Daily Discussion No. 1: Building Community and Engagement - What Are You Thankful For?
After some ten months on Steemit, I have decided to resume an updated version of a "Community Engagement Initiative" I used to moderate/curate on one of my Xanga blogs, back around 2004.
Back then (before Facebook) a lot of people participated in what we might call "social blogging," which is basically what many of the more consistent content creators on Steemit are currently doing.
This also is partly inspired by the recent Steemit Growth Forum, and a number of discussions I have seen on the topic of what we each can do to help Steemit/Steem thrive and grow.
What IS "Daily Discussion?"
Here's how it works:
Brightly colored fall leaves
Once a day, I plan to post a topic for discussion... it can be pretty much anything; sometimes it will be frivolous, sometimes it might be controversial; maybe drawn from current events, maybe philosophical, maybe personal experience. I might include a few of my own thoughts... and then invite readers to share their experiences and opinions.
Every time I post one of these "discussion" posts, I will be using the tag #dailydiscussion as well as the existing #discussion tag created by @timcliff a while back.
Responses can either in be in the comments, below... OR (if you have a lot to add!) you can write your own post as a response and then post a link to it in the comment section.
The purpose of this initiative is to increase engagement and interaction on Steemit.
I have been following @penguinpablo's Steemit stats and have been noticing that the "number of comments per post" has been dropping steadily for months now, and it concerns me from the perspective of building Steemit as a vibrant social content community.
Some Guidelines and General Information:
I will actively curate and upvote comments left on Daily Discussion posts, to the best of my ability. At the start, it shouldn't be so hard... but on my old blog there would sometimes be 200-300 responses, which could make it tricky to keep up.
Young seagull on the beach
Right now, this is an experiment... if sufficient interest develops, I might add daily prizes in SBD for the best replies, as an added incentive.
IF you are going to write your own post as a reply, please:
1. Use the tag #dailydiscussion as your primary tag
2. Include "Daily Discussion No. __ " in your title
3. Link to this post in your post to help promote "Daily Discussion." Doesn't matter if this post is long past it's payout time... it's not about rewards, its about promoting interactive posts on Steemit.
4. Link to your post in comments below the discussion your responding to.
That way your posts will be easier for me and other participants to find and follow.
Please be courteous and respectful, especially if/when a discussion touches on controversial topics-- religion, politics, society, health, parenting, etc. Keep in mind one of the old fundamental aspects of web message board netiquette: "Attack the TOPIC, not the POSTER."
These posts are designed specifically to encourage community engagement and discussion. However, DO NOT spam irrelevant comments and follow requests-- that is NOT "engagement!" You WILL be flagged!
Support Your Fellow Participants! Since this is an ongoing community engagement exercise, please DO upvote the comments of others you feel add to the quality of the discussion! And please DO visit the posts of those who create responses and thoughts as separate posts!
If you think this initiative is a good idea for creating more interaction on Steemit, please consider resteeming this post!
So, without further ado, let's get started!
Daily Discussion No. 1: What Are You Thankful For?
Autumn blackberry leaves
Today is Thanksgiving Day in the USA -- Happy Thanksgiving to those who are celebrating it!
Of course, this holiday is not celebrated in many parts of the world, so let's make this a broader discussion of thankfulness, and what it means to you.
What are you TRULY thankful for, in your life? On the surface, it's easy to say things like "food, friends, family, shelter," but what else? What are the things-- if any-- that repeatedly show up in your life that make you pause and think "Wow... it sure is a great thing that ____ exists/is possible/is in my life?"
It doesn't have to to be something major like "my husband survived cancer," it can be as simple as "I freakin' love fresh bread!" Or it can be both... or a whole list of things.
Share your thoughts and experiences below!
And remember... the purpose of the Daily Discussion initiative is to interact, and however little or large your contribution, it does matter!
(As usual, all text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is original content, created expressly for Steemit)
Created at 171123 12:30 PDT
Hej med dig! ;) great initiative! I am thankful for the events of my life that lead me to where I am sitting today, wouldn't have it any other way and I hope it will only go further! Cheers for life man!
Hej, og tak for besøget! Good thing to be thankful for!
Looks like you have a nice engagement and Steemit recruiting initiative going, yourself. We need many more positive influencers out there to help build our community.
