Posting and Succeeding on Steemit: A Closer Look at "Quality" and "Value"
This is an unplanned post.
Seems like there may be a trend in the making, as this post was — in an unplanned fashion — inspired by a post by @whatsup entitled "Another Unplanned Post - Helping others by keeping it casual."
Anyway, I was inspired by these words:
The Content Evangelists can preach about Quality and how they hate memes and "low effort posts", that can be their thing. I want to seek engagement and connections instead.
So I wanted to take a look at "Quality" and what we think we're doing here.
The Whole "Quality Content" Issue
Spring flowers
The term "Quality Content" gets tossed around a lot on Steemit, as people lament the lack of same, or complain that expecting "quality content" isn't what Steemit was meant to be about.... and variations. Some assert that the entire future of Steemit hinges on "Quality Content;" some dismiss "Quality Content" as irrelevant in social media, pointing to twitter and Facebook; both cesspools of meaningless shitposts.
Half the time I'll watch someone go off in response to a post and it's clear that "Quality Content" is synonymous with what they like and "shitposts" are what they don't like. Pretty simple, really. Except, of course, one person's trash is another person's treasure. And so, the whole argument doesn't actually move us any closer to determining what best serves Steemit, in the long run.
Yes, I said "in the long run," because that does seem to be a common thread.
If you're concerned enough about the community to be worried about content, odds are you also care about what happens here, in a timeframe that extends beyond this coming weekend.
"Quality" vs. "Value"
Red Primroses
Although some might think I'm a "Quality Content Evangelist," actually I am not. Yes, I generally expect quality of MYSELF, but I don't pretend anyone else should adhere to my standards. We all have different backgrounds.
Rather than being concerned about what we mean — or don't mean — when we say "quality," why don't we instead look at whether or not any given piece of content adds "Value."
"Value" is a little different from "Quality."
Whereas most "quality" tends to also add "value;" it's not really a requirement. And there's lots of stuff that adds "value" without being of any great quality or genius.
So How Do We Determine "Value?"
When I consider my own patterns as I go through the content discovery process on Steemit, there are certain basic tenets that apply, for me (a non-exhaustive pair of lists):
Value can be ADDED by:
Originality — it may be short and simple, but you came up with it YOURSELF.
Poppies in the sun
Humor — I guffawed, or even snorted coffee-- great!
Novelty — Something was totally new to me.
Engagement — Can't overstate this enough! If your post makes me feel engaged in what you do and wanting to respond? That adds HUGE value!
Uniqueness — I'd never thought of that before.
Beauty — Often a core part of Photography posts.
Inspiration — In fact, this post is the result of inspiration from another post!
Making me think — No explanation needed
Informing — A relevant news item; new research.
Calls to Action — Getting people to DO something.
Contests/Challenges — Stimulate interaction and Engagement.
Questions/Debates — whether on hot topics or everyone ones.
On the other hand, value is usually DECREASED by:
Repetition — I've already seen this 6-month old meme 300 times on the web.
Sloppiness — At least take the time to spell check your Title and tags!
Plagiarism — DON'T present an article from Time Magazine, as your own.
Scotch broom
Self-Upvoting — This is a "touchy" area for some, but I am mostly talking about the blatantly self-serving kind... like the other week I commented on someone's very nice post; then noticed the OP would give all her visitors a $0.03 upvote on their comments (nice!) and then an $0.87 upvote on all her own "thanks for your comment!" responses. WTF?
"Naked" Photos — No, I don't mean the NSFW kind, I mean a post that contains solely a photo, with the title "Cool picture of house," no description, no reason why you like, no indication of whether it's even your photo.
"Naked" Memes — See "naked photos."
"Naked" Videos — Pretty much a variation on "naked photos."
Non-caring — A variation of "sloppiness;" a post that's messy, unuoriginal and screams "I just need to put ANYthing here to create a post and earn rewards."
Unfocused Vlogs — "You talking" for seven minutes does not add value. Especially not when accompanied by "Cinema Verité" camera work! You talking about something you're interested in or passionate about CAN, especially if you're capable of staying on task.
