Beyond Steemit
Forget what you know about the Steem blockchain. Forget what the white paper says. This is war. To win the war of the blockchains, we need solid marketing. This superior technology will lose out without employing superior marketing techniques.
We need to get STEEM out there and into the public consciousness. We need to attract users, businesses, and developers.
We must design, build, and utilise a solid marketing plan. The best technology has no value if the potential users are not aware of its existence.
Blockchain technology is bigger than the internet.
The Steem blockchain encompasses the all in one package with the ability to be integrated into every website in the world. Its tech is more superior than other Cyptocurrencies. It is multifaceted in nature, and infinite in potential.
Forget Steem as a basis for a social media platform. We need to think of Steem as the best digitial currency.
“A new logo, logotype, and clearly distinguishing color scheme will be developed for steemit.com to differentiate it from the Steem Blockchain (which will continue to use the existing, widely known logo) - Roadmap 2017
While Steemit undergoes a rebranding process we should focus on marketing Steem as the best digital currency on the blockchain. Giving Steemit only as a bonus reason as to why it is such a superior digital currency.
Steem superiority:
- Easy to use digital cash with simple account addresses
- Mega fast transaction rates with zero transaction fees
- Safe and secure with inbuilt escrow
- Efficient and environmentally friendly compared with other digital cash
- Decentralised and censorship resistant
- Consumer friendly and community driven
- Anyone can set up an account
- Many built in applications such as a search function for businesses that accept Steem & Steem dollars
- Built in community, spreading the cryptocurrency through the wider population
- More women getting Steem wallets than any other digital cash wallet
- Intrinsic value of currency based on community content creation, curation, and applications
- “Steem is designed from the ground up to address the major barriers to adoption and monetisation of a social media based economy” – white paper
- Can already scale bigger than other social media platforms
We have everything and more than what Dash is offering.
We should be laying down our claim as “the future of payments” as “the future of cryptocurrency”.
We should focus on Steem as a digital currency. Why is it the best? Not only is it a superior cryptocurrency, it also plugs into a social media. This isn’t regular social media. This is social change media. With a dynamic thriving community of cryptocurrency enthusiasts. The Steemit blockchain has infinite potential.
But check this:
Dash Youtube channel
Compared with this:
Steem Youtube channel
Where are our videos? Why aren’t we promoting Steem?
We need better than this.
Dash is doing well in the markets not because of its tech, but because of their marketing campaigns, and because of Amanda B. Johnson selling it. She sells it so well I know her name and have seen her on the interwebs many times.
We need social media production aimed for the masses outside of Steemit, and we need motivational speakers to promote Steem at conferences, and get individuals, groups, and companies interested in developing for the Steem blockchain. Steem being the best tech means nothing if people don’t know about it.
We need videos (and infographs) explaining Steem; money, security, etc, and all the different features which make this the best blockchain technology.
Steem is superior to all other digital currencies in so many ways but not enough people know that.
Steem is a superior cryptocurrency on a decentralised blockchain tied into a social change media platform. A babe in its infancy, already superior to its competitors, unlimited in potential. A truly cutting edge technology.
Why does Steemit attract people?
- $$$
- Excellent content
- Great place for artists, groups, events, organisations, and companies to represent themselves with no censorship, no filters, or limits to views like other social media platforms
- Community
- Possibilities for applications in the blockchain are limitless
- Steem extremely undervalued. Great for investing.
- Bitcoin volatile. Steem is designed for stability and everyday commerce.
- Active visible founders @ned and @dan
Centralised social media sites are under more scrutiny than ever. Steemit as part of a decentralised blockchain is easy to understand. It possesses intrinsic value and worth.
“In the future we will be adding support for confidential transactions. Your Steem Dollars and STEEM balances will be kept private, but your Steem Power must still remain public to support voting / reputation” – @Dan (8 months ago)
Although currently Steem wallets are fully transparent in nature, privacy will eventually be implemented. I was taken aback when I first realised the transparent viewable nature of the Steem wallets, but I quickly got used to it.
I’ve read the 2017 roadmap, and I know it doesn’t contain everything.
I look forward to https://steem.io/ being updated and attracting more developers.
