What we can learn from others?steemCreated with Sketch.

in #iamutopian5 years ago

After a year on Steem(it) I have a strange feeling that the opportunity is slipping away from our hands.

The idea behind Steem(it) is both intuitive and unintuitive.

On the positive side, our comparative advantage is the ability to "tip", to give incentives to content creators we like. At first glance, it would be expected to have a constant influx of new users. The same users who are already sharing their content on various social networks and platforms. Why on Earth they are not joining Steem?

It was puzzling me for a long time, and maybe I've found some explanations.

What I see as the biggest problem for Steem communities is the inability to define the product.

We are constantly trying to build the community(es) and deliver something from those communities. What I think we should do is completely opposite. I strongly believe that we need to define the products and wait for the community to form in an organic way around those products.

Let's see the examples:

https://tangosix.rs/ the best portal about Aviation, in Yugoslavia

This website is very specialized. Topics are broadly divided into civilian and military.
Authors are posting on regular basis, 3-4 times per week. Authors are the absolute pinnacle from the field. The amount of details that could be found about airplanes and AA Defence is unprecedented. This portal is so good, that some people from abroad are regular readers although all the text are written in Serbo-Croatian. Tangosix is able to generate 100+ comments, effortlessly. example

What we can learn: we need the most relevant experts from the field. Only those are able to generate something attractive for a broader audience
The main question is: how to attract them to steemSTEM for example, or stemQ?

image.png
Screenshot from Tangosix. 11.245 FB likes, for a niche website, written mainly in Serbian and occasionally in Croatian. For the comparison, www.ausairpower.net/ with similar content, written in English is not significantly more popular

https://www.b92.net/ Serbian news portal

Before I show you something alarming, a short lesson from geography. In 2017 there were only 7 million inhabitants in Serbia. If we are very, very generous in our estimation and if we count all the people from Yugoslavia who can read Serbian and all the people from abroad, we can't count more than 25 M potential readers.

This is what Alexa can tell us:

image.png

image.png

B92, news portal from Serbia is as popular as Steemit, website that is aiming at global acceptance.

What B92 done well?

There is one fantastic aspect of B92: UX for comment section

It's incredibly easy and everyone can make an impulsive comment. The most popular articles can get more than 500 comments and more than 1500 Likes/Dislikes for the top rated comments. Comments on B92 became so important tool in political campaigns that the whole new class of activists was invented, so-called "sandwich bots". It's a long story and the phenomenon that deserves a separate post.

What we can learn: people are impulsive. There must be a method to post an angry comment. Nobody cares for 0.01 $, people want to say something. The solution is simple - guest accout(s). If those impulsive authors decide to join and open their own accounts - good for them.
The main question is: why is Steemit building fences? With the median income per post <0.05 $, "earning money" can not be the main selling point for Steemit.

https://www.dpreview.com/ https://kenrockwell.com/ https://www.the-digital-picture.com

Three websites with the same aim but 3 very different styles.

The main idea behing all three websites is to provide comprehensive and unbiased camera reviews.

https://www.dpreview.com/ was the most successful. It's incredibly popular for 20 years already, and I don't know a single photo enthusiast who missed this website:

image.png

It became so popular that Amazon - purchased it, turning it into a marketing opportunity.

The second website, https://www.the-digital-picture.com is the youngest. The main selling point of this website and the very reason why it's indexed on the first page in Google Search is the ability to produce comprehensive reviews. If you want to learn what is the difference between 4 generations of a particular model of camera lens - this is the place for you. Yes, of course, you can purchase camera related item via the website.

The last presented website, https://kenrockwell.com/ , is probably the least attractive website in the existence :D

image.png

This website became the hot spot for vintage lenses and kenrockwell is accepting tips, thus it's the most similar to Steemit...

What we can learn: beside on focusing on Steem, we should find the way to sell our digital products.
The main question is: why instead of using Steemit, we don't have more specialized websites with focused content

Instagram hribovc

This summer, I went to Slovenia, without any plan. I simply asked locals and installed Instagram to find good locations for my photos. The first account was hribovc. After discovering hribovc, I started adding the most prominent authors whose content they share.

Photos made by several authors, nejajesenko included, were absolutely breathtaking. Mountains in sunrise or sunset, with typical Slovenian fog and clouds below (not above, below).

