Six design principles behind a Steem blog series

in #rsslog4 years ago (edited)

This post describes some of the blogging design principles that have emerged for a series of blog posts during the course of a 10 month effort


Introduction

image.png

Last April, I posted about a blogging experiment that I began in March. Since that time, I have posted almost daily - and sometimes twice per day - with a new post in the series. The best description that I've found for the series is that it's sort of a digest of timely information on a particular topic. Topics have included music and entertainment, business and investing, and the lion's share have been about science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM). To see the entire series, you can view the #rsslog category.

It turns out that the series has had mixed results. When people come across it for the first time, responses have been entirely positive and even enthusiastic in nature, and I am very grateful that it has received fantastic support from voters in the STEM tribe.

However, outside of the STEM tribe, Steem's voters have mostly ignored it. The clear message that I'm getting from STEEMPower voters is a nice big yawn. ; -) The absence of interest from Steem blockchain voters makes it difficult to justify the time that I spend on the series. (I'm not complaining. Just observing.)

Before I throw in the towel, however, I'm going to make an attempt at promoting the series by describing some of the principles that are being demonstrated by this series of posts, and why I think they're valuable for the blockchain. And I'm going to ask voters to consider offering support to posts from all authors that implement some or all of the principles that are described below.

In its current form, this series consists of five links and summaries per day. Four of the links are usually drawn from the Internet at large, and one of them comes from the Steem blockchain. The summaries consist of my own, original, descriptive text that's usually in the neighborhood of 100-400 words per link. For any Steem post, a beneficiary setting is applied so that the author of the post that I'm summarizing gets a 10% share of the author rewards. The posts are also set to burn 10% of author rewards by assigning them to @null. After posting, I also share the link on Twitter and I copy it to my pre-Steem blog, with links back to steemit.com, steempeak.com, and stemgeeks.net. (Incidentally, I tried to also start copying it to minds.com, but got banned after two posts with no warning and no capability to appeal. If anyone is under the illusion that minds.com is some sort of a free-speech platform, that would be incorrect.)

So, with all that as background, let me describe some of the design principles that I have begun to make use of as this series has evolved. This is mostly just based on my own intuition, with little backing from literature or formal marketing experience, but I hope it is still useful.

Principle 1: It's all about eyeballs

Goodhart's law has been paraphrased as, "When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure."

As a play on the attention economy, the way to raise the value of the Steem blockchain is to bring attention to its content - to attract eyeballs. Nothing else will do. Authors and voters who bring attention to the blockchain will increase its innate value. As an author, if I write for the voters instead of the readers, I'm turning a measure into a target and potentially devaluing the blockchain.

So, to the best of my ability, I'm trying to write to attract an audience and just cross my fingers that the voters will eventually agree about the value that these design principles bring to the series' content.

Principle 2: Content should be timely and relevant

Most of the links in my series go to articles that were posted within a few days before the post. On the infrequent occasions where I post older links, it's almost always done because it is relevant to something else that is current.

As a recent example to demonstrate the timeliness and relevance of the content, I'd like to point to this Twitter post. I posted about a topic on January 21, and CBS Los Angeles covered it two days later, on January 23.

Principle 3: Respect the reader's time

Each post in the series now opens with five headlines, so that the reader can tell - in a matter of seconds - if they want to read any further. The headlines are written to be descriptive, not "click-bait". Hopefully, if the reader just reads the headlines and nothing else, they've already learned some small things.

Moving on from the headlines, each section stands alone as a module, so the reader can read just one summary or any number of them up through all of them. Again, if the reader just reads a summary, hopefully they have learned something. If they still want more depth, the post includes the link back to the original article.

Although creating these posts is somewhat time consuming, I post them from my "lite" account, because the goal is to be informative while minimizing the cognitive demand that is placed on the reader. The format is meant to be densely packed with information that is timely and relevant and easy for the reader to navigate.

Principle 4: Encourage discussion and collaboration

As noted in the introduction, when I summarize a post by another Steem author, I also assign them a 10% beneficiary setting. Over the course of the 10 months that I've been doing this, it probably works out that I have shared author rewards with somewhere around 300 other authors.