Our Wikipedia page also needs updated.
“Images and other multimedia content must be embedded from other web hosts.”
All our media needs to be up to date to show that we are thriving, strong, and current.
“it is essential that we provide support and resources to entrepreneurs and developers building upon the Steem Blockchain as a platform.” - Roadmap 2017
This is just an idea, but I think it would be very beneficial to have an easy to access projects page, which lists all the incomplete, ongoing, and finished projects. Not just tech and application projects but also community and social projects such as Podcasts ( @VOTU & @SteemitTalk), Writing ( @Fisteganos CoreStory ), and many other projects that I am probably not aware of. I believe that giving these projects visibility will help these projects thrive, as well as allowing more people to interact, and also donate; building the Steem blockchain faster and stronger.
Some cool apps in development I’ve recently heard about:
"Streams" by @Thirsty - Audio hosting with lots of cool features for musicians and artists.
"Steepshot" by @Steepshot – An app that rewards user by sharing and commenting on photos.
Steem apps and steemit chat should be higher in the list on steemit.com. Or kept elsewhere as they are very difficult to find. It took me two weeks to find out about steemit chat.
This simple app blew my mind.
https://www.steemlocator.com/
Apps need to be more visible. This simple app to promote businesses using steem is amazing. Advertising businesses that accept Steem is an excellent strategy for mass adoption of Steem.
A coffee shop that just so happens to have the BEST coffees in the WORLD accepts Steem and SBD as payment.
How easy is it for a business to set up to accept Steem and SBD? We need to produce media aimed at different targets. A short video explaining how a business can set itself up to accept Steem and SBD, and the advantages of doing so, can go a long way.
A viable market should build with demand, but we need to build that demand by marketing.
“The ultimate source of growth and thus value of the Steem Blockchain and platform itself is third-party developers. Most of our other efforts would be wasted without an easy and direct process for fresh developers, brand new to the platform, to quickly and rewardingly prototype innovative applications and business ideas. The developer site we will launch at developer.steem.io will feature a clear, easy-to-understand structure indicating a full list of public services and endpoints, officially supported client libraries and software, and API documentation with excellent example code to get brand new developers up and running quickly on the Steem Blockchain. Internal user experience testing of the site will ensure we are communicating our full stack effectively to all comers. “ - Roadmap 2017
We need to advertise these features to potential developers for Steemit. These are great ideas, but we need to get them out there.
Steemit has polarised the experts because this avant garde blockchain is several steps ahead of the game. A movement or concerto not yet imagined by the masses. It’s on the van guard.
Our challenges to overcome; getting our message across to the public.
Future of Steemit
As the White Paper says shareholders of social media companies have generated billions of dollars in wealth through collective user generated content. What could the users of a platform such as Steemit do with billions of dollars? Steemit in the future could be used to fund businesses, governments, or even space exploration…
As a community driven tool it has the potential to change the dynamics of our world. The distribution method of Steem pushes humanity in the direction away from scarcity of resources; providing funding on a global scale to people who before would not have had access to either bank accounts or income.
“Our long-term goal remains the same: to provide the best platform for censorship-resistant publishing and store of value to the widest user base possible, in an effort to increase human freedom and accelerate the spread of access to basic rights for all people on Earth. “ - Roadmap 2017
“Our primary short-term goal is to drastically increase the number of weekly signups, weekly active users, and weekly social interaction events on steemit.com.” - Roadmap 2017
To achieve this short-term goal we need to promote the Steem blockchain to developers, businesses, and users through targetted media campaigns.
I know it is just in Beta and less than a year old, but there is no time like now to start creating media to market the Steem blockchain. Even though it is just a baby it is a leviathan compared to our competition.
Steemit users are a new type of venture capitalist. We are prospectors of the future. Although we all have varying reasons for being here on Steemit, the success of the Steem blockchain is intrinsically tied to all our goals. Therefore we must align our goals to best maximise the utility of Steemit for the promotion of the Steem blockchain.
Steemit is a social community as well as a hive for all the latest news on cryptocurrency.
We should utilise all our resources. We have content makers and a community of experts sitting on this superior cryptocurrency.