What we can learn: you can't buy devotion. Speaking in terms of economy, it cost anywhere between 100 and 500 $ to regularly wake up before sunrise and climb. However... If someone is doing it for fun - it's free
The main question is: why we don't pick the most devoted authors and bring them to the platform?

http://www.ari-maj.com/ fashion blog

This is probably the weirdest peak I made for this list. Ok, fighter jets, cameras, mountains, but fashion blogging?

Here is the story. It's about the product, again. After purchasing a nice dSLR I wanted to make some good photos of my GF. Unfortunately, all I could find were pro photoshoots with 3 sources of light, 2 helpers and 3h in Photoshop.

After googling photos, I've noticed one face on every 10th photo. Few clicks later - I found her name and her blog.

It's interesting to see the evolution in several years:

  • APS-C camera, kit lens, wrong white balance (too much blue)
  • discovered that people prefer "yellow-ish" photos (too yellow), poor postures, terrible... (hair all over her face, bad frames, plain wrong)
  • revolution, new style: I'm a cute girl and "I have nothing to wear Blog". She is getting sponsors
  • Full frame camera and prime lens(es?) introduced. Posture is almost perfect now and I learned a lot (movement, eyes pointed in one direction, subject is filling the whole frame...)
  • new revolution: "the art of femininity", way too provocative for my taste, but she was featured in the Polish Playboy. She discovered the niche

What we can learn: it takes 5+ years of devotion discovering the niche in blogging
The main question is: should we adopt the existing bloggers or should we foster our own

In Conclusion

The situation we are experiencing on Steem(it) since summer 2018 is deja vu for me and for millions of Eastern Europeans older than 30. What started as our blessing, became our course. Incentives helped us to grow during the initial phase, but the system also made us blind for the outside world. In the "real world", blogging platforms can become profitable if their content is valuable. However, if the users are evolving in optimizing their earnings in Steem - they will be able to earn Steem and nothing more.

After you learn about the ecosystem and start earning, you should focus on one and only thing: Steem price. Why? Well, it's obvious... If you spent a year on Steemit, how much time it will take to double the amount of Steem? Maybe 6 months if you become more efficient. Or... If the price of Steem goes up - your savings become more valuable. More valuable, at a much faster rate.

To achieve that, we need more users. Scientifically proven...

In order to attract users we should (according to the experience of other authors):

  • find those who are devoted and already active. Instead of bringing them to Steem(it), we should bring Steem to their platforms. For free, effortlessly, but we will adopt their users, overnight. They are already established, we are not.
  • we should pay pro authors to promote Steem. The system we see on Steemit is that Steem is distributed to content creators, no matter what. Why not paying those who can produce content?
  • posting via guest account - the killing feature and must have
  • we need to compete in free market. Steemhunt, nice try, but horrible execution because 50% of reviews are abysmal. Content creators can be tipped, but they still need to create products that can be sold
  • evolution of bloggers takes too long. Instead of having the approach "bottom-up" (fostering amateurs to become professionals), we should try "top-down" approach, with paid professionals, those with proven digital products

Think about it... A PhD in Eastern Europe is paid less than 1 solid upvote from Utopian.

The total amount of Steem given to content creators per day is about 15-20.000 $.

For that amount of money, it would be possible to pay:

  • 100 experts working in the Western world
  • or 500 solid authors
  • or maybe 1.000 student/enthusiasts

As it's impossible to have enough audience to read 1000 posts per day - let's have 50 great posts instead.

Never forget, the real value of Steem = number of users x log(num. of users)

We need to attract users, with good products, with great content or via seamless transition.

Many thanks to those of you who formed the communities. Without you, this place would be long gone

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I've been here since 2016... and I largely agree with you.

Throughout the existence of steemit user engagement has gone up and down with the price of steem, which is in itself just following the crazy swings of the other crypto's.

And still, after two years, much of the content is about crypto, which no-one is truly interested in.

The way forward is to focus on the social medium aspect, and have the crypto thing as a nice side thingy, the blockchain offers the opportunity to offer a lot of niches to many people but it needs to be worked out.

That being said though, having seen 3 years of this website, it is not dying. The booms are crazy times, but many of the people who where here posting 3 years ago are still here, and many new users come in, but the booms just bring 1000's who come for the crypto, and leave as soon as the bubble bursts.