Mange tak! I am trying to do my own small push for it! cheers!
It's great... and how we can best grow a people-driven platform.
I am thankful for the journey of life. I plan to write about it to extend the conversation. The message is basically around the idea of growth and change brings us to where we are today.
I heard it said once that we are he sum total of our experiences... and so-- good or bad-- whatever changes we have encountered and incorporated into our reality is precisely what makes us "us." And if we'd chose a different path, we wouldn't be who we are, in this moment.
I should have added that to my post. Do you ever wonder the big “what if”? What if, I had chosen differently or been there earlier? If you could go back in time where would you go and do differently?
First, the creation of a discussion is the basis of a social platform. This is a great way to engage users in a conversation.
I feel grateful for the fact that I have a family. I am grateful that my daughter and husband are healthy and happy.
And I'm grateful to this platform for being able to share my content with users around the world. In addition, it turned out to be quite a decent job for my mother in the decree
For me having a family is definitely something to be thankful for... it gives me a sense of "belonging to something." Although my parents have passed away, I'm grateful to have my wife and three kids as family.
This is an excellent idea to help promote engagement here on this platform. I have noticed a decrease in activity even in the few months I have been here.
I am thankful that I am healthy and able to enjoy my growing family, my children and grandchildren. I am thankful for all my friends, new and old a like.
I am thankful for the steemit community. I have met so many new friends here from all over the world, expanding my horizons. I have learned a great deal from these friends and I have much more to learn. I am hopeful that I can also add value to others lives.
On the whole the steemit community is a very positive place to be. There will always be those that choose to be negative and unhelpful. But I would like to see more of the nurturing. Perhaps we can change a few minds.
Thanks for sharing... I just hope we can reverse the declining engagement trend... if enough people who are sincerely into engagement and the "social" end of social media get together and insist on being seen and heard, I can't help but think it will either overwhelm the apathy... OR we'll end up building our own subculture within the Steemit environment.
I'm about six days late in responding but on this Thanksgiving I am thankful for being in a lovely new home that gives me much needed creative space and peace of mind. I'm also thankful for my fur baby's 4th birthday. And my freshly-minted Marines Skyped me. It was a great day.
It just matters that you made it and participated! And it sounds like your Thanksgiving offered much to be thankful for!
Despite all the troubles I am facing right now, I am thankful for a lot of things- my kids and husband especially. I have a post sitting on my drafts in this context, I lost words and stopped. Thanks for this initiative,I will try to finish the post and share...
Well done... it's always interesting to me how there are things to be thankful for, even when things are quite difficult.
Look forward to your post!
hello @denmarkguy... I did not have to finish my post until a few minutes ago.. I was not able to use the tag, but nonetheless, here it goes...
Hope you had a great Thanksgiving.
Hey! I think it is a great idea and I am definetively re-steeming this post.
I am gonna try to engage and make other engage, as much as my work allows me.
Cheers :)
Thanks for the support and your kind words! I very much hope this can become a regular feature with a good following.
Interesting proposal of intellectual and interactive enrichment in Steemit, much need make proposals like this and I THANKFUL that. Really and sincerely my "thankful list" is very big (I am very grateful), but without pretending to reduce it, I can say here that I have to thankful a couple of things:
1.- I thankful to my Mother for giving me Life and good upbringing with excellent examples.
2.- I appreciate having the Intelligence that I have, since my birth.
Those are definitely some good things to be thankful for!
This is awesome. I'm so glad to see this. I've been so concerned about the state of Steemit lately.
I'm grateful for all the usual things for sure. I'm also really glad for the practice of gratitude. I do a gratitude list each morning, and it's a really helpful practice.
That IS a really nice practice... and well done! I do something similar, although I'm not on that regular a schedule... but I try to take regular time outs to be grateful... especially for the little things we so often take for granted.
I am just hoping that if enough "engagement initiatives" take root on Steemit, we may be able to jump start interaction again.
I really hope it will help. Interaction is a big piece of what makes Steemit so wonderful. Not sure what can be done about the abusive flaggers. Maybe they'll get bored.
Lost money in my first ponzi scheme money game, which later introduced me to the awesome crypto world, I'm surely thankful.
There's a nice one-- good fortune arising from what started as something unfortunate. Goes to show that you never quite know where the path of life is going to take you.