If we can use the community of Steemit to produce media content for Steem, we won’t just be showing Steem as a superior currency, but also Steemit as a community able to create content that outperforms its competition. Value in action.
TLDR: Steem needs media production to promote the Steem blockchain. We need videos explaining the functionality and features of the Steem blockchain and its digital currencies, as well as speakers for conferences. We need to utilise our decentralised structure for our global campaign to win this war.
In the words of Charlie Chaplin:
“You, the people have the power - the power to create machines. The power to create happiness! You, the people, have the power to make this life free and beautiful, to make this life a wonderful adventure.
Then - in the name of Steemit let us use that power - let us all unite. Let us fight for a new world - a decent world that will give men a chance to work - that will give youth a future and old age a security. By the promise of these things, brutes have risen to power. But they lie! They do not fulfil that promise. They never will!
Centralised systems free themselves but they enslave the people! Now let us fight to fulfil that promise! Let us fight to free the world - to do away with national barriers - to do away with greed, with hate and intolerance. Let us fight for a world of reason, a world where science and progress will lead to all men’s happiness. Steemians! in the name of Steemit, let us all unite!”
@RiskDebonair
Irish Writer, Poet, & Lover of Steem
You also don't have to purchase elite rigs to get the best megahash to MINE steem. In fact that doesn't work. You mine steem by actually participating and using the front end apps like steemit. You can do this even on a cell phone or very low end machine.
Unlike other currencies, the end result of mining can be accomplished via steemit/busy.org by anyone. You just vote, post, and comment. It may take a bit to build up and the payouts may seem small, but even the small payouts dwarf the payouts I was able to get if I dedicated some nice hardware to a lot of the other cryptos.
That is also a big selling point for steem. Mining doesn't really exist, but the end results of mining happen to anyone who simply uses the platform on a regular basis.
"mining with minds" is simply a genius kind of model!
Yeah and we need some video content creators that use youtube and such to start marketing simply things like that to get people here. Focus on one simple thing at a time rather than trying to say everything about steem/it in a single video.
well use your steem and make it happen, rather than burning 80 SBD a day imagine if some were allocated or pooled by the people for just that, offer rewards. everybody will make you a awesome video for 50$ go to freelancer :D same principle could apply here. I'm just saying the model right now doesn't really support that. it's to risky to spend 1-2 days making a animation then seeing it sink, or making a small profit. Incentives are already here and we aren't using them neither the social nor the monetary, we need the SOCIAL-media to work.
Just some quick thought I will be back later.
Cheers
`j3dy
I generally make about $50 per week on steemit. Sometimes less, sometimes more. I definitely don't get 80 SBD per day. I don't even get 80 SBD per week.
I do understand your sentiment though.
This is a very good point that I had not considered before. I've seen mining rigs advertised and wondered, "well, if we're going to run computers to mine coins, what's the point?"
A currency for social media encourages people to read and write. It encourages literacy in a way that few other systems I've seen can do.
Thank you for this nice explanation. These are the sort of things that people outside of the Steem world should know.
holy voting track :D
Thank you for the recognition!! One of the aims of @votu is to reach the masses as a cultural content producer that expands across the crypto world, reinforcing our anti censorship ideals and bringing people to steemit that way as more and more people learn who we are and where we came from.
I wouldn't worry too much about the lack of marketing in the first world for now though. What I find interesting is the explosion of steemit in Indonesia. I have a good feeling about this.
Look at it this way: If steem exploded in the US alone, it may never become a world currency, because people from less advantaged countries would always be less advantaged and they would turn to currencies where they can gain advantage. If steem can grow first in poorer countries before the price gets too high, then we could be looking at a huge advantage over cryptos like dash and bitcoin where the vast majority of exchanges come from one place.
It's not about targetting the first world, but about an up to date digital presence. I'm not suggesting a massive marketing blitz, but just covering the basics. Simple videos explaining the tech aimed towards businesses, users, and developers. As well as some easy to understand infographs.
We need to think of this like a chess game. The winner is whoever can take the least amount of moves to achieve their goal. Creating media to promote Steem will give us a bonus percentage of growth which over time will help us achieve our short term and long term goals quicker.
