RE: The Greatest Trick Steemit Ever Pulled Was Convincing The World It Didn't Exist
Totally disagree. Steemit has much more of a 'churn' problem than a marketing problem. There is no point in trying to pull lots of people in if you can't keep your existing users. In early July virtually every user who visited Steemit.com came back again. Suddenly that changed later in the month, and only 1/3 of visitors would return. And as the price declined, many more became disaffected and left.
Disaffected users are a huge problem for a new start up. When you think about joining, the first thing you'll likely do is ask someone who used it. If the people who left outnumber the people who are satisfied, you have a big problem.
Despite all that I'm optimistic. The decline ended months ago, in price and user activity. The website is improving, and we have growth in areas which I see as promising. Problems get addressed quickly and everyone moves on the next drama. I actually think this is the calm before the storm, which is why I continue to buy a little more Steem each month.
^Absolutely this. Everything you hear on steemit, especially post-steemfest it outreach outreach outreach we gotta tell people that steemit is a thing because otherwise they won't know.
Guess what. They know. Theyre simply not interested. they don't feel that the platform has much to offer them.
And thats really not a totally unreasonable position.
Test that theory and ask 20 random people on the street if they have heard about Steemit, I guarantee you you'll get 20 nos.
Cg
you would probably get 17 noes for bitcoin. Im not saying that steemit is a household word. It doesnt have to be for significant growth. But the people we have a chance with (friends of active members, people interested in next gen social networks, people interested in blogging or crypto, etc) know were here. They just dont see as we have anything to offer them.
How many of your friends have you told about steemit? How many were interested and became active?
In its height, I told about 20 friends, about half of those were likely to become active, and about half of those, actually became active.
One is still active, the others left because of similar reasons I brought up. They felt that it was an excellent opportunity to get in early with a platform that was going to be a huge promotion tool. Only to see complete inactivity on the marketing front and a self congratulatory attitude from the site bigwigs.
Cg
Funny thing is, early July I had a 100% success rate in getting people onto Steemit. I got about 20 people onto it just by proselytizing it. Then, suddenly, it was really hard to get people onto it. My experience coincides with the divergence in the graph shown by @gavvet here:
https://steemit.com/stats/@gavvet/the-state-of-steemit-com-web-visitors
I think early july, the site still had something to offer in terms of social interaction/discussion. And there was a lot of percieved forward progress. Mid july people were sticking around because they saw the yuge monies, and even if they weren't getting any the monies were huge enough to keep trying to get lucky at least for a little while.
I mean think about right now though. RIght now ned and many of the other steemit inc people pay someone to read and vote on steemit content for them. So basically, we can't get the dude who owns the joint interested. What chance do we have with the man on the street?
Exactly, and that could only go so far; imagine if there had been a big marketing campaign then. So that as well as hearing about it from you, your friends were aware of the multi-platform campaign.
The word would have spread like wildfire.
Cg
To reply to your below comment because of the (should have been sorted out months ago) nesting problem.
Exactly!!
Cg
Well I think a concerted marketing campaign would have solved that churn problem by insuring there were more joining than leaving. Facebook has millions of people leaving it each day, however it has tens of millions joining.
My worry is that Steemit HQ have no idea about marketing and/or do not think it's important. They have this misty eyed view that everything will happen organically when it won't. Marketing Steemit is hard now; as it's very hard to get people who aren't into crypto excited at potential rewards of pennies, however it is not impossible. Though it must be tried to be achieved.
Cg