RE: Trying to Get Beyond Monetary Rewards
Great post, well articulated and lots of insightful points here. I'll pick a couple that resonated with me to respond to:
what the whales vote on, we get more of.
Funny you should mention this. I've noticed a distinct trend in my own posts. My cryptocurrency posts get totally ignored by the whales, typically making only a dollar or less, but these posts take me the most effort to create. On the other hand, my Japan Diary series chronicling my experiences in Japan is quite popular with the whales. These posts, which require only a small amount of effort compared to my cryptocurrency posts, are my real moneymakers. Whenever I get tired of not getting any payouts, I just do another Japan Diary and then I feel better the next day. We need someone to become the patron whale of cryptocurrencies! Maybe @thecryptofiend could oblige if he gets big enough to achieve whale status. ;-)
leaving one engaging comment achieves way more than dozens of small votes
Amen to this! Comments are worth their weight in gold. Recently I did a post about my cryptocurrency investment strategies. It got a dismal payout, but generated a large amount of commenting and good back & forth discussion. I had a lot of fun engaging with people on that post, so I view it as a great success despite the small payout. I think a post without comments is a terrible thing, akin to a sad little school kid with no friends.
First thanks for reading! For a long time now I've mainly done shorter 3-5 minute reads.
I definitely understand where you're coming from on the crypto vs Japan Diary posts. There is that split on writing topics where some are in the 'what I want to write' category with others being more oriented towards 'what they want'. They both have their pros and cons, just a matter of where the focus is that day. Often it does seem that the less time intensive and quicker to digest posts do better payout wise. However it did seem that many of those posts with lower payouts tended to get me more followers, even if they had lower SP. I am actually a bit surprised there's not much curation on the cryptos though, many months ago that seemed to be a big thing. But this may be from either being a more competitive market on here or due to the user base changing to more non-crypto, social media oriented people...hard for me to say. In the end though, there's usually a good balance to be struck putting out the longer posts that I just want to do with the shorter ones that seem to be better received. And all hail @thecryptofiend. Lol! We seem to bring up one of his posts each week on our @steemittalk podcast.
Comments in the end are the life blood of social media (especially while not having an onsite direct messaging system.) I've heard so often regarding Reddit that 'the gold is in the comments' which very often is true (once you week through the trolls anyway, lol.)
I'm pretty happy with some of the changes that are bringing comments back to the forefront on here. This includes changes to the calculation of what makes the trending page, putting/keeping curation rewards on comments, and the like. While it's definitely not all about the money, things like this are what prompt users to the 'desired uses.' This encourages the engagement that is sooo important.
One last thought. There are posts that lend themselves more to conversation/comments than others. For example many of the 'news' oriented ones I've done while ideally being interesting, often don't leave a reader with too much to say outside 'heh, that is cool,' or some equivalent. I'm not trying to paint this as bad, just how it is. However the choices of what to choose for topics, how they are written, and perhaps the willingness to give a deeper (even if controversial) point of view are likely to be effected as users catch on to these 'rule changes.'
Yes indeed, there has to be some hook that gives me an easy angle to base a comment around. Otherwise, even if I like a post, I may not comment if I can't think of something useful to say. And I hate just saying something short like "cool post!". As with my blogs, I want my comments to have some substance and not look like some stamp from a bot.
I find that the best hooks are the ones that actively invite audience participation. Such as "Which of these options do you like the best? I'd love to hear from you in the comments below!" and the like.
And speaking of Reddit, I've noticed that Reddit has a huge cryptocurrency community with vast daily discussion threads for example on the EthTrader sub-reddit. I think some of them have migrated onto Steemit, but I'm kind of surprised more of them haven't made the leap. You'd think Steemit would be a natural stomping ground for such people. I'd love to see a Steemit marketing campaign targeting Reddit users.
I hear you, I tend to be the same way. Generally I don't like leaving the 'cool post' type comment. Often I either leave a 'wall of text' or nothing, though I've been trying to work on that a bit, just so I comment more.
You're very right on the 'hooks' and having some sort of 'call to action' like that to give their take. There are also more 'controversial' topics that tend to get people to chime in on their own, with it being something they're more passionate about. Often on the internet that could degenerate quickly, but not so much a problem with the community here (at least in my eyes.)
I think there are a couple of issues impeding the crossing over to here for reddit users. First, most places steemit links are removed (automatically or by moderators) or shadow-banned (where even with upvotes they stay at the bottom of lists.) There's a similar thing on Facebook. The other is the calls of 'scam' and other naysayers who tend to be the loudest people in the room. While it's definitely not insurmountable, it does make things more difficult.
These people annoy me. I can understand some healthy skepticism, but I wish people would do some research and think for themselves instead of just giving a gut reaction and calling it a day.
The fact that Steem has lost 98% of its value since the highs of last summer probably doesn't help either. People think "hey, Steem, okay, let me check out the price chart". Once they look at that, it's game over for most of them. I bet we probably won't see another big wave of adoption until the price begins to recover. But of course the price will have a hard time recovering without some increased adoption and excitement to get people buying again... it's sort of a chicken-and-egg type problem.
Oh I understand. When someone is being asked to invest money, they should be skeptical. But I find it rather hilarious when people who've not put in a cent scream ponzi.
Regardless, if you are able to earn something from nothing (outside of time of course, but it's not like we were necessarily paid anything before) then it's really a moot point.
Ideally we can get come organic growth just through word of mouth. It's nice that most of the 'loud fighting' has died away (at least for now, lol.) I brought this up with a facebook friend just yesterday, she may check it out. I tend to not push it hard, instead just pique their interest and let them ask questions as they come.
But yea, there definitely is a somewhat catch-22 right now with some potential signups lacking excitement with the low price while potential investors are likely looking to see the user base grow.
I did hear that steemit inc recently hired a 3 or 4 person marketing team. I'm rather excited to see what they put out there.