I agree with what you are saying, but this is war. Only so many of these blockchain technologies will survive. If there is no information out there about Steem, it won't be difficult for a competitor to spread false information or smear us. Many of these blockchain startups have little experience in marketing which gives us an advantage, but Dash has already begun escalating. It won't be long before other digital currencies follow suit, and we could get left behind.
Even if we are set to succeed without doing much other than relying on organic growth and zero marketing through digital content creation, that could leave us in a world with 15 digital currencies with Steem in the top 10.
Or if we lessen the time it takes to achieve our goals, it will reduce the time other digital currencies have to get established. We could end up with a world with only 5 digital currencies with Steem being number 1.
The global growth of Steem is just another aspect to be promoting to businesses, users, and developers.
One major underlying marketing being done really, is our posts, that rank in google everywhere and especially in the cryptocurrency niche, steemit posts are everywhere. This in itself, is really "some marketing". It is like 'cost per impression ads'! For a start, it; at the very least creates awareness and people may not adopt steem, the very first time they see steem. When eventually real marketing does start, this awareness will play its role and adoption will be much easier. Thus, in the meantime, crypto-gurus on steem can take advantage of our posts for now, exactly as you have done in this post, to fill the internet with killer posts about the beauty and power of steem!
I agree, but at the same time, that list of advantages that steem has as a cryptocurrency, that should be reinforced and emphasised more often because it's often forgotten or taken for granted what a great thing we have here.
I've screen shot the list as a reminder
I agree as well!
Does everything need to be made from scratch? Would it be possible to align if not merge with other companies?
Quora is a simple Q&A model, and its threads often rank very high in search results.
WELL SAID! That being said, add Philippines to the list. Real marketing is about to happen in the Philippines, to increase create mass adoption of steem, in the Philippines, sponsored by steem inc. i think things are taking place behind the scenes.
One of the most important points I have heard so far:
Exactly. I think for various reasons people in developing countries are more amenable to the message and the potential here.
Most cryptocurrencies are trying to go after the people in developed countries who already have so many choices and frankly are often blind to the problems with the current system.
Developing countries are where the most growth is right now anyway - if we can make the most of that then it doesn't matter if we get the developed world right now.
Eventually Steemit and Steem will get so big that they will have to come on board.
The world is changing and we should use it to our advantage.
Great post and great ideas. Steem promoted as a currency, bingo! We should have stealth transactions soon, perhaps even before Dash! I know that it is near completion.
Video Chanel bingo! Etc, etc..
Is it just a matter of time? Are these things being prepared as I write? I look forward to seeing how all of this unfolds as I continue to mine Steem as @dwinblood wrote "without expensive rigs"!
Great job!
@kus-knee (The Old Dog)
@kus-knee can you give more info? are you a steem developer? thx
I'm not a developer but I know that Dan Larimar had completed a lot of the Stealth development before leaving Bitshares.
If you want to know the history it's here:
https://bitsharestalk.org/index.php/topic,22956.msg297816.html#msg297816
The work is now being finished by the Bitshares Munich team @chris4210 @kencode I saw their team in Munich in October and the work was nearing completion then. Dash is not even in Alpha yet is it?
That will never happen and the introduction in the steem whitepaper exemplifies the reason why:
Hard forks happen constantly and road maps change. I was involved in BitShares before it existed and that thing changed and evolved so much you'd never recognise it from its original white paper.
You may be right but let's see what happens.
I believe the blockchain is evolving and will continue to evolve ^_^
I don't see the benefits of stealth vs those of transparency. In fact I see people rightly steering away from secrecy and toward transparency.
Transparency in rewards is really important, but it's different from transparency of private property. Users need to have a way of hiding how much they own and what transactions they do with other users. I think this is one of the biggest challenges for SBD right now. There are a lot of people who don't want to show for the whole world what they are buying and selling so they don't even consider using SBD.
"mining crypto with minds", underheardof genius. i have shattered one PC since i got on steemit cos trying failed experiments to mine something at least. I always get on that black screen and i am lost. I never if i am mine currently or not. After shattering one PC, I can't say i have any other alt-coin. I have one shattered PC.
