Taking STEEM to the Mainstream Content Consumer - My Experience so Far
On-boarding to STEEM has been highlighted as an issue for some time. Between finding ways to set up accounts, then funding the accounts with RC and then training people, there is a lot involved. If you are an app owner, or a business owner like me, we want to get people on board as soon as they request it. Failing to do so loses users and customers.
My Non STEEM brand, The Excel Club (@theexcelclub), recently went live integrating the comments section of the blog with STEEM using Steempress. Although I have not yet launched this formally to my following and users, people have started to take notice. For STEEM this is good, but for The Excel Club (or any other business), losing customers because of on-boarding could be an issue.
I knew taking STEEM to the mainstream content consumer would be difficult, but I wasn’t expecting the first bits of feedback to be problems with on-boarding. Foolish me. I should have known. I did data posts on account creation.
In the last 24 hours I got the following messages, 2 are direct emails and one was left on Youtube.
So, I have 19 account creation tokens, and will be helping these people myself. I already have a free course about steem available on Udemy so I will do what I can. Until I do the hard launch, there is some important information Excel Club users need to know about steem, so I put this little video together after further discussions with both steem users and excel club users today.
I think I am going to have to do a lot more hand holding than original expected to on-board people. I also have to get my definition of STEEM right, in a way that is simple and not scary. Cryptocurrency is scary to many people. For my use case, which is different to many other business on the blockchain, steem is a value added benefit. this value can be looked at like a a loyalty card with a supermarket, where your points can be redeemed. STEEM earned by learning Excel and Power BI on the Excel Club can be redeemed against premium course and content prices.
Oh and while I am at it, I placed my first ad for a steem app in my latest non steem post. The soft launch is about awareness and I want my users to see there are other ways to use their steem other than offsetting it against premium courses with me. Social proof of STEEMs value really. Do go check it out, the first to comment with the name of the app I promoted will get a full 0.17 upvote from me.
http://theexcelclub.com/simple-explanation-of-machine-learning-shown-with-excel-part-1/
Hi
I got maybe about 100 free account creation credits idling, and still wondering how I could make a good use of them.
Any ideas ?
Really, how cool. You could use some to onboard friends and family, although I know many dont really want to do this because there is just too much explain to do.
You could also do a post offering assistance to others that know people who are waiting on accounts?
If steem becomes more popular, people will be wanting accounts and holding these could also be a benefit. At the moment it costs only 3 steem to set up an account without them. thats like $1.15. Imagine when steem is $5 again, thats $15, at which stage people wont be so quick to burn steem to set up accounts and these could be in demand.
All done, long ago. I got 8 members of my familly on Steemit so far, all friends, neighbours, coleagues been advised and encouraged, some came and some refused, some remained here while large part gave up.
All over, during last 2 years, I have probably brought to steemit about 20-25 people.
I like you last idea of hodling for the future, for days when steem is back to $5-10.
If only the price for new acct will not be reduced then from the 3 steem
I like the tool on steemworld .org where I found a trustless way of creating new acounts, without revealing the new master password to the creator. All done from the set of public keys.
Would that be Steem Monsters?
how easy did I make that.........it would have been more fun if my vote was worth more lol
At least with a dapp like Steem Monsters you have a chance to get some referral income that can offset some of the time invested. It also starts people off into a game and so when they sell a card they just see Steem/SBD at the games currency just like any other game. Then they see Steemit and oh so that where all the players of the game are chatting and earning more currency! Finally the best part is you get to see if someone buys a starter packs and then you can go see if they blogged anything asking for help or reach out to them that way if they are using steem.
The great thing though if they end up joining because of something like Steem Monsters there are already a lot of community out there that they then can join. One such community I’m active in is called @contestkings. I’m just a guild member there but they are really amazing people. They are onboarding people with physical printed out SM cards, and all kinds of things. @Steemmonstershow also has a show there every week and they do have on onboarding contest last week they were offering 10 SBI and a booster pack to the winner(s)
Once you get people into a community any hand holding needed now becomes a village effort and not always just a single person.
the users I am focused on are content consumers, people that have searched for the topic I blog about. They are not content creators and I dont want to try and encourage them do to so. Youtube has way more content consumers that dont care how creators make money than they do have content creators. there is a lot to learn on YT too if you want to earn money. There are communities for Youtube creators to learn the ropes. but we dont need communities to learn how to consumer content on youtube. Steem is more complex because of the rewards and the belief that anyone on the platform should earn. I think this is a mind set we need to change. how we change it to attract more consumers I have no idea.
When I’m on YouTube I don’t want or need to leave YouTube to find anything.
