Just Steem It. (Perfecting the Pitch with Minimalism)
Dear Steemit community,
A few months ago, @donkeypong and I produced a guidebook called Simply Steemit. The hope was to make it short enough as a newbie's guide. It was 10-pages long. Whether or not it really helped the broader community, this is a personal continuation, an attempt to really simplify Steem or Steemit.
I believe in minimalism
I believe that it has useful effects on product perception and product iteration.
Steem / Steemit means different things to different people, so I think that the platform itself is the perfect solution for its own decentralized marketing. Marketing itself has the power to shape future product iterations.
So far we have "Blog. Post. Earn." and "Your voice is worth something."
I think they are pretty decent taglines.
But I think we can tap into our own experience of using the platform. It would be perfect if we could really simplify Steem / Steemit into a one pager, much like the ten commandments, or something like that for wider understanding and adoption. It will be a dynamically changing list, as we work towards perfecting the pitch.
The art of zen.
Minimalism is really just an excuse to have most impact with the least amount of effort. I'm not a professional designer, but I find practising design in minimalism is both fun and effective. I would recommend anyone who wants to have a dig at visual design to start doing minimal stuff with ready-made tools and images. Like Gimp, or templatey stuff like TypeSlab. Any good apps for minialistic designs?
Decentralized self-marketing entity.
Everybody can participate in perfecting the pitch. The act itself inherently benefits everybody. We don't depend on one message. We work together to formulate many messages for the many different minds around the world. Minimalism is a great way to anchor this ongoing crowdsourced project.
As a branding enthusiast, I hope #juststeemit posts get support. To embody minimalism, I'll also try to keep #juststeemit posts short and instructive. I know, another circlejerk.
Nice work, I especially like the 3rd design-'Build together online'.
Yeah I like that myself as well.. but it's too B/W, boring.. maybe someone more artistic has a better, friendlier render :)
This is a good call to the community to spread the good word of Steemit! It's up to us to make it a success, which is driven by our enthusiasm for it. I dig the simple designs!
I'd probably do a brighter colored one later, like cyan or something!
That's a good idea, there's been tons of studies about the psychological impact of certain colors - here's an article for example https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/233843
So especially when you're working with minimal designs, every single tiny element down to color can still make a significant difference.
https://steemit.com/logo/@darkflame/steemweb-re-kevinwong-just-steem-it
I saw this post https://steemit.com/juststeemit/@kevinwong/just-steem-it-perfecting-the-pitch-with-minimalism and loved the graphics! I created this modification of the original by @kevinwong and although its not very minimalist, I like it. A throwback to the early web.
I think the word choices are kinda off for this... what other stronger suggestions to market steemit well?
beautiful design work, Kevin! Really like it!
Just Steem It - Whatever you have in mind, Just Steem It (JSI)...
I like Steem on, as well! What would you get from
Steem on it:)Thanks @good-karma :) Granted not everyone's a big fan of black and white, but it's easy to just try some design on it!
Yes i like Steem On as well!
Steem on is gold!
I really like these designs!
Personally I think there would be benefit for having a few available to target different audiences. I think some people respond better to the $ argument (paid to blog, voice is worth something, etc..) aspect as well as the non monetary ones that focus more on the community (Build Together Online one, which I personally LOVE!)
Great work
Yeap people have differing tastes. Even color schemes may be enough to make a difference! Thanks, it seems a lot more experienced Steemians like Build Together Online. Thinking if that's used as a hook, it may need some refinement to target those who don't even know about Steemit.. well it's still tricky.
While I can understand the benefits of having a single one for cost reasons, I feel we can make use of having 2-3 that pitch it differently. We seem to have a few different audiences that we target, each that somewhat need a separate marketing pitch. These groups (in my eyes) being the existing crypto crowd (which seems to have been semi-saturated this those were the earliest adopters,) the generic facebook/reddit crowd (get paid for what you're already doing, at least the pitch,) and those who want to help/change the world/current paradigm (those who think with their hearts and charities/non-profits.) I see the two designs you had for the last two mentioned.
There have been some successful campaigns that instead of saying what something is, injects a question (vs the answer.) I remember seeing noodle.com attempt this locally some years back. I should mention this isn't ever a sure thing and very tricky to frame in a way that the target audience will actually go search the service/product afterwards.
Question campaigns can be supplemented with things like guerrilla marketing (like random chalk art for an example) or randomly placed cards with QR codes (which can have sayings like This card give you $5 at steemit, really just the given SP on signup, how can YOU make the world better, or how much value is your voice worth.) All of this is just brainstorming. I do think we will have a much easier time targeting younger, more tech comfortable crowds, like universities.
The whole idea of guerrilla marketing is just to get ads onto places they are not expected, typically in some type of creative way. (Which could be a very interesting challenge to steemit users.) A semi-cheesy example is:
source
On this one people just had the stencil which they put on a dirty street/sidewalk, and simply 'cleaned' the exposed areas to make the design. This page also has a bunch of examples. Again, we don't have to do this, but there are cheap ways to put the steemit name/logo into strange spots that can be eye catching.
Looking the last one especially, I love a twist on the steemit logo!
I think I just rotated the original steem logo 45 degrees! (or 90, can't remember!)
Its the little things, it looks great!
Great idea. A simple one page document would really help. Also I like the #juststeemit tag as a potential meme too as well as generating images that people can spread around:)
It's like Just Use It. Or Just Be Human lol. I guess the "right" message + a celeb suddenly endorses it = win..
Yes:)
I like "Build Together Online."
"Just steem it" sounds too much like Nike's slogan "Just Do It."
It's the chinaman in me trying to clone and modify a popular brand :P haha
😆
Totally agree with your post Kevin...I think all websites and apps are tending or should tend to a minimalist and clear design. It is all about focus and simplicity, which is not always easy to achieve.
May I ask you which image size do you use for your posts?
What image size do I use for my posts? Like for this I did each image with 800 px (width) and 500 px (height)
Yes exactly...Thank you :)
I love the "Build Together Online". It's simple, powerfull and really express what steemit is all about: Community.
I'm trying to express that it's a total-solutions tool for crypto.. but how do u say it