We could also sell Steemit as the cheapest and quickest way to set up a blog.
If all you want to do is blog, you don't even need to understand how the Steemit system works.
Your post was a wonderful read!
The discussion you've ignited in your comment stream demonstrates the intellectual passion so many of our fellow Steemians share for the success of this platform.
I have upvoted and followed you, @riskdebonair and I hope you will follow me as well -- I have some ideas I'd like to post about next week for the grassroots promotion of Steemit.
After reading your post, any feedback from you would be received with a most heartfelt thank you.
Have an amazing weekend brother! 🤝
Thank you!
Followed! ^_^
Killer marketing only works when you have a killer product AND a killer audience. Just ask Apple or Amazon. We have one, but not the other. We must refine our platform until we find our audience. Then we market like a maniac!!
I'm not suggesting a marketing blitz. Just having up to date information explaining the benefits of the Steem currencies and the superiority of the technology behind the steem blockchain, to attract potential businesses, users, and developers.
Steemit is undergoing many changes including rebranding so I am not suggesting to market it. Just to have information out there on the other aforementioned aspects of it to promote the growth and development of our blockchain.
Lets have both :) "ONWARDS! ...."
Love your pic/profile
Hello master commenter @baah. Welcome to my post. Yeah, I like the pic, but I'm still not sure about the profile yet!!
HAHAH you're hilarious, my wall of words don't make me a master, just outspoken ;P "well travelled philosopher & lover of damn fine coffee"
You cannot exclude the front end and focus on the concepts which the front end is a direct result of. So when you say:
To have information is paramount, agreed, but you can see why people are responding to the marketing aspect and rightly see it as motions without direction. I am in disagreement about disecting/fragmenting the function of steem into cryptocommodity, blockchain technology and front end/steemit because the blockchain means nothing without content creation, commodities means nothing without content creation and the epicenter has been and will always be social media, not cryptocommodity.
I believe the epicenter has always been the blockchain. The currencies and the social media platform are just extensions of this ever evolving blockchain.
How can you get more people interested into the blockchain but not into the platform which feeds the blockchain or exclusively of that?
Here is an outlined plan. The point is to synergistically increase the user base to the social media platform through promoting other aspects of the blockchain which would draw businesses, users, developers, and investors here.
If we can start creating content for these things, we will be ready to start rolling out community created content for promoting Steemit after its rebranding, and we will have the benefit of already having produced a plethora of content which explains the technologies and currencies tied into this social media platform.
-nesting limit-
It's a double edged sword: more blockchain tech content.
One side will drive people to adapt the steem blockchain for themselves, being developers and business
The other will fall back onto us and drive regular users away who look at the technology aspect of it and see it as foreign to them.
Your reward for being in
Promotedis an upvote from @pipes.Obscurity is the biggest threat.
All the marketing in the world won't make a lick of difference as long as the blogging platform is so paleolithic.
Steemit can't do 1/10th what an ordinary Wordpress blog can do. There is absolutely no way to compete in this space. For that matter, it can't even do 1/10th of what Facebook and Twitter do (I can't even find out how many people have resteemed my posts, and the site has been up for a year!).
Basic features such as CSS integration and user analytics should have been day-1 features. All the marketing in the world isn't going to remedy that.
Steemit has a long way to go before it's going to challenge any of the established players. And if updates keep coming at such a glacial pace, then the war is already lost.
We don't need to waste time and energy trying to tell the world how great Steemit is, because Steemit is not great---not yet. Not unless it gets its act together. And that means creating a blogging platform that can do EVERYTHING that other platforms already do, PLUS pay content creators. Until such time as you have that, any attempt at marketing is counterproductive.
wait...fb and twitter give you stake in their network for getting large followings to support and upvote you?...
And they also have something equivalent to the world class market pegged asset to give there users a safe bank account?
Ohhh wait...that is Steem. The first Scalable, Self-Governing Social Media blockchain...ever.
Oh wait...i almost forgot. The blockchain makes it unsensorable (unless you call flagging censorship...but flagging often just makes people want to see a post more(it does for me). Please dont b silly.. i'm cool with people putting it down but when they are wrong i'll tell them. You sir are overlooking so much and it is so obvious to everyone who pays attention.