No Reason for this post — Another one that pretty much speaks for itself. If you don't actually have an idea (or a CLUE, even!), don't post. Just don't!
As I said up top, these are not meant to be exhaustive lists, and you can probably add to them!
OK then, so why does VALUE Matter?
"Value" is a sort of nebulous term, if we try to actually describe it.
Spring flowers
For me, it is best understood as a somewhat intangible quality that makes us want to come back and check up on the content of a web site, blog or a content creator.
If you want to think about "adding value," sit down make a list of the top 20 people on Steemit you try to always keep up with. Chances are most of them are adding value to the community.
Value matters for the exact reason that it is "something" that makes you keeping coming back. So "adding value" matters on Steemit because it's what keeps people coming back, over and over. People who keep coming back to a venue are also the ones most likely to engage in peer-to-peer (or "word of mouth") advertising, which is how venues that don't formally advertise grow their follower, user or customer base.
When a venue doesn't add value, you end up with "one-time users," which means — on a membership site like Steemit — you can easily end up with lousy retention, which might eventually lead to the complete collapse of the community.
And that is not something to strive for!
How about YOU? What's your stance on the whole "Quality" and "Value" debate? Do you see the difference between "Quality" and "Value?" How would you characterize your approach to Steemit? Is it planned, or unplanned? Do you feel your posts "add value" here? Leave a comment-- share your experiences-- be part of the conversation!
created by @zord189
(As usual, all text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is original content, created expressly for Steemit)
Created at 180518 17:50 PDT
You definitely add a lot of value with your posts. But we can't expect 10 or 100 million new users to be good content creators considering their background and education.
Thank you, and absolutely right! We can't expect the next ten or hundred million users to create quality content... but we can ask them to do their best to add value.
I love the site "engrish.com." It's just a bunch of silly photos of public signage featuring awkward translations. Quality? Hardly! But it adds value because I am amused every time I go there, and each photo is presented in an organized fashion with a clever caption.
Pretty much anyone is capable of saying "here's my cat Max being cute!" and "photo is my own," as opposed to just a photo with the title "cat." I suppose it's about "giving a $hit," on some basic level.
I believe people are smart and will know who to support. On the long run, it will level up by itself. A lot of spammers trick me once or twice but I find them over time and even if they get a buck or two I'm not concerned. We want distribution after all and it's not easy to start on steemit. A lot of people coming from different cultures and have different values. Begging is a normal thing in some countries for instance.
Ah yes, the "different cultures" thing does play into the mix, and very much so. I often used to wonder why our members from the Nigerian community seemed able to figure out "posting and engaging" while others from certain Asian countries often "begged for votes." Different cultural values.
Being Danish, I find "self-promotion" loathsome; yet it's an essential part of social media. If I had a "more American" (meaning US, more than Canada) mindset, I'd probably be doing a lot better with my blogs and even my Steemit efforts.
You present some really great points @denmarkguy. I think naturally if you present Value and Quality Content it will kind of trickle down and eventually lead to Engagment.
But Is having Engagement always a good thing or beneficial to a Community??
Maybe it could be argued that having a bunch of pot heads Engaging and talking with each other about the latest XXX movie is not a good thing.
I guess it's all subjective.
But thank you for a very thought provoking post
Thanks for the feedback!
I guess it ultimately comes down to the question of WHY we choose to participate in something; in ANYthing.
For me, "engagement matters." I could post much of the same content I post here to one of my "regular" blogs, perhaps even get 2000 page views by morning... and have ONE person interact with me in the comments. Being able to say "That was read 2000 times, pass the salt..." doesn't matter much to me. That the post earned a dollar or two in Google AdSense revenue is pretty irrelevant to me.
Here on Steemit, I get to interact because I get dozens of comments. THAT is "value," so me, right there.
But yes, it's all subjective, because that defines "value" to ME.
It’s still difficult to understand because ones definition of quality may vary from others . What we may put hours into may not consist “quality” than what we may work on for 30 minutes
Indeed. And that's why I am more oriented to whether or not something adds value to the overall Steemit experience than whether it's actually of high quality.