Part of that battle is how hard it is to find anything on this site beyond a couple of days in tags. If you are stuck searching stuff on the Steemit end you will go from days old to months with a whole lot of stuff missing. The 7 day cycle is something that needs to be broken as well.
You also have endless scrolling which really bogs things down as well after a while. If I go manual hunting down the gaming tag maybe I’ll make it to day 4 before I give up as it struggles to keep loading more and more in.
Perhaps that is in part why steempeak or whatever that one site is has curator feeds. Sadly the best way of finding anything on steem is using google or something like steemlookup unless you have the skillset and access to quarry more directly.
That needs to change and I’ve seen people talk about they can never find content they want to consume. The person consuming does not care about our 7 day window. Yet the content creators are.
I’ve had people in my community tell me they just read and watch videos in our upvote feed in discord. They just don’t have time to try and find anything they enjoy otherwise. To much for them to have to filter though.
this is very interesting feedback and I agree. when you are on youtube there is no need to leave.
the search problem is an issue, I have also heard the same from other curators. and you are right, the normal consumer does not care about the 7 days window, but when the normal consumer comes to steem, they are sucked into the ...curate within 7 days or you don't earn. Money comes into it and normal content curation goes out the window.
we really have a long way to go on steem to make it 'consumer friendly'
the current ideological flagging wars is stopping any half thinking human from joining this platform at the moment.
I wasn't being flagged until this last hour. ( for good posts - links below)
..and now I am...
One of the posts was flagged to oblivion for offering solutions to ideological flagging,!!!!
This is getting out of hand and driving people off steemit.
It's making the whole platform look like the playground of small people with big SP.
It's killing steemit. (and steem...?)
These are the two posts flagged for ....
..... "for posting ignorant trash on our blockchain," (yes, really).
https://steemit.com/blog/@lucylin/a-solution-to-inappropriate-flagging-ones-based-entirely-on-ideological-differences
https://steemit.com/blog/@lucylin/an-introduction-to-steemit-communism-and-the-big-picture-1
On boarding users while this is going on, is akin to inviting someone into your house while an arsonist is throwing petrol around the kitchen....(imo)
I don't want my new users to come any where near steemit and they are not content creators but content consumers. I get a few downvotes on my YT videos and it doesn't bother me, everyone else gets them too. So if my consumers dont like my content, I don't mind flags. Keep im mind, my content on my brand account is not aimed at steem users and Im not so bothered if no one on steem sees it.
Paula,
We at the Steeminati have been having the same problem...
That's why we made our group....
We only bring in 1 person roughly a month and the hand holding besides a severe time problem to the one providing it. Is such a deterent that most people drop out without giving Steem a chance....
Easily getting up, figuring things out on your on yourself and inviting environment are so important. Right now it is zealots...but early adoption will not get wide acceptance unless we can fix these things... other social media platforms do not have these problems... and we are in competition with them as well as other blockchains... yes I know there is a difference betweem Steem, vs. SteemIt and other interfaces.
But to 99% of common users they don't give a hoot...
sigh......I dont know what to say.....
"But to 99% of common users they don't give a hoot.."
unfortunately with steem, unless they are content consumers only, they need to. Its such a complicated system for the average joe. and there I am trying to keep it simple, sign up and you can earn rewards like a loyalty card and redeem then against the price of my premium content. I don't want them to come near steemit, but I have to send them here to reset their passwords and keys when they get them.....
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"Too complicated!"
On the few occasions I have mentioned this venue to others, that's the feedback I've gotten. I had much hope of using this as a blogging/sharing/fundraising value for my charity organization, but that's becoming more and more of a longshot.
Even when I can get through to people, there's the next issue: "Why can't I just buy some of this 'Steem' with my debit card?" People's eyes glaze over when I start talking about exchanges, and buying BTC/ETH/LTC, then exchanging that for Steem. "Too complicated!"
People expect "plug an play;" people expect "continue with Facebook,"... not complications.
Bright Blessings, and thanks for all your work!
if the rewards were not there, it would be a lot easier, people would just read content and vote on what they like, just like other platforms. it gets complicated because everyone wants to make money, and just understand how to make money is not as easy as posting seems to confuse everyone. Ah the expectations gap.
Fully agree that not having the ability to purchase steem with a credit or debit card or fiat does add to the complexity
Well I know the answer, but will save that vote for someone else :)
I do expect you'll be doing a fair amount of hand-holding. If we had a central on-boarding place, as discussed at the SOS forum this evening, you could perhaps send them that way. However, the personal touch might be the best route for your clients. Good luck!
Did my first lot of hand holding today and onboarded an excel club user that couldnt get an account, although it looks like steemit inc may have caught up on the backlog
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thanks @pennsif
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