[steem-marketing] What is our unfair advantage?
Peter Thiel talks about one important aspect of marketing in his book Zero to One. What you should ask is: What is our unfair advantage? What makes our company (or in this case, blockchain) better than everything else?
In another book, Nail It Then Scale It, authors talk about identifying customer pain. If you can find potential customer who have a pain you can make go away, you might have a business opportunity. If there is no pain, you will find only a handful of customers and there is no real business opportunity.
So what exactly is our unfair advantage compared to others? And what is the pain that is relieved much better than any other solution on the market currently?
So far the focus has been to sell Steem blockchain as a way to make money online. That is, of course, a legitimate point of view. But is it the best? There are already millions of ways to make money online. Steem is just another, and not even the best because it's really hard to earn so much here that you can quit your dayjob. Another weakness is that those who want to make money will leave the platform very easily when the price goes down. It's just not very good market segment.
– Come to Steemit! You can make money by blogging!
– Oh, cool! I'll try it immediately!
– Yay, hope you like it.
– Hmm... I earned only a few dollars. Not worth of my time. This sucks. And because the price is declining, my SP is also losing its value. Steemit is a scam, I'll tell all my friends to avoid it! Fuck you!
The truth is that those who want to make money online are not very loyal users. They tend to squeeze everything they can easily get and then leave to find something better. It doesn't make much sense to keep those people at the center of marketing efforts.
That doesn't mean that we can't mention about the possibility to earn money. But it shouldn't be the first thing. First we should find people who are in pain and then relieve that pain.
– Hi! What's up?
– Really bad... I have lots of great ideas how to make my community and the whole society better, but my government doesn't like competition so they censor everything.
– Oh, sorry to hear that. But didn't you know that there is this thing called Steem. It's a blogging platform build on a blockchain, so nobody can censor it, not even your government. You should publish your thoughts and ideas there.
– What, really?! SHUT UP AND TAKE MY MONEY!
– Well... you don't have to pay anything to use it. Actually, if you are a good writer and other people like what you do, you can get paid by the blockchain.
– Oh my holy cats! Does such an amazing platform really exist?!
If you can find people who have a real problem and solve that problem, you have loyal customers for a long time.
The unfair advantage of Steem is that it's the best uncensorable publishing platform at the moment. That should be the focus of marketing. We need to make the message clear: if you need a way to publishing platform where your message is not removed or altered by anybody, Steem is your best choice.
Some good points here...
Experience tells me that downplaying the money is actually kind of important... @steevc may be right that money is a good hook, but those who are "money seekers" are generally a very low "quality" user who's only loyal to their pocketbook, not so social media or community.
If we MUST use "the money," instead of the tired old get paid to blog angle, why not present the idea to existing bloggers and content creators as a comparable-- but better-- alternative to getting money from AdSense and Amazon affiliate accounts? In a dollar-for-dollar sense, you'll probably come out ahead on Steemit (I certainly do!), AND you won't have to sit with the eternal worry that Google is going to cut your account "for saying the wrong thing" or Amazon shutting you down for using a non-current link, or something.
The VALUE there is reaching people who already are committed to creating content (good for Steemit) and offering them an attractive alternative.
this is right on
To me, steemit solves the content monetization issue, that is the biggest pain right now online and we've solved it. For any serious blogger, making $1 on your first post is 1000% more than I did when I wrote my first blog in 2009.
The uncensored thing doesnt work in my experience. As soon as someone gets flag, they tell everyone how this is "not true".
That's exactly right! And "building a strong base" of Steemit users who are already committed bloggers/content creators will give the platform a "quality appearance" that will automatically look attractive to new bloggers.
The "uncensored" thing is a nice angle... but it also strikes me as a pretty limited niche. Besides, playing it up too much opens us up to creating a cesspool of (figuratively speaking) "people who like to shout FIRE in a crowded theater," aka trolls and flamers. Sure, it's nice for legitimate free speech organizations and spokespeople... but they are a pretty small group.
We have to start with small groups. It's very rare to see any kind of product to be able to go straight to the mass markets. First there are some niche groups who legitimize the product as a solution that actually works. Majority of the people don't want to try anything new, they need to see that it's been used by early adopters first.