I wish you good fortune with these observations, and I hope that your vision will come true.

And still, after two years, much of the content is about crypto, which no-one is truly interested in.

Couldn't agree more. Google Trends are supporting us (Cryptocurrency):

throughout the existence of steemit user engagement has gone up and down with the price of steem

Demonstrable truth as well, there were 3 peaks:

That being said though, having seen 3 years of this website, it is not dying

It's definitely the best part! I'm very happy to see many die-hard platforms, https://www.erepublik.com/en for example, lasting for more than a decade.

Hopefully, Steem(it) will pass the test of time as well.

Thank you for your comment, it gave me some topics to think about

Very interesting examples!

Instead of bringing them to Steem(it), we should bring Steem to their platforms. For free, effortlessly, but we will adopt their users, overnight.

This is what Smart Media Tokens should be used for...
EOS is doing just this. Tapatalk which unites 300 Million monthly active users from (expert)Forums all around the world, migrates to EOS. Many small expert-forums as you said are more valuable than a middle-sized network without expertise. I mean Steem(it) is no social-media like Facebook. This is a different animal. And as you said...we kind of don't realy know what we are (reddit? Medium? Twitter?).

Simply putting out those SMTs, so that Medium and Co could implement them, would be easier than redesign Steem(it) it self. Agree with @walkerlv bullrun will bring the same situation like in 2017. Prices let people forget what worth creation means. But you sure that steemit is still alive? Yesterday we had a low in active users. 4.500 people world-wide (bots included).

I hoped for them in autumn 2018 :'(

The biggest problem of steemit and as a consequence, of steem too, is non-existent marketing. All that you wrote stands but if no one KNOWS about steem, then it is all for nothing, unfortunately, and I am yet to be convinced that there is ANYTHING useful being done for the promotion of steem on a global level that would actually make a difference. What we all need is some marketing experts.

I agree 110%... I have no clue how to do good marketing, I never studied marketing, but at least, I'm trying to understand and copy:

  • why there is such a horrible FB page?
  • why Tweeter/FB... comments are rare
  • why there is not a single "star" involved
  • why there is no paid campaign

Why, why, why... I see that other companies are doing that successfully...

Common honey... 110% ... Really... ccc
I am seriously allergic to the notion that there is a philosophical and mathematical chance of something existing beyond its full capacity of 100%. I will forgive you only because you are cute ;)

As for the marketing thing, with all due respect to them, I think an average steem user would do a better job, including you and me. Who knows, maybe they will offer us a job? :D :D :D

I've been playing DrugWars for the whole day. My vocabulary became a bit limited :D

Hahahahahahahaha :D Samo ti igraj drugwars.... Baci pogled tko im je timu... ;)

Uvukao sam duks u trenerku, slušam nekog lika kako trabunja na Balkan Info o doživljajima i primio sam se totalno.

Mnogo zarazna igrica, pošto sam svojevremeno pasionirano kliktao https://www.erepublik.com/en

Uzbuddjenje je ostalo isto

Hi alexs1320,

Thank you for sharing your thought about the Steem blockchain. The Utopian #Iamutopian category was created solely for anything that is related to Utopian. Especially, things that will bring value directly to Utopian. Not for general thought about the BC.

Ups, my mistake, I considered it as a game of words, "what would be Utopia" on Steemit BC. Sorry for bothering you to read, 100% upvote as compensation.

You are right. We need more experts. And more artists. And more musicians. And more investors.

It would be great, to cover niches. It's not all that different from biology/ ecology/ evolution.

Our current state reminds me of this:

It's synapside ancestor of both dinosaurs and mammalians, with two different types of teeth, certainly unusual - but it works. Actually, it's the best beast at this moment.

The problem is that the other platforms are developing as well. In order to survive, Steem(it) needs to change something because the adaptive landscape is ever changing.

Some 15 years ago, blogging platform with rudimentary functions would be fantastic. Today... Not so.

Exactly! And the speed is highly relevant. The development of (better) apps and the growth of the user base has to accelerate a lot. Otherwise some new network or platform can quickly outperform the steem network turning it obsolete (=a T-Rex devouring the synapside).

That's the spirit!

Excellent analysis !

Thank you :)

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