The Truth about Wales - scary statistics revealed. How can we improve the retention rate?
As part of a plan to promote Steemit in Wales @stephenkendal trawled the database to come up with a list of users based in Wales.
There were 63 members in that list to start.
To kickstart the promotion of steemit in Wales I thought it would be good to see if we could set up a meetup of existing users in Wales.
As a starting point I went through Stephen's list to see which accounts are still active.
Of the 60 odd accounts only 11 have been active in the last two weeks (bright green in the spreadsheet below) - that is just 17.7%.
Even if the last active period is extended to the past month (pale green) that still only expands the active user number to 15 or 24.2%.
These retention figures really are poor - although not totally surprising. I had seen similar figures from @paulag in the past.
But it does put the status of steemit in perspective. In Wales, with a population of 3.1 million, there are only 15 active steemians - that is less than 0.000005% of the population.
We truly have a mountain to climb to put steemit on the map in Wales.
More importantly it does highlight the very serious need to improve the retention rate in steemit.
At these current rates to achieve an active user base of 1 million, steemit will need to recruit 5 million new users.
Clearly an absurd situation.
If you ask steemians what can be done to improve retention rates you will get many different answers. Many of those answers will revolve around improving rewards for the newer users.
There are some admirable projects like the Minnow Support Project and Project Curie that aim to tackle the problem. But that is obviously not enough.
Beyond those sorts of projects what can realistically be done in the here and now to help keep new users on steemit.
Two key areas for me are :
1. Modifying and managing expectations in the promotion and signup process.
The 'sales pitch' of steemit needs to go beyond the standard post and earn message. If that is the primary marketing message used to recruit new members many will give up disappointed and disillusioned with steemit within the first few weeks. We need to show that there is a deeper value to becoming a steemit user beyond the simple $ value that might, over time, be accrued.
2. Introduce some form of mentoring or buddy system right from the starting gate.
Amongst the Wales users I analysed 13 had signed up and never started posting (NSB). Several more had posted just once and then given up.
In games like Entropia a mentoring system is baked into the game with rewards for successful mentoring of new players. That is not feasible in steemit so we must look to some manually managed process.
Mentoring is something I am giving a lot of thought to - both in the context of recruiting new users to steemit in Wales, and for helping keep new users on board in the homesteading community that I am an active part of.
I would welcome any ideas for mentoring in the comments below.
So in Wales we have at best 15 active steemians. I am hoping as many as possible of us can meet up in the near future.
For any of us that want to help promote steemit in Wales it does appear we have a fresh green Welsh mountain to climb. But if the sheep can do it so can we.
And the rewards could be great. If between the 15 of us we could recruit and retain just 30 new users we would have tripled the steemit membership in one fowl swoop.
We best not chicken out of this.
If any of these active users would be interested in a meetup do let me know :
@artystuff, @berolena, @bloodycritique, @clydemajiklegion, @artystuff, @berolena, @bloodycritique, @clydemajiklegion, @growthtools, @guided, @kissmyaxe76, @leonjones, @mattjacobmason, @mivstar, @pumpkinsandcats, @she-raa86, @stevejhuggett
You might also be interested in some of my other posts :
Are there any Whales in Wales? Looking for steemians in Wales - anyone interested in a meetup?
A Dollar A Day - my way of supporting charitable causes on steemit
Homesteaders and Preppers on steemit : ideas for improving retention
Cabbages coming out of my ears - Heading for Brassica Independence Day
The Steemit Guide to Homesteading : a Global Adventure in Collaborative Curation
Homesteaders & Preppers on steemit - 230 members and rising - v9 [08 Oct '17]
SteemTowns - connecting the virtual with the reality - would it be possible?
[flag image from pixabay - Creative Commons CC0]
Very interesting post. With a population similar to Ireland, these numbers dont surprise me. What I would say is do persist with the meet up and over time you will see the group grow. We have a similar meet up in Dublin every month
Yes I'm keen to move forward with the meetup. I am thinking that face-to-fact meetings will help strengthen the members of the group and hopefully improve ongoing retention.