That's why I'm all in favor of slower "organic" growth-- it is likely to create a far more solid and engaged user base than we can get from some mass-marketing effort.
Making $1 on your first post is nice as a bonus. If money is the main attraction, that's a little low IMO
For a US citizen sure. But how about someone in indonesia?
But are the marketing efforts focused on Indonesia? Or the development?
In those cases i tell people "if the censorship gets strong enough there will be big money in making a site that ONLY shows flagged content".
Then they usually laugh. I smile slyly and say "yep...its going to piss censorship advocates off when they try it cause im ready to make money off them ;)"
Then why we are not seeing much more users coming on and staying? There is always a pain of "not getting paid" but I don't think Steem is currently solving that problem well enough. Otherwise we would see a lot bigger userbase.
I agree that is a good 'hook', but I think the reality is that the percentage of social media users who actually care about that are a fairly small minority. If we cater to just those users, then I think we are selling ourselves short.
We have to start somewhere. Usually the project fails when it tries to be everything for everybody in the beginning. It's better to conquer niche markets one by one. Currently we don't have much unfair advantages that would attract huge masses. There is no pain that Steem solves better than anything else.
One way is to market/develop Steemit as a bloggers platform. This is in fact a niche compared to social media platforms. I have no figures, but I can imagine many bloggers dream of monetising their work in one way or the other. Do we know what bloggers are looking for?
Alternative way to market/develop Steemit is towards social media incl not only blogging but also micro blogging, personal but more importantly business promotion, marketplaces etc. All around interactivity and lower costs to the businesses. Money rules, so when we can lower the pain of costs to businesses, we will have a unique selling point. In cryptoland we may not be unique (eg lower tx costs) but in the fiat world we are. Take what Facebook does and make it better! That is the name of the game and the way to innovate and become relevant for a large market potential.
I'd focus on bloggers, too. The fact is that, in its current form, Steem is much more a publishing platform rather than a social network.
You are absolutely right in stating Steemit is more a publishing platform than a social network. My point is to expand/develop Steemit beyond just a publishing platform. First steps in doing so is not that difficult :) BTW, even in the publishing role, Steemit would already be interesting for some of the businesses out there to start investing in Steemit as another channel in their mix of channels they already enable for their content and interactions with their followers.
I think the community feature will be a great addition to the publishing platform. My intuition says that it's something that is needed to make Steemit more useful.
What kind of businesses, exactly? Do they have a pain that Steem can help with?
Think of any business that uses Facebook/Instagram and others as a channel.
FB and IG have an unfair advantage: huge network effect. We don't have that (yet) so most businesses don't even consider using Steemit because they think it's waste of time.
That is chicken and egg. To break that we need to be creative and work with innovators int he industry. I have a couple of them in my own network in 2 or even 3 market segments, and can start helping Steemit community and Steemit Inc to onboard them. This requires much more effort than just a repost or one phone call, hence I look at this as a new business I could (help to) startup or give Steemit Inc the opportunity to take that business onboard int heir organisation.
Gret post @samupaha! You are right on, I agree with your line of thinking that money isn't the best thing to focus on.
I'm seeing Steemit as more of a great blogging platform. It has these features:
I agree with this. The market already seema to as well. Pizzagate (aka pedogate) is one of the most read topics on steem after being censored on other platforms. THOSE users are also verrrry loyal. Money to them is 2nd.
I don't think Steemit is uncensored. As compared to the outside world, possibly. But we are censoring to a degree every time we don't vote on content. And some might say, when we do vote on content, we are exercising a positive form of censorship by bribing people to say what we want to hear and maybe not what they actually want to say - a form of gentle persuasion if you will. I see Steemit as fluidity itself. It's still a baby. It will find its own way. Therefore, I'm simply saying to everyone I know - "Steemit is an adventure in Social Networking. It's open to everyone and it's free. So join in and maybe find a better life for yourself and therefore, Steemit as well." My Steemit positioning statement for now... but it will change as both I and Steemit grow.
There is some real censorship in the world. Unwanted messages are removed and users banned. Steem represents a true alternative: nobody can remove an account or its messages. This is a gamechanger for people who don't have any other way of publishing their texts. They are in real pain and Steem can help them. They don't care whether or not they get up or down votes, they just want their voice to be heard.