Think about your content - I was thinking about mine and......

Have you ever really thought about why you are creating content on steem?  Is it because you are passionate about writing, sharing your knowledge or creating?   Who are you publishing for?  What type of content do you publish and has it change over time?  What types of content have done well for you and what has not?

What I have found is that many users post on steem because there are earning involved. Not because they fancy themselves content creators.  Some have turned out to be awesome creators, which is great to see.  But many have not.  This all of a sudden “I want to be a creator” buzz didn’t help steem at all.  If "we can grow an all of a sudden "I want to be a curator" buzz, I think we would do better!

With other people using Alt accounts to manage their content and tribes, I have been thinking lately about my content on steem and my content journey.  I have already split out my Excel content, but I'm considering splitting out things further and taking a little more control of my content. But more on that in a later post.

I came to steem as a content creator.  Publishing content was not new to me at all.  But the type of content I publish here on steem has very much changed over time.  The interest shown in the different post types has been interesting.   I have learned a lot over the few years, and so much of this learning was done here on steem

Let's take a look at my content types

Excel

When I started on steem I was posting about Excel.  As a subject matter expert, this is what a publish off steem so it was the natural thing to start with.  I wanted to see if and how steem could help me grow my content business.  I didn’t get noticed.  It was a bit of a flop.

I returned to blogging about Excel almost a year ago However, it gets posted via @theexcelclub with steempress and it's not doing to bad. The content is not what the steem audience want to read.  But that does not mean it’s not valued on steem. Since the HF I have seen some nice random votes and @ocdb has paid a visit a couple of times.  I do this content because I enjoy it.  I’m passionate about it and I’m striving for growth.  I don’t mind if the steem audience doesn’t want to learn Excel because the marketing of these posts is aimed at nonsteem users. But its putting eyes on steem every day.  I run this blog to earn a living, but I don't rely on steem rewards.

Data Posts

When the Excel content didn’t get me noticed, I fliped my skills and showed the steem community what the tools could do.  With the aid of the steem SQL database and Excel/PowerBI and it wasn’t long before I grabbed the attention of many steem users.  I did data post for a long time, however, they are seriously time-consuming, and in the non steem world, well I get paid for the same type of work. It just doesn’t make sense to be working for free. 

I kinda miss doing data posts.  Always knowing what as going on and when. I do hope to bring some of this back, but when I do, it will be via @theexcelclub, so if you are not following that account yet then you should.

Steem/Community

Looking at the data so much meant I knew a lot about what was going on and how things worked around steem.  This got me involved in let's say the ‘politics’ of steem and community building.  From there I move into witness and posted a lot about steem and ran community posts.  I still talk about steem, sure looky here 😊.  But I don’t get involved in the politics half as much and I have stepped back from most community things too.  The politics side got me down.  If you don’t enjoy it, stop!  The community stuff, well that’s kinda a time thing and well steem was turning into a ghost town

But I’m finding my passion for steem creep back in and I do hope to do more community stuff in the future.  I have already started manually curating steempress users.  These users are showing steem to the world and I see myself becoming more and more active within the steempress community and world.

Business/Blogging

I started blogging about my business around a year ago.  I set and track targets.  Talk growth, what’s worked for me and what has not.  I talk about blogging, article writing, SEO.  It's all real experience and I’m sure a valuable resource for some.  I was hoping it would be valuable to steem users as we are all creating content.  I’m sharing what I am doing to grow, doing all the testing saving you all that time in figuring it out for yourself.  These posts do okay here on steem. But the reality is, they would get more eyes off steem and I need to promote them more.  It's tied in with my Excel stuff so I just love to write about it.  

Lifestyle

Lately, I have been more activity on lifestyle and personal posts.  I have really enjoyed doing these posts because its different for me.  Feels less like work.  I have made many friends here on steem and enjoy reading about their lives and cultures.  Just maybe they would like to read about mine.  Although probably the least valuable content I am publishing on steem (but not necessarily the least rewarded) I'm enjoying doing it and didn’t think when I started on steem I would be publishing content like this.  And amazingly, I get engagement!

Conclusion

The most valuable content I’m publishing on steem is probably the Business/blogging and the Excel stuff.  These topics are highly searched and evergreen off steem.  But from engagement, these topics are not the most popular content for the steem audience. 

As someone that uses content as a marketing strategy, you give the audience what they want.  The steem audience is still limited to steem topics. As the steem community gets to know you as a person, lifestyle blogs create engagement too.   However, for the steem platform, I don’t believe this to be the strongest content.

Steem has been an interesting experiment for me. I have tried a lot of things and been surprised by the results of some and not so surprised with the results of others.  What’s important to me, is that I enjoy posting.  I do have a follow-up post on this to do.....as all this is leading somewhere......but as always.....it takes time to get things organized.