I like how you define it as value over quality. That makes for a much broader range of posts that give value.
I like to think of good value posts as ones that are not using linear abstraction as the mode of thinking, that give an inkling of there being an actual person doing the posting. Okay, so you posted a picture of your dog. Awesome (actually, all posts of dog pictures are awesome because dogs are the best thing ever).
But where are you in this post? What memories does this pic of your dog trigger? I wanna know something more about you, something from your heart, or your gut, or your soul, or your genitals,, or your yearning or your regret, or your mind. That's what's valuable to me - seeing posts that are written by humans, not just slipping one or two categories into a post and pressing "post". Where are you? I wanna see you.
Hahahaha. We all seem to be long-winded runners. Marathoners on this current treadmill in search of ¿What is quality? consensus. But even more remarkable, the sort of synchronicity we've just had through our most recent posts. Since I have just published sort of a weird tirade about this same subject. }:)
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Quality is totally subjective.
What is one’s trash is the other’s gold, as we see time over time with media, popular websites, and also the moving pictures.
I admit myself that when it comes to reading I’m quite the snob, probably even more so when it comes to movies. But those are personal experiences and not what makes my feed and not necessarily what builds my social circle.
I prefer reading Voltaire over Mills & Boons, I prefer a director trying to frak with my mind over an easygoing soap story, but that’s all both personal time and experience.
Sometimes value is the exact opposite. The opportunity to unwind, to think less, to read different styles and find value in them. The discovery.
And, of course, the thought provocation. Even though at times that may be wanting to bang my head against the wall. Often even [imaginary] head banging results in me learning something new and that’s improvement, self-improvement thus value.
Over all it doesn't really matter. Even if you are a big whale people don't really follow you because of what you write they follow them because it's where the money is at. Demand for quality and value gets lost then the site allows big delegations given to people who have some followers from a different site, when you look at them they haven't produced the followers from those sites. If they did they have thousands to millions of comments coming in whereas as most can barely conjure up three or four comments as those are generally from people on Steemit before they got here. They rake out thousands of dollars from the rewards pool for minimal effort, most posting old video's and articles from their old sites while people like you writing pretty good stuff make a few bucks. As a matter of fact I just left one site where this goof ball running for president under the Libertarian party released a four minute video detailing how he's going to use his Steemit proceeds to fund a hundred and twenty thousand dollar endeavor to have his book printed in China and mailed to every resident in New Orleans before the Libertarian convention there. That's a hundred and thirty thousand dollars he's going to take out of the rewards pool for such foolishness. He doesn't stand a chance in hell of ever becoming president, there's only 411 followers on the NO Libertarian FB page and no one's posted there since Feb 2016. So now I am suppose to feel just as good as you about sitting down and writing out some article of quality for a few pennies while this nut case gets to run off with hundreds of thousands of dollars he never even had to try to earn like you or I would. Then I ran across someone a couple weeks ago whose taking paragraphs from different articles on the same subject and pasting them together to make a whole new article out of several. Another ironic side is the wealthier one's criticizing people making statements about how they had to earn their way to the top and they are upset others are easily making money posting silly meme's...then a few days later they turn around and do the same thing. This site is so twisted it surely shows you what would happen if a decentralized system was put into place worldwide...the world would never survive such a disorganized mess. Just think how it would be if everyone could sit there and delegate their own pay to themselves because basically that's what happens here, most what's earned is self delegated and/or able to be self delegated into the hundred from delegation handed to them. I am not paying anymore attention to excuses why one's not earning, you have to get to the point that you yourself can make your own post worth it with voting it up, or make up a bunch of sock puppets to comment, upvote you, or happen to fall into the graces of someone with delegation to hand out. At that point quality and value can get lost, jibberish will suffice, I see it everyday.
Hi again! Glad I stepped into your blog further before moving down the #mysteemitformula list today in my get to know how to steemit tour...
I have added these concepts of quality and value to my ponder page as I try to determine how to steemit.
It seems that community plays a big role here... So many bits to learn and so very excited to be doing it!
I am super curious to see how my stuff fits in here.