It is hoped that this example will encourage collaboration on the blockchain, and it is also somewhat consistent with the Steem whitepaper, which says,

Of the key principles used to guide the design of Steem, the most important is that everyone who contributes to a venture should receive pro-rata ownership, payment, or debt from the venture

Finally, this practice also shows off a capability of the Steem blockchain that is unavailable to authors of the other links that are included in the post. If authors from other blogs do happen to follow links from their logs back to my Steem post, they're going to immediately see something that Steem can do and other blogs can't.

Further, because the topics are nearly all selected from recently posted articles, the posts are relevant to the current moment in time, and the variety of subjects funnels opportunities for discussion from the remote Internet onto the Steem blockchain.

Principle 5: Near out of footprint marketing

In the early 2000s, I worked for a major telecom company that wanted to expand its geographic footprint. The strategy they executed to accomplish this was called "near out of footprint marketing". Basically, this meant that they targeted new geographic locations for expansion by finding places that were adjacent to their existing footprint.

For Steem, obviously the geographic footprint is not relevant, but I think the concept is still useful. If Steem's existing "footprint" is in the cryptocurrency space, then adjacent areas include things like STEM, accounting & finance, business & investing, media & entertainment, and so on.

Because the goal is to bring eyeballs to the blockchain, I mostly target topics that might bring eyeballs from the adjacent space of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).

Additionally, when I post the link on Twitter, I use category tags that will put the link in front of people who have interests in topics other than cryptocurrency.

I don't know what's a good number, but during the last 28 days, Twitter says that I have made 32.6 thousand impressions, and based on my selection of tags, I'd guess that most of those are people who are outside of the cryptocurrency space, but adjacent to it.

Principle 6: Create connections

In the early or mid-2000s, I read an academic article on the subject of blog popularity. I'll never find it again, but what I remember from it was that blogs that had the most links out to other blogs tended to also have the most links in.

So, the posts in this series always have links out to blogs and sites on the Internet. Hopefully, many of those links will show up in log files, and curious authors or "web masters" will find themselves clicking those links to find out who linked to their blog, and why? Additionally, when people are discussed in the articles that I link to, I often try to find their own personal web pages or blogs and link to those. (As a general rule, whenever possible I try to link to things other than Twitter accounts or LinkedIn pages, where the person would not receive a log notification of the link.)

This is also consistent with the Steem whitepaper, which says,

Content without curation is of limited value. If it had access to all the content of the internet but not the links between that content, Google would struggle to produce useful search results. It is the linkage between information that gives it significant value.

Conclusion

At the risk of seeming self-important, I hope it's apparent that I have put a lot of thought into the design of these posts, far beyond just the daily content. As a result, I would humbly ask other authors to consider incorporating some of these principles into your own posts, and I would ask voters to express their support for posts that incorporate these ideas.

For voters, of course, I'd like to see more support for my own posts from Steem voters, but more importantly, I also think it's important for the value of the blockchain. Therefore, I'd like to see these principles rewarded in anyone's post, regardless of author.

Further, I'd like to say thank you to the small contingent of people who have been reading and commenting on these posts, and to the tribe of STEM voters who have supported them so strongly.

And of course, please consider following @remlaps-lite to get this series to start showing up in your feed. After the disappearance of zappl and steepshot, I don't use that account for much else at this point.

Finally, as noted earlier, you can view the full series at the #rsslog tag. Recent posts from the last 7 days cover topics from psychology and privacy to wildlife and geology. They can be seen here:


Thank you for your time and attention.

As a general rule, I up-vote comments that demonstrate "proof of reading".




Steve Palmer is an IT professional with three decades of professional experience in data communications and information systems. He holds a bachelor's degree in mathematics, a master's degree in computer science, and a master's degree in information systems and technology management. He has been awarded 3 US patents.

Steve is also a co-founder of the Steem's Best Classical Music Facebook page, and the @classical-music steemit curation account.

Follow in RSS: @remlaps, @remlaps-lite

Sort:  

Part of this is due to many having their votes set to do so using a bot. I wonder at times how much content is actually read that has votes.

Another aspect is many like myself, who have little SP in the scheme of things, and this limits how much voting we have at our disposal. I vote for your posts sometimes, but I find I often have to leave some posts unvoted. Especially if I interact with some (as I am here) and they reply. I usually vote replies despite it burning the vote for being dust.

I appreciate your conduct here, and at times am smart enough to understand the topics you cover. Understand if it becomes to much, but sometimes my lack of vote is not due to disinterest or ignorance on the topic at hand.

