Marketing Steem - what do we want, how should we get it, where do we start?
We all want Steem to grow.
We want the price of STEEM to go up, we want the number of active users to increase, we want more dapps to be built, we want more investors to invest.
But which chicken comes before which egg?
And which goose will lay the golden one?
For me now, it is all about numbers.
It's bums on seats, it's boots on the ground, it's people through the door.
WE NEED MORE ACTIVE USERS ON STEEM.
Our 45,000 or so active users is chicken feed in the world of social media, in the world of games, in the world of investment.
45,000 is about half the number of people who travel to Wembley Stadium to watch the FA Cup Final in the UK. It is about two thirds of the number who went to the Super Bowl this year. It less than than the number of people that visit the Eiffel Tower every three days.
So how do we attract more people?
MARKETING > MARKETING > MARKETING > MARKETING >>>>>
As far as I know there have not been many (any?) targeted, coordinated and sustained marketing campaigns to build the user base of steem - either from Steemit Inc or from the Steem Community.
There have been a number of 'pop-up' campaigns like Promo-Steem, the recent '60 Seconds of Steem' promo video ads, and the ongoing Twitter pushes led by @nathanmars, @theycallmedan and others.
These have generally been adhoc, short term projects.
Individual apps and dapps are now just beginning to launch their own individual marketing efforts but they have so far been quite limited.
In the past many on the platform would have looked to Steemit Inc for some form of marketing activity. Now the focus has to be on the community to pick up this ball and run.
Some might say it is too early to do marketing. We need to get our house in order before we go for mass adoption.
Others might say this will be a job for the Steem Foundation, in whatever form that takes.
I hope the Foundation will have marketing front and centre in its plans.
Of course we can wait for the Foundation to arrive, but that will still be some months away before it is up and running and firing on all cylinders.
And we could wait to get our house in order. But what order are we waiting to get it into?
For me personally the time is now.
I read the numbers every day for the SoS Daily News. And the numbers don't lie.
We need to grab more people, we need to grab them quick and we need to keep them here.
There will not be great resources available. So whatever we do will have to be focused and it will have to be clever.
Our greatest resource is us. Thousands of committed steemians who believe in the platform.
A starting point will be to home in on some target markets that might yield the best results in the fastest time.
Here are my four suggested starting targets...
MARKETING TARGETS
1. Games & Contests - Life is a GAME. Play it on STEEM.
Games and gaming are one of the fastest developing areas on Steem.
We have the growing successes of Steem Monsters and DrugWars but our game lineup is still young and relatively immature compared with the outside game world. We must be careful not to oversell what Steem has to offer to the average gamer.
We need to identify our Unique Selling Points and market them with precision.
Running alongside the games on Steem I do think we can make much more of Steem as a platform for contests. There are usually around 50 varied contests running at any one time and that is with no co-ordinated support.
More can be made of contests on Steem. They attract a complementary demographic to games, and they can offer the unique selling point that you can generally still earn from posting to a contest even if you don't win.
2. Niche Communities - ALT. Life? Live it on STEEM.
Steem has always had a particular appeal to the more free thinking, open minded, alternative leaning members of society.
This is reflected by the strong presence on the platform of communities like @homesteaderscoop, @canna-curate, @naturalmedicine, @vegansofsteemit and @informationwar.
We can play to this strength. Market to the 'ALT.Lifers'. Provide resources for these existing communities to go out and recruit to like minded people. If they bring people into their existing communities, retention will likely be much higher.
Steem may never be able to appeal to the passive masses.
But imagine if we could become the No. 1 destination for the 'ALT.Lifers' - those who have a different take on the world.
They may only be a 10% minority of the population. But if we got 10% of that 10% I'd settle for that.
3. The Dispossessed - If you can't say it elsewhere, say it on Steem.
The mainstream social media like YouTube, Facebook and Twitter are banning creators at an ever increasing rate, and for an ever wider range of reasons. The likes of Patreon and Tumblr are following suit.
Those de-platformed and dispossessed free thinkers are looking for a safe space to move to.
Can Steem provide the censorship resistant sanctuary they are looking for?
Partiko took the initiative to rescue those cast aside in Tumblr's recent purge.
Can we bring to bear the right resources, sufficient support and a coordinated approach to onboard the banned ones looking for a new home?
4. Steem in the Community
This is the most difficult target to aim for, and needs most thinking through.
Getting Steem out on the streets and letting people touch it, feel it, taste it may in some countries be the best way to bring people onboard.
The rather dashing activity of the DASH program in Venezuela getting so many businesses to sign up to accept DASH shines a light on one possible route for STEEM. The Steem Merchants project of @rutablockchain in Venezuela is trying to follow the same path but it has only minimal resources to work with.
In countries like Bangladesh, the Philippines, Nigeria, Ghana, as well as Venezuela projects like Fundition and A Dollar A Day have worked with steemians to show the benefits of Steem to local communities.
The scalability, and the wider applicability, of this approach need to be explored more fully. But maybe, just maybe, in the right places at the right times this might win the day for Steem.
These are four possible points of focus for marketing Steem.
There are others for certain, all with pros and cons.
But we need to start somewhere.
The next step is the first question?
Anyone interested?
[ graphic from @pennsif ]
So far my experience with promotion of Steem is it doesn’t go well at all.... the biggest problem I see is complexity, sure we have potential to attract people interested in crypto that understand some aspect of its use(private keys) but for the majority of people it too clunky and complicated to be used as an actual social media platform!
We need the house in order first but your right the time is now!
