chapter-1-of-11-have-you-recently-sign-up-on-steemit-and-don-t-know-what-to-do-first-basic-things-for-new-people-make-their-way
Regards, @gold84
THanks for this, I'll defiantly take a look, I've been trying to right some new user content as well. It can certainly be overwhelming for new users.
@phelimint you are welcome. I agree, new users have so much to learn here, that when they start its difficult to know what to do first.
Thanks to you.
Regards, @gold84
There is nothing wrong with you, but you are going after the wrong target. Check out daily @penguinpablo reports for steemit. We get a flood of new people daily and 97% fail. I was helping 4 people here over the last few weeks and all were good and all stopped posting.
You are wasting your time to go after any outside target while you can easily catch a few of those who are here trying and who might fail otherwise.
Let the @jerrybanfield's spend their resources to get people in here - we are a tough room and 100's of people get the door slammed in their face daily. See @archange reports for the tragic state of minnows here.
For you - focus on some minnows who are here and trying. The rep of 45-55 is a good place to start. I'm sure you have a good enough upvote that simply supporting a few of those people and helping them grow will be much more effective than you dragging in someone that really does not want to try. A person with a 52 rep is generally trying like hell and would really appreciate a boost from you in:
I know you want to help those around you but I'm sorry - you can't. Only they can make the leap. I am a weight loss success story who was obese and near death in a small town for about 15 years. Then I became thin and healthy in a four year period by learning healthy habits and sticking to them.
This was 8 years ago and not one person from that town or in my family or other friends has even read my books or visited my sites or watched a video. Almost no one congratulated me when I lost weight. They could care less that I'm still thin and healthy 8 years later while they are fatter and getting hip replacements. Everyone I knew who was fat and sick when I lost weight is still fat and sick or dead now.
So how can I be a weight loss coach with all this failure? It's because all of the success I've had with random people who find me on the internet and beg for help, or cry out their story, or tell me they will do any thing to improve and succeed. Those people are easy to help and I do it all the time.
This goes for steemit as well. I have friends here who I've helped with a lot of the details of doing well on this site and they far exceed my results. Now I have those connections of people with bigger reps than me who I met when we were equal or they were smaller.
Focus on the people swimming in this stream and not the ones outside of it and you have a better (not guaranteed) chance of success. As for the people outside - I recommend not talking to them about steemit unless they ask to protect your own sanity.
I did get my son to sign up here and do a few posts and got him set up on the @steemdunk voting bot. Now at least he is growing his sp and voting daily. If he ever comes in for real's at least he will have a bit of a jump in sp and rep. You could try to do that with your inert friends and at least get their votes :)
Very wise words, focus on the people trying! This should be a post just by itself.
I managed to get 1 friend on, but he still hasn't done anything, so I've effectively given up, it would be great to have more people here but like you said focus on the people here and make it a great place so others may want to join.
Yes, I think we are best to focus on the willing. This is not an easy place by any means and many minnows are posting great content to no one :(
I think this is great advice, thank you for stopping by. In fact I do actively curate minnows and new users is it a passion of mine here. I'm often providing some tips and advice, resteeming and blogging about others. I've committed to delegating over half my steem power to community support project, but there's always more I could be doing. I shall try harder to help new members. I've decided to follow everyone that left a comment here today and will start with that.
Well being a new user I'm looking for the same kind of help you want to provide to people close to you. Looking at your account it looks like you've done relatively well so far. Show them the success you've already had.
Certainly you can't earn that much blogging on a typical website like blogger or Wordpress without a massive following. I started an account back in May but didn't do anything with it until this month, those are some missed months.
If they're already interested in blogging it's much better to do it on Steemit because there are people here already looking for your content. If they want to start Blogging on there own blog they're going to have to sit in the Google Sandbox for at least 6 months before they start to rank, so tell them to come to where there is already an audience waiting for them.
