Post Promotion (Sorta) Off the Chain

I apologize, the Fun Music Challenge #8 won't be written today. I wanted to write about something else instead. Do not worry, though, the challenge will be finished in the near future.

Many, if not most, Steemians use Discord in conjunction with their crypto social experience. This is mostly because Steemit is still in beta and the lack of many features have been endlessly discussed, but have not gone anywhere yet. Speaking of which, that sounds like another random @dmania post, featuring @ned, coming up.

That's right, the favorite spot outside of Steem Chat to promote your contents in the communities you chose to participate drop in. There's nothing wrong with wanting to promote your content without spending a cent. In fact, I also use these channels for the potential exposure.

Being part of @steemflagrewards and offering part of my time with the @steemcleaners, including some of the more covert operations, required branching out in terms of connections. It often resulted in reaching out to different communities or contact the correct person(s) for corrective actions I could not have performed otherwise. In many servers I have visited, I noted the existence of a "Post Promotion" channel.

The real question is: is it effective?

This is a matter of opinion. I have personally found it work best in communities where I am either active or a niche community with smaller numbers. Similar to real life, people check on you and what you are doing if you have built that connection. What a concept!

In larger communities, such as @minnowsupport (PAL), their promotional channel is often just a flood of links. I don't know who actually goes in there and check out several different posts, if at all. The community is saturated with traffic that it felt impossible to be seen. But, they do have top-notch support when it comes to weeding out abusers from their services.

Then, there are other communities, like @steembasicincome or @steemcommunity, that mandate (or strongly suggest) certain criteria before utilizing their promotional channels. Steem Chat already does this. Here are some examples I have seen along the way:

<sub>This is @sherlockholmes asking you...nicely

Team @buildawhale expects you to not go post happy

The @steembasicincome Project wishes you to slow down and check out what others are posting</sub>

Why does any of this matter? What is the point?

Recently, a little accident happened to @steemcommunity. Going through the comments, I felt impressed to point out how people did not seem to notice something was off. Here was the response I got from @ats-david:

_{I mean, he's not wrong...}

I do not disagree that is a huge problem on the platform. Everyone is too busy chasing/buying that next big upvote, they are not making an attempt to have social interaction. In fact, it's rather antisocial. About three weeks ago, I wrote a piece about how the social aspect of the Steem Blockchain could eventually devolve into a mindless, although different from traditional proof of work, mining operation.

Well, I can't change the world, but I can try a different approach for my own modus operandi.

I'm going to try something different

I decided that I should try a self-imposed challenge; maybe for a few days, maybe even a week or two. I want to try to do something similar to what @steembasicincome expects of their promotional channel, starting with this post.

This means that I will check out at least one other content in the sea of links and choose one to upvote and comment. My vote isn't worth much, but I hope the authors will feel their work is being appreciated. Who knows? Maybe I will find high quality content creators like @stahlberg, who is over the top amazing. Or, I may find people who will, in turn, check out my content and offer some upvotes.

We shall see what happens. Perhaps this could be something similar to the Fun Music Challenge I decided to take on a while back thanks to @hanen. If I were to give this a tag, I'm thinking something along the lines of #PromotionHunt or #ContentHunter.

Anyways, I will keep you all updated.