Last time we talked about followers and influencers.

The key to engaging followers is making them interested in whatever you are promoting or presenting. To do that you have to both know as much as possible about the product or service and be able to present it in a clear way that gets the message across. The information must be correct. If it's not correct, you are damaging your own credibility and the credibility of the promoted product.

Getting Clarity out of the Way

Let's say you're about to Tweet "Join me on the Steemit coin site and make $$$ with a Witness!#bitcoin #connect #decentralized". What's wrong with this statement? One, there's no Steemit Coin. Two, Steemit is a blogging website. Three, there are no instant witness riches. Four, there are other ways to make money. Anyone already familiar with Steemit is going to think you've gotten into some real strong stuff and anyone not familiar is just going to be confused.

Taking that into account, would "Post your original content on Steemit and curate. #makemoney #originalcontent #upvote" be better? Unlikely. Yes, this is what you can accomplish on Steemit. You can post and you can curate. Do your Twitter fans know what "original content" is? No. To them, original content is any number of things that may or may not have anything to do with creating something uniqe to post. "Curate" just makes them think of art gallery curators. This sentence makes no sense to the majority.

"Sign up and blog on Steemit and earn crypto by posting and voting! #earncrypto #steem #cryptocurrency" Now this gets the message across. It's pretty clear as to what the website is about, that tokens can be earned, and that the basic activities consist of posting and voting.

The Introduction

Once a cross-platform follower is interested in what you're all about, they need a hand exploring it. A personal touch goes a long way.

Folks who don't know their Bitcoin from a Chuck-e-Cheese token need guidance to get acquainted with a project that makes no sense to them. Their first contact with STEEM or SBDs will likely be a contact with the Trending list of Steemit. And you know how that goes. They're going to assume that there is some magical way that users are granted money (remember that the payouts are shown in $) for writing random crap. As the influencer who got them there, it's on you to provide that guidance. Otherwise they'll look at it once, click the post button, realize they need an account, and leave.

Let's say you have a goal to transfer your Facebook followers to the Steem blockchain and get them actively engaging with you here. It's not as simple as saying "hey go join me". Roughly, these are the actual steps you'll need to undertake in order to make this a success.

^{Goal stockphoto}

Goal: Inspire someone to make their first post using Steemit

1. Explain how Steemit works, where the information is stored, how rewards are allocated, the two tokens and the utility of Steem Power
2. Talk them through account creation and its ideal use; explain that account approval takes 7+ days
3. Create the account for them or walk them through the standard creation process
4. If they have to wait 7+ days they will likely stop caring and forget
5. Explain passwords and keys, get them situated
6. Help them figure out how to start off and get posting
7. Help them get noticed by anyone who isn't yourself

This is a pretty big pain in the ass. If you've got 1,000 organic followers, you're not going to do this for every single person. You'll become tech support.

Solution: Succinct information and clear guides

1. In your general messages explain how Steemit works, where the information is stored, how rewards are allocated, the two tokens and the utility of Steem Power
2. Clearly state that the account creation process has a wait time to it
3. Direct them to easy to understand written guides
4. Direct them to helpful supporting resources

Never direct anyone to your own guides unless they're 100% correct and vetted. If anything goes wrong, you will discredit yourself in front of your follower and lose them across all platforms.

Why bother?

Now that the how and what are out of the way, let's look at the why. Why do we need to influence people to explore Steemit (or whatever front end you prefer) and learn about the currency?

Because we are all stakeholders. Some have a bigger stake than others but all have a stake. The success of all these projects build on the blockchain ultimately leads to the success of STEEM and SBD as prominent cryptocurrencies. How stakeholders perceive these projects directly correlates to the success and failure of these projects, and indirectly, affects the perception of the success or failure of the tokens we hold.

^{^ Lego stakeholders -- read the article}

Stakeholders

Just now the word stakeholders came up to describe everyone who has a stake -- aka an account -- on Steemit. Who else does it describe?

• Everyone who processes SBD or STEEM (ie. @blocktrades)
• Everyone whose services include payments via SBD or STEEM
• Developers working on any of the projects
• Reporters and bloggers writing about Steemit or the tokens
• Families of individuals who earn their living by posting on Steemit, Dtube, etc
• Readers of authors like @richq11 @everittdmickey etc who follow their novels
• Hosting service providers
• Staff and vendors at SteemFest venues
• Merchandise printers
• Registrants awaiting their account activation

This is just a few examples. Some of these are internal and some are external. Some are stakeholders for a limited time only and some are continual. The term stakeholder thus does not only apply to those having a direct, quantifiable investment, but also those who are indirectly invested.

Generally, a stakeholder is typically defined as anyone who can affect X or anyone X can have affect on.

Conclusion

In tying all this together we can clearly see that we all have a vested interest in presenting the blockchain, the tokens, and the general project in a positive light and supporting others who aim to do the same.

One of the best and most-actionable ways to achieve this is by stabilizing our ranks with quality members. But what's a quality member anyway? Watch for the next post in this series for that discussion.

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Like what we're doing? Support us as a Witness. Go to https://steemit.com/~witnesses At the bottom, type in guiltyparties Click VOTE