Personally I've been working hard to create good content and share it with as many as possible and have already made a few friends along the way. I'm an artist so it's nice to have such a big art community here on Steemit.
In time people will start to understand and accept that this is a better platform then what's currently widely accepted. Good luck to you!
I have to agree with you on this. I've been a local food blogger for more than 5 years, but I see people get more success even with just months here in Steemit.
I guess not everybody is into the process of writing something. Maybe they just want to read. I also tried promoting this with my friend, but they just say they don't have the "time" and "skills". Well, maybe they just don't want to try. :(
Well, writing and creating content isn't necessarily for everyone but we can certainly use readers for all this content we're creating. :) I'll check out your blog here on Steemit!
I do think that many people overthink the idea of blogging and the kind of content the need to produce. For me one of my favorite think about steemit is that it's a one stop shop for everything or interest. I can follow other silverbugs, garderner and homesteaders, parenting advice, I can check in for some comedy and also get all my crypto advice in one place. I feel like I can really be a full me here, instead of just showcase the silver side like I had to do on our coin blog.
As for advice that one thing I always tell new users is to find your niche and community and get involved in it, steemit is also big enough that if there isn't a community for you, then start one, there's others here that will have the same interest. Commenting an engaging is just as important (if not more) than blogging. I wish you the best of luck here and will follow your progress.
You're right there's a broad array of topics that you can find with good content on Steemit. As far as finding my niche I would have to say that's painting with oils and fine art and I've posted some here and seen some success with a few of them. But I have many interests that I like to write about and that I have an interest in, do you think it's better to stick with creating content around one idea? Last night I wrote a few posts about forbidden archaeology.
I imagine it's probably because I'm new here and lot's of people are creating content so you're not going to get every post noticed but I've seen several decent fall flat. I've been looking at into different communities but I'm not sure what I'm looking for at this point. When you say join a community do you mean getting to know people for example who post under the tag art or do you mean join a community? And if you mean join a community where do you find them? By the way I'm following you as well, so I'll definitely check out posts as too!
Yeah a community around a tag, I don't know the art community well, but I'm sure there is kinda an established group around some sort of tag. I'm most active in the #steemsilvergold community and #teamcanada community. but also #teamaustralia and #thealliance. There are just groups of motivated bloggers that band together it's just a matter of seeking them out.
Here's a post with some community and some other ideas
One thing I have heard and think is good advice is focus on commenting and building your audience first till you get maybe 200 followers, then balance with you blogs and comments still. I know how frustrating it is to make an amazing blog for hours only to get like 10 views and 0.50.
I personally think minnow support project is a great community and many have associated discord channels which is worth while checking out.
Sorry you asked about focus too. I'm a bad one to ask, my blog is very erratic. I have been layering though, and adding more as I go. For example it was quick to saturate the silver community and theirs a ceiling as to just how well you can do with laser focus like that, but it was totally where I started.
I’ve been on SteemIt for about 3 months now and I still feel like I don’t know what I’ doing. To be honest: SteemIt is not a very newcomer-friendly site.
First of all, There’s no real, clear and complete Manuel provided (or maybe I haven’t found it yet). One needs to learn by reading other people’s post; useful information on how to get started is scattered all around.
Secondly, there’s an awful lot to learn: curation reward time windows, curation trails, guilds, powering up, upvoting wisely, not to mention having to use markdown to style your post. (And the list is an awful lot longer)
Also, there’s all those sideons. Visit this website to see your voting power, visit the other one to see your stats, go to steemvp, or to steemsupply...
In fact, the only Reason I’m still here is because I’m stubborn and I made a deal with myself to not quit.
I’m not even trying to invite others to SteemIt. After 3 months, I’m starting to get the basics, but there’s a terrible lot I don’t understand yet, which makes I’m probably missing out on a lot of money and SP. That’s really frustrating.
It’s not just: make money blogging. It’s not as simple as it sounds. To stay and learn, you need to put in more of your time and energy than most people can spare...