I believe there has been several of the meetings in Dublin. Are they growing each time? Are they helping people stick with steemit?
I am planning to do a similar analysis with the Homesteaders and Preppers community. I am just finalising the latest list that has almost 250 homesteaders and preppers on steemit.
I am hoping that there will be a higher retention rate there to demonstrate the value of active communities in keeping people on board.
it would be very interesting to see if the retention rate is higher, are you going to do an analysis?
Yes the Dublin meet up grows each month and many of the same people return. There are people from Dublin on steemit since summer 16
Yes I'm working on the Homesteaders list at the moment. Should have time to finish it before the end of the week.
Good luck with tripling the numbers. Is there an easy way to find people from your country on steemit? Would be interesting to find other Danes.
I believe @stephenkendal did some sort of filtering on the database for anyone that mentioned Wales in their profile. I think @greenacrehome has the set up to do this if you can catch him in the Discord channel.
I'll give it a try, thank you.
Only just picked up on your post @pennsif one of the weaknesses in Steemit notifications can be easily missed!
Hi @stevejhuggett, thank you for connecting here. Are you north, south, mid Wales? I'm in west Wales.
Same here @pennsif, Gorslas in Carmarthenshire.
Hi Steve, if you are interested in connecting with other steemit users in Wales, and maybe joining a meetup, I've just set up a SteemWales Discord server :
Do drop by if you have a minute.
Do not worry my friend we continued here similar to a little fish, noy a whale, thank you for the statistic it is very nice to know completely the proccess and participation of this person in steemit.
Best regard
Thank you for your comment.
Are there many steemit users now in El Salvador? Have you managed to have any meetups there yet?
No my friend i invited my friends to steemit but they do not believe me,
i identify only one user but do not post . Lot, he only copy and paste contenta it is not good here ok, in @cervantes told me only i am from El Salvador but you have reason i wanted for identify another maybe i am not find very much.
But i will try to organize a meet up.
Good luck with that.
@pennsif,
This gem of a post was discovered by the @OCD Curator team!
Please Reply to this comment if you accept, and are willing to let us share your gem of a post! By accepting this, you have a chance to receive extra rewards and one of your photos in this article may be used on our compilation post!
You can follow @ocd – learn more about the project and see other Gems! We strive for transparency!
Hey bud, great post. It's good your looking into ways to help with retention!
Please reply and I'll nominate your post to @ocd!
That would be great, happy to have the post shared. Thank you @ma1neevent.
Some of my ancestors are Welsh - does this count? lol
Seems like a very sound project to undertake, and I (as a newbie) really like the mentoring idea. thumbs up :)
Thank you. Still working out how to implement the mentoring.
Thanks for attending Pimp Your Post Thursday @pennsif. I have written a post to share your featured post. Just stopping back to let you know that you can see your name in lights right here. (Just kidding about the lights :)
Thank you @shadowspub. Totally enjoyed PYPT, will be back again next Thursday.
Will be looking forward to seeing you @pennsif
This if we were in a normal fair system should be a 100 SBD upvote post at minimum. The amount of work you put into this is unreal. Thank you. If you want to form a group on https://SteemThat.com feel free to do so. Organize everyone and private message each other. We are asking members to visit the open group there also and share your flags. One way we thought of to track active folks from different areas of the world. So far we have 200 people from 200 different countries it seems.
I will take a look, thank you.
Just reading this now @pennsif
We organise meetups in Dublin regularly and it can be hard at first to find people in your area but all you need is one other and you can start meeting. In time the group will grow.
Retention rates are not great but then again this is a new technology. Retention rates can be improved but I don't think it's a huge problem that retention rates are low, if its because people are just dipping their toe in the water. We do need however many more new users trying it out to get the network to grow and we do need to find out the reasons why people aren't staying. Is it still too hard to use?
Hmm, though i have not heard about wales befoer, but i read your point and i think is fine, keep it up am new in steemit just a few day old, i will like to learn more from you, thanks for sharing.
Thank you.
welcome