The language of content - We all need to learn to speak it!
Can this be? Is content a language? I believe so yes, and we all need to learn to speak the content language as this is what Steemit is all about.
Creating good content is the way we as content authors and creators are communicating with each other.
Your Steemit reputation is staked on exactly that - creating good content, that communicates well with other users on the platform. If we look at all the content being created on the internet these days. Content can be nearly anything, a tweet about your sports team winning, uploading a pic of you kids to Facebook or us posting content onto Steemit. It's all about content and most of it is just a few clicks away.
We as content authors should write content that stands out and you need to motivate the rest of Steemit users to read it, and obviously of they like it, vote for it. We need to build our own brands, in my case, my blog @jacor , on the Steemit platform. We all have a brand to build, and our reputation is 100% linked to it. It is a big responsibility that we have to ourselves. I have been writing a lot about building a reputation on the platform. And I hope it is starting to pay off.
The key thing to realize is that your content is just a click away from other users on the platform. Your posts is a fundamental part of how you express things in your personal ways and therefor inherently linked directly to your reputation. As a result we are actually managing our own content strategies.
We all need to find our own way to develop our own content and make it appealing to other users, and the way to do this is to understand the language of content :)
Overload of content
In our case here on Steemit, just as the rest of the internet, content is everywhere. We are showered with new posts. There is no way anyone can consume even a small percentage of everything being created.
So how can we make our content stand out? Unfortunately there is no shortcuts. We have to build a reputation. I think we all know that by default, we feel good when we know we have a good reputation.
Physiological Sciences Experiment
The link between reputation and reward is much closer than we think.
In 2008 the National Physiological Sciences from a university Aichi Japan, did an experiment to map neural responses to different types of rewards. The first reward was from a financial reward perspective. The subject played a card game and reward was cash when you win. I guess they played poker :) The second reward was however reputation based, in this case the subjects was shown pictures of themselves with a positive or negative description of themselves written by their fellow participants in the experiment.
Interestingly, the brain responded in exactly the same way to these types of rewards when the description was positive.*
So our brains consider our personal reputation just as important as financial reward. And here we have steemit, which in principle reward us financially for good content. The financial reward can only follow after we build a good reputation first.
I am currently writing content on various subjects, and I am trying different things to be noticed by the community. For me this is step 1 in building a good reputation. But now I have to go back to work, as I cannot afford to do this on a full time basis - YET :)
I have written a post a few days ago, How to become a dolphin in a few easy steps, where I highlight a few things which I believe is important in the steps. This is again only my opinion, based on what I have observed in the ecosystem of the Steemit platform
Thank you, @jacor, I fully agree that at first appears reputation, and then cash reward. And in my opinion this is the basic principle. But human psychology is different. Someone willing to invest their time and talents in reputation, and someone wants money right now.
You probably know about the famous experiment with Marshmallows. The children were encouraged to wait a few minutes and not to eat one candy. As a reward, the researchers promised to give the child two candies if he will be able to endure a few minutes. Someone from children has endured and got two candies, and someone could not. Then these children were observed for several years. And researchers found that those children that could endure a few minutes and got two candies, were in all respects more successful and richer than those children who ate the candy immediately.
Someone can tolerate and invest in strategic victory. And someone wants an instant win and quick money.
Nice comment @omfedor, and thank you for mentioning the experiment . That leaves me with a question? Is steemit not offering both these options at the same time? Steempower (Marshmallows) for those who can wait and also Steem Dollars (Candy) for those that want an instant win?
I would say that when a person takes all the Steem Dollars or when he tries by any means to get the voices of whales and dolphins, he eats one Marshmallow candy. When man focuses on communication within the community, patiently creates interesting and useful content and investing money in Steem Power, he is like the child who endures. He will get two Marshmallow candies in the end and will become more successful than the previous one.
So yes, here is a psychological experiment like that one with marshmallows :)
I would have been terrible at the marshmallow game... I think..
But I'm thinking strategy! :)
I am with you on that one @blakemiles84 , I love marshmallows !
On steemit you are your brand, take care of your brand, become useful to the community and you will be rewarded in the long run. Gather trusted followers an every one of your articles will get well rewarded no matter what.
Well said @nojah . Your comment deserves a follow in my books, consider yourself followed :) One of my main aims on the platform is to build a following. I believe that a twitter following is important, when you want to promote and build a brand. On steemit, your following is worth much more than twitter!