Part of this is due to many having their votes set to do so using a bot. I wonder at times how much content is actually read that has votes.

Thanks for the reply! You're right on both points, especially the one excerpted. Much of my own voting power runs on autopilot, too, so I have no grounds to complain. Although, I do try to keep an eye on my bot and have the rules up to date so that my votes are distributed to diverse authors and valuable topics.

My point in posting isn't to gripe about the rewards, though. That's just how the game works here. In this post, I just wanted to do some extra post and idea promotion. I've never really been much of a marketing person, but for Steem to grow out of the doldrums, I think we all need to pick up a little bit of that skill. It doesn't do much good for anyone if I put a bunch of thought into the design of these posts and then keep it all to myself.

@remlaps

Thank you for your informative post. You listed some principles that I did not follow. At this time, I mainly write about energy production. I don't have many popular topics left, so I'll be moving on to another category soon.

Principle 2 presents a challenge as the more unpopular forms of power are difficult to research. Due to the lack of popularity, it is difficult to validate a lot of the information, so it takes longer. I'm working on ways to speed things up with services like Google Alert and make the information more relevant.

Another issue I go through with meeting the intent of Principle 2 is the dates of information during my research. When writing about coal power, for instance, there isn't that much information posted daily.

You've also listed a couple of other things I don't do when writing: Social media, collaboration, etc. I haven't thought about those yet, so I'll work to incorporate them.

I find that it has been challenging to start out blogging AND find the recognition needed to build a following. Thanks to your post, however, I believe I will find it a bit easier to get started.

Thanks again.

@scholaris

Thanks for the reply! I'm glad you found the post to be informative.

I think that principle #2 probably isn't necessary for all topics. Your idea to use google alerts is a good one, though. I use RSS feeds to get current content, but Google Alerts would also let you get information from sites on the Internet that don't publish RSS feeds.

No thanks are necessary, friend. It is quite refreshing to read a post with a methodical approach towards achieving a goal. I just reformatted my Twitter account to include my Steem Username and I started using APPICS.

I find using Google Alerts is useful for the most up-to-date searches on popular items. However, it doesn't work for everything. Searching for the phrase "neutron life cycle" doesn't return as many results as "Faith in Humanity". I would expect the neutron life cycle to be on everyone's mind, but alas the world doesn't bend to my ideals lol.

Google isn't the only search engine out there. I'm sure the others fulfill a similar service.

As a regular reader and occasional commenter on the @remlaps-lite blog, I must affirm that I find your design of the blog achieves many of the goals for it you have stated here. I can scan the opening paragraph and grasp the topics treated therein. If I have no particular interest in them, I could simply move on, but I have not done so yet, mostly because I feel a sense of loyalty to you and your consistent work to produce the blog, even if our interests don't dovetail perfectly.

I can then move on to the summaries, which include links and even video betimes. On those matters I have little interest in, I simply move on to the next. Sometimes I follow the links and dive into the material because I am very interested in the topic. From time to time I comment on the issues, and I confirm you certainly do upvote comments that show your post has been read. Further, you substantively engage as well, which indicates you're not just cranking out a blog as a tactic to gain market, but that you're undertaking social interaction through that blog with the wide, wide world, which I consider the miraculous benefit of social media: turning us all into neighbors that can chat over the fence.

Overall, I find your blog well designed to minimize wasting my attention on matters in which I have little specific interest, while presenting matters in which you do, and where our interests dovetail, we are then well enabled to engage substantively therein. I would agree with you that the format you have developed here would be well duplicated by other content creators who wish to present multiple links daily in a given area, or on a suite of topics.

It is one of the posts I look most forward to reading each day, and I hope nothing prevents you continuing to do so for the foreseeable future.

Thanks!

Thank you for the feedback! I greatly appreciate the confirmation that, from your perspective, some of the things that I designed into it for the benefit of the reader are working as intended.

I definitely enjoy creating these blogs every day and I learn a lot from them. I also enjoy the conversations that we have had on a variety of topics that were covered. I often find that I learn as much from your comments and subsequent discussions as I do from the links themselves.

I agree with you about the benefit of social media, and I like the comparison you make to neighbors chatting across the fence. That's a really good analogy.

Shared on Twitter, here. #posh

Coin Marketplace

STEEM 0.36
TRX 0.12
JST 0.040
BTC 70446.49
ETH 3571.68
USDT 1.00
SBD 4.73