Hello Steemit community!

This is my application for the Steem Ambassador position. In the beginning I was not sure whether I should apply because I can't fulfill one of the requirements which is showing a picture of myself. Mostly, for a personal reason and partly because I value my privacy. I am doubting because I have a feeling it was not "fair" towards the other applicants.

After thinking more about it, I have decided to take a shot at it, because I think as a Steem Ambassador I am able to contribute to the Steemit community, which have given me so much. It is a valuable position, because ambassadors will form the support pillar for the #promo-steem movement which will help out hundres and thousands of Steem promoters. I am already a part of this movement and I want to be involved more.

My Story

---

When @starkerz held his iconic presentation at Steemfest about how little attention Steemit promoters were receiving, I immediately felt I had to do something. As someone who has invested his funds into Steemit it seems logically to me if we are able to do something that could add to the value of our investment, we should do so or atleast try.

I was not sure how to start, so I began with a contest to support the Steemit promoters. When I posted the contest something happened what I didn't expect. First of all the promoters I had on my list reached out to me. At that moment it moment it was clear to me how passioned they were about their promoting. The second thing that happened blew me away which was people asking me how to join my support list. The first one that did this was @seyiodus with whom I have been working till this day.

After the first contest I spoke with many promoters. Whenever I talked with them I asked them things like what problems they were facing with promoting. To my surprise, most of them told me that the promotion itself was not a big problem, but it was getting people to stay. So that got me thinking. The most obvious reason is that people get demotivated because they don't get attention for their posts. However as a curator for @curie and @ocd I noticed that even when people got decent rewards for their articles, they still left. So apart from the rewards there was something missing. And I have come to believe that part is interaction, connection or something with being in a group.

The realization led to the beginning of the @promo-mentors community. I started out with gathering a group of curators (a few were from Curie). We discussed for a few days with the promoters what we could to retain the newcomers. After a week of curating we added mentors to provide newcomers an experienced Steemian with whom they could talk to.

How it now runs: the community is a collaboration between promoters and mentors. The promoters invite people to the group while the mentors are there to help the newcomers to get on their feet. Daily mentors are giving personal guidance and hold workshops, which all the members can attend to get feedback for their posts. In addition, we with the help of @curie and @ocd curators and our own voting trail (our biggest contributer is @anomadsoul) we are rewarding quality authors AND giving small but encouraging votes to the ones that are eager to contribute to the Steemit community.

While @promo-mentors strictly isn't doing direct promotion it grows the Steemit community through "a network effect". Due to our collaboration with the Steemit promoters and our members inviting their friends, family and lovers our member count has grown to 550. Our group is diversed. We have people from Venezuela, Nigeria, South-Africa, Indonesia and the Philippines. At the moment we have 14 mentors of which 5 are Spanish mentors. In the future we are planning to recruit more people that speak different languages. Our discord group link: https://discord.gg/vDPAFqb.

Another positive effect of our community is that people are being made aware of the #promo-steem movement, which has created new promoters. An example of this is my @ocd-colleague @mariska.lubis who is an amazing women from Indonesia who was already telling people about Steemit wherever she went. When she learned about #promo-steem she was more encouraged to promote Steemit outside her area. A month ago she went to Bandung which is one of the big cities in Indonesia to promote Steemit with her group.

What I am going to do as Steem Ambassador

---

If it is possible for me to get delegation I will use this to grow @promo-mentors. My vision for @promo-mentors is that it will be a project incubator, a community that encourages people to initiate their own projects. At the moment we are scouting and mentoring promising authors, we want to do the same with projects. We will focus on projects that bring value to Steem or puts Steem on the map. For instance one of our members @leap8 is working on a creating a Pixabay (free high quality image source) for Steemit. Due to this personal situation he is not able to work full time on this. However with promo-mentors' modest support he is more encouraged to work on this. I believe in encouraging people to start projects will make Steemit more interesting which automatically will attract more users to this platform. If I become a Steem Ambassador this will be one of my biggest focus.

I hope that the Steemit community will find me worthy of being an Ambassador. Anybody that wants to see the result of my work, feel free to visit me in the Promo-Mentors Discord group and my blog.

At the moment I am working on the main page of @promo-mentors and on the promotion of our group. I have posted our demo video below.

Thank you for reading my application.