Excellent analogy @jacor. I believe you HAVE to build your own reputation on Steemit if you want to be successful. One thing is for certain – Steemit is definitely not Facebook or Twitter where you can rely on instant friends to like your posts. Without introducing yourself and posting decent posts consistently, curating and voting for those who deserve it and so encouraging other Steemers – you’ll never build a solid reputation on Steemit.
@naomi-louise , thank you for the comment. I like your statement about not being able to rely on instant friends to like your posts. It is for sure not easy to get up-votes on posts when you look at the multitude of posts which created daily on Steemit. Build your reputation day-by-day, post-by-post . Build friends in the community and in return build a following! Most of all enjoy every step of the way, because I believe there will still be a lot of changes in the coming times!
Very interesting post @jacor
Thank you @faraz . Hope to see you reading more of my posts as we all build a following :)
I'm agree with you ;)
We can try to do our community better :)
I think people who understand the long game here are looking to build a reputation rather than trying to win the lottery of getting whale attention. Ultimately getting followers will prove to be more important when there are millions or hundreds of millions of minnows - their voting power will add up to a huge amount and so will actually have much more relevance.
Agreed, For me, Reputation will turn into followers. More and more of us are spreading the word of the platform and this platform is constantly . We are all upping our game in the content we create, so the content gets better. The platform will be massive one of these days.
I agree with you, but I think you overlooked something here.
And what a race for easy money was in these few weeks. And still is. With bots, tricks for what to post, when to post, how to write, tags, images, H1, subjects, trends....everything.
That's my concern: we are building a reputation, we want a good community, good content, but we run for these tricks for easy money. Isn't these approaches a little opposed ?
Don't think I don't agree with you. You're right. Buuuuut ....money race ...
I suppose we'll take a step back, calm down, understand the situation and do the right thing: create VALUE or try to create value
Of course, building a community takes time. In the end, time will tell. :)
Very nice quote from Abraham Lincoln @fishborne . I must say that even through everything that happened in the past few weeks, things are already taking shape! Every week the content which makes the the trending pages are changing and diversifying. I know there is still a lot of excellent content that fall through the cracks. Unfortunately I don't think any of us knows the answer of how to solve this problem immediately, but in the long term. When Minnows however turn into Dolphins and Dolphins turn into Whales, we will have a more diversified voting audience, with a much wider reach and spread of reward. You are right, in the end, only time will tell.
We are both on the same wavelenght. Speaking my mind got me a -5 reputation. This reputation system is Orwellian.
You have to like all the crap they're feeding you or STFU.
If they keep this system going they'll be creating more crap than value.
Time will tell.
This is the childhood of a revolutionary platform.
Patience and understanding is required from all of us. We'll see where will be going ...
Enjoy (even with your -5). :(
Cheers
It's more revolutionary than most people think. They think it's about making your own money and making transactions. But it's more Orwellian, making people get in line with the "consensus" . And I'll go a step further, it's also helping to create AI. And when AI becomes self conscience, I don't know if the human race will be useful to it.
You wrote it yourself "childhood", a living being that still has to become aware.
(Twilight Zone stuff)
Wow. I need some time to reflect on this.
You brought up some fascinating points. And yes we are our own brands and everything we type out and send is viewable to everyone on the platform. The stakes are high and while I found the "Physiological Sciences Experiment" interesting, I would go one step further and say that reputation is far more valuable than money. It's far easier to replenish money than it is reputation. Reputation cannot be won in a lottery. But I know the case was about proving how important reputation is and not necessarily comparing them on that level.
Steemit is different than most other social media platforms, because anyone can see anything you post. Their are no private posts or friendship requests needed. If you verbally abuse someone at the start of your time here, someone can go back and find it. The blockchain should make people aware that what they write always matters and will be a permanent reflection on them.
Thank you for this post @jacor I think we are very much on the same page.
That's a good insight. I can relate to that in my life. If people can focus on reputation, it could take some of the disappointment away of not being noticed while building toward a future where perhaps the money will follow.
@jasonstaggers , I hope to be an example of what can happen when you build a good reputation in writing content. We all just have to hang in here. Build a reputation and hopefully the reward will follow. @piedpiper have a very nice piece about satisfaction on Steemit. You can view it here
Upvoted
Nice @jacor
Shot you an Upvote :)