I have this older post that gives help for when you are new. I also just posted another minnow tip post. It's not easy, but it's worth it. Don't give up. I almost did in October and now I'm so glad i just worked harder instead.
Make Money Blogging on Steemit Top Tips and Checklist for Better Results!!
Yeah, you have some good points about the views as a new comer. I think I'm going to write a post about this very thing.
I'm kinda an ignorance is bliss guy, so for the first few months i ignored all that stuff your talking about curation and voting. I just voted for everything and didn't worry. I slowly learned over the first first few months, it really doesn't make a huge difference till you have a slider anyways.
I'd just concentrate on commenting, making friends, building your following and blogging.
You can have a slider as a minnow. I’ve just written a post about it: https://steemit.com/busy/@mike314-0005/a-post-vote-slider-for-minnows-and-monetizing-old-posts-it-is-possible
That's interesting, If I remember correctly I think you have a slider if you use busy.org as well.
From my experience the best way to learn this well is to put steemit a t shirt on and put urself in the faces of people who look busy. It’s hard but you will find /learn all of the answers to their questions quickly and convincingly
@starkerz first want to wish you Happy Holidays! As you know I have been working on over 20 ideas to help improve the steemit front-end. I took a week break on that because for over 3 weeks I have been preparing the 11 chapter/posts steemit guide to help new members and new visitors on steemit, to make their way on the platform.
This post from @phelimint is very related to this, and its one of the reasons I created this full guide of 11 chapters/posts.
By the way, you and @stephenkendal are mentioned in Chapter #5 for the #promo-steem project and I am describing their what you are doing, you will see this on the full index in this first chapter/post: https://steemit.com/steem/@gold84/chapter-1-of-11-have-you-recently-sign-up-on-steemit-and-don-t-know-what-to-do-first-basic-things-for-new-people-make-their-way
Looking forward to your thoughts on this, and according to what I saw, it is already helping minnows, which was my first thought for this series of posts.
Regards, @gold84
Your right about that busy people comment. I remember reading if you wanted to get something done, ask the busiest person you see...lol.
Phil, I just tried to blog but couldn't figure out how. I didn't see where to begin writing. I have a subject to bring value to crypto investors/ speculators. We can get together for another coffee if its easier. :)
Yeah we could definitely do that. I actually wrote a blog today with lots of advice for new users. If your topic/blog is gonna be awesome. I'd actually suggest building a following for a few weeks first so more people will actually see it. I'm sure we can get together again the new year though.
not sure i'll have the time to build a following first.
Help those who are willing to help themselves. Get your tips ready and dish them out when they come to you for advice of what else they can do. Best not to bombard them with everything at one go.
Transitioning from social media channels where they used to just propagate existing content to the Steemit platform where original content creation and curation are required will not be easy for every new Steemian. Creating new content requires creative inspiration, some planning and discipline to get the sh** done!
In order to retain active contributors, there needs to be an equitable distribution of rewards. It's certainly not happening now with the high incidence of 'reward pool rape'.
Contributors who are unable to sustain their interest will 'actively' look out for reasons to quit: poor ROI on time and creative energy spent, unfair distribution of rewards, using automation to circumvent the Steemit mission, etc.
For those who persist, the future may be bright. You will not be able to drag everyone across the line. Conserve your energy for those who wish to be helped.
Cheers!
Thanks for your feedback man, I think your totally right. I've showed then the way and here when they find me, otherwise it's certainly not helping and only frustrating me being trying to engage them.
this also happened to me , when my friend @ogochukwu was convincing me to join steemit, it took him to get me to join. its all about capturing them to show their talents here and assure them ,that they wont regret it . he told me to give it my time and that i wont regret now am seeing the fun and meeting new people , the most important is educting my self here on steem about crypto currency its bee great throughout my stay here.
That's great your friend was able to recruit you. I think all I can do it continue to sing the praises of steemit and hope they decide to continue.
yeah yeah i think you can do a better job