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I go with the idea of strengthening the little guys that are here and trying now. Our 95% kill rate needs to be improved. We get enough people in here daily of their own accord and then they die in two weeks.
If we can get more redfish to minnows as in @stevevc's @thedarkhorse's, @pualag's initiatives (etc), this will help more than getting more tiny fish to come and be dead.
I promote steem on multiple platforms by linking great posts with good payouts. I have brought in 20 content creators in 2 years and all died fast. I won't stop promoting, but taking care of the people here now seems to be a better use of effort for me.
And I feel like the dapps are the thing to push when I do promote. At least you can learn how to use them without super-human effort. And many of them give upvotes when you use them, so at least there is that.
You know on a second thought that is how my @Partiko mentorship played out. I didn’t really get anyone new my Students were mostly established users just wanted guidance and support!
Now look at them with @d00k13 a as backup!
You are correct in saying supporting those that land here has proven to be where we am needed most!
I agree we need to support those that do arrive into staying and the dapps seem to be what makes it possible.
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Retention is one of our biggest issues.
We are filling buckets with massive holes in the bottom!
Definitely does seem that way and us standing users are holding as many cups as possible to catch what flows out 😅
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Absolutely agree. I have long said, as my experience trying to demo it to people is that they all say the same thing; "Too complicated", which is why we need simple sign-up and things like Steepshot and Zapple re-booting. Simple DApps that get people on board. Push the simple DApps first to give people a taster and pique their interest to delve deeper.
Yea simple dapps will definitely help but even just the first step of signing up and saving the keys and having multiples with no real account recovery system is a wall that needs to be scaled. Many mobile crypto wallets jump straight into simplifying saving keyword phrases in encrypted emails then also saved into your password manager for authorization via fingerprint.... it would be a huge step even if only the posting key was saved.
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I quite agree - they are still issues. And the house still needs to be put in order. But I have been hearing that ever since I started 18 months ago.
I fear we will miss the boat if we don't board soon...
I try look at it in a sense of where is the competition? We have clones and what not but I have yet to see a platform doing what Steem does, everything in one place. This is where I believe we are only racing to board in hopes to maintain interest in our projects but the tension that is being created in the process is defeating our efforts. We need to firmly step out of development and into completed projects, everywhere you look things are unfinished.
Dunno about you but I prefer to stay in a well insulated house over a pretty house any day of the week, the pretty house will always let the chill in.
Great example is DOGE, it ain’t pretty and development has stopped yet it works as it’s said to and widely supported because of it.
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while the numbers might not show signups, i'm certain with advances in frontends, games and things like the steem keychain the 'interfacing' part with the steem blockchain is getting better. the problem is it's still got that 'underground/dodgy' vibe too it because of the money i think -- i'm sure a lot of people are thinking where is the money from, bitcoin did me in and crashed from 20k to 3k and other internet horror stories of password leaks and such like -- the hard core elite that are here are people that are the 1% of the 1% who have a bit of a clue of what they are doing (on the majority) and understand the keys, creativity, involvement cycle and how to craft themselves some kind of digital indepedance here.
it's not just the bringing, it's the retention right? i think we are on a good path to 'clean up' the areas that people are most concerned about but it also takes a bunch of education on their side if they are willing to learn and maybe people are just overloaded with decision making in life to be 'learning/adapting' to this what often times looks like this parrell universe running alongside the day to day -- steem can look like an abstraction layer on reality at times.
maybe the focusing goals should be to pick 10 areas that we believe needs to be concentrating on and build mini teams of 5 people to work together on them --- personally i'd like to concentrate on building a food kitchen for the homeless powered by steem, i've seen many vans with washing machines and showers that weekly go to churchs here in the uk for people to wash their clothes or have some level of decency restored by having a shower -- i'd like to see us connect some real world offchain issues.
keep doing all you do daily and weekly, don't lose faith, even if you reach a handful of people that's better than just being closed minded to what's happening past our keyboard and mouses. see you tonight!
Yes, we have to work on the story we tell, and improve our image all round.
And the rubbish retention rate needs to be firmly kicked into touch.
Like the food kitchen idea - look out for what comes next...
Everyone that is big into crypto seems to use Coinmarketcap.com so maybe we could put some STEEM ads there.. We could have a Steem Account that makes a post for each ad, and the community could upvote those posts to help fund more!
That's a very smart and simple idea actually. I would definitely chip in by upvoting the account.
We need to spend
Less time on Discord and this is one way to bring attention to our Blockchain
Also we’ve started a movement called
On Twitter to grow our network exponentially
Discord is our favourite rabbit hole. But we really need to come up above ground and feast on the fresh grass...
Gaming will take us to the next level. We get a couple of crypto projects looking for exposure, sponsoring steemmonsters tournaments with their advertising budget, and that whole ecosystem is going to explode and take the rest of the chain with it.
Hi
You raise many valid points, but I agree that marketing Steem and it’s Dapps to the world should be a priority.
Upvoted and Resteemed!
Excellent point of view
Communities will be key. Looking forward to see what you got for us on the new show ALT Life.
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I agree that the focus should be on much more open-minded than average people. Novelty seekers are the best target group now. My gut feeling based on personal experience points to this, too.
The advantage of marketing Steem as platform of games and contests is that that has the ability to bring people interested in spending money on Steem. One should not overplay the earning aspect of Steem because it is mathematically impossible for the average Steemian to be an earner in the long run. This is no pyramid scheme but an emerging decentralized platform for businesses that leverage the unique selling points of the blockchain deriving from the immutability and uncensorability of data.