RE: Before You Can Spread The Gospel You Must Create The Word: Steem Marketing and Branding Thoughts
Hi @midlet, thanks for the mention, and thanks for this post.
I would agree with just about every point.
Marketing/sales is generally about solving people's problems and / or aspiration.
Steem can make a case on each these.
Although what we have to offer is by and large still very imperfect.
But I am very much about doing the best with what you've got, rather than waiting for ever for what you would like to have.
Communities and SMTs will be great, but it will be some considerable time before they are really polished enough to be fully roadworthy and ready to race in the fast lane.
In the meantime others will be racing past us, carrying all those passengers that want to get from A to B in a hurry.
That doesn't mean the Steem bus should stay in the garage and just do little trips around our own backyard.
It needs to give itself a lick of paint, tune up the engine the best we can, fill the tank, publish our timetables, tell the staff to smile, put some signs up that we are open for business, and set off on our journey.
Even it means we have to travel the back roads, and pick up people from some of the less popular stops along the way, we need to start filling the bus with whatever travellers we can find along the way.
Once that bus is filled, and the passengers stay on board, we can then buy a second bigger, newer, smarter bus and start operating more services to more destinations.
I hear you. I think it's hard(read expensive) to get a lot of people to pay attention to a product or service, but I think it's even harder to get them back once they've had a bad experience.
Unfortunately, I think that's where Steem is at right now. Overall, it's a bad experience, that's why we have trouble retaining users. I think you and everyone else whose stuck it out can attest to this.
Of course I'm someone very bullish about Steem, so this isn't meant to be a Steem sucks sort of sentiment. I think there are a lot of great improvements being made, it's getting there, but if it were up to me(it's not, lol) I wouldn't spend money on advertising yet, and to be clear, that's primarily what I'm talking about. Us spending resources to market right now. I think it would be a poor use of our very limited funds in the current state of things.
It will have some element of risk. But not doing anything has a similar or even greater element of risk.
I am hoping @steemonboarding is really going to get motoring now they have SPS funding, and along with other project like the Steem Terminal, and SteemSavvy, they can hopefully begin to up the retention rate.