Facebook and Twitter are also multi-billion dollar companies. Owning a stake in those platforms is actually worth something.
Being censorship-free is a wonderful thing. But it doesn't mean a thing unless the platform itself is user-friendly enough to draw in, you know, users. And tens of millions of them, at that.
you mean as user friendly as....hm.... reddit?
Well this is as user friendly as reddit (another multi-billion dollar---Censoring platform). And to be honest we don't need millions of people to blog here...we just need millions to use steem's IMMUTABLE database. If you would have stopped and read what I posted you would realize there is more than just censorship free (though yes...that IS enough for mass adoption).
I feel bad for you if you are not in when this launches for real. And it will..
Steemit is currently undergoing rebranding, and still growing. In the above post I am not talking about marketing Steemit, but marketing Steem as a currency, and the Steem blockchain.
You want to market the Steem currency? Which is currently competing with the 700+ altcoins in existence?
That's not Steemit's hedgehog concept.
The only thing that makes Steem unique, the only thing that gives it a market advantage (from a general consumer's perspective) is the fact that it is tied to a social media platform as a reward system. Outside of that, Steem is nothing. If it were better than other altcoins it would be beating other altcoins.
Now, if the quality of the Steemit platform were to increase, that would be a different story, because the only real way to evangelize Steem as a currency is to increase the value of the property that the token represents; namely, the Steemit platform. The currency is backed by the value of the platform. If the platform lacks value, the currency lacks a purpose.
So you will understand why I mistook "Steem Marketing" for "Steemit Marketing", since, after all, they are one and the same thing in every possible situation and every possible context.
You're going to object to that statement, of course. But you'll never disprove it.
In terms of alt-coins we already have more capability than Dash. Why are they doing so good? Marketing.
Which statement will I object to? I think that it is important for people to understand the currencies and the technology behind the Steem blockchain as well as the social media platform plugged into the blockchain.
As a digital currency we have more intrinsic value than other alt-coins (due to Steemit), plus we have the steem dollar which gives stability in trade.
I'm not suggesting to ignore the steem blockchain's social media platform, but to develop media showing the technology behind the blockchain, the superiority of its currency, and how this ties into the social media platform, and after the rebranding (new logos, more development etc) of Steemit is finished then create media for it. The Steem blockchain started out with the idea of being plugged into a social media platform to bootstrap the currency into wider use. It has evolved though, and will continue to do so. Blockchain technology is massive and has infinite potential. The direction of apps such as busy show that we are taking the all in one philosophy.
While I understand this point from the real and active blogger perspective, you need to remember that Steem is just a backend for a blogging platform. The most important thing is that the backend can actually support all the features and a huge userbase. That's why developers are still prioritizing it. There hasn't been anything like it before, so the devs are creating something totally unique and the problems they are facing are also completely new.
Steem is only valuable if people actually buy it. And people (by which I mean consumers, not backroom programmers) couldn't care less what is happening inside the black box. They only care about the thing they interface with.
All this insistence that the back end has to be perfected before the user experience can be worked on is frighteningly reminiscent of a Word Perfect mentality. The people around here are putting the cart light years in front of the horse. But no matter how many times I raise the warning cry, the lesson is not learned.
Others may be content to let Steemit become the Word Perfect of the 2010s, but I'm not going to stick my head in the sand on this issue.
When the Steemit community finally gets tired of failing, I'll be here for you. Until then, I'm going to keep being as blunt as possible. And yeah, I know it makes me look like the bad guy. But I wouldn't have it any other way.
Isn't it the the other way around? The horse in this case is the blockchain. It's the engine that runs the whole system. If it sucks, it's impossible to build a great service on top of it. In the case of social media system, we need to have really scalable blockchain so it can actually serve all the millions of people who are our potential users. If the blockchain doesn't scale, we end up in a situation like Bitcoin is now. Blocks are full and people can't use it anymore. Then it doesn't matter how beautiful the website is: it's still unusable.
You are not a bad guy, you just have a different perspective on this.