The problem of STEEM is that nobody is talking about STEEM outside of Steemit

in #steemit7 years ago

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I've been thinking about @JerryBanfield's post from a few days ago where he highlights some of the problems that is holding the STEEM community from going forward and proposes a new way of funding marketing and ecosystem development proposals similar to Dash, which I think is a great idea and first step. But I'm not sure it is enough.

The main problem that I see that Steemit has is that it's too centralized around the STEEM blockchain, odd as that might sound. When you look on Steemit you'll find tons of posts praising STEEM and Steemit, but look on other social media and you'll hardly find anybody talking about it.

For example, when I investigate a new cryptocurrency the first place I go to is Reddit. Well, the STEEM reddit is a terribly quiet place that doesn't ooze enthusiasm at all. Why is it so quiet there? Why is nobody discussing STEEM and where are all the moonposts? As Steemians we know these are on Steemit, but if you're not already on Steemit then how are you supposed to know?

Posting on Steemit is like an echo-chamber, because it is it's own closed ecosystem. Whereas other social media platforms are linked and messages from one platform cross over into the other platform, the STEEM blockchain seems to have created it's own little island on the internet and simply hopes for people to magically stumble on it through Google or otherwise and start adopting it. It's a very passive way of marketing.

That's why @Jerrybanfield's suggestion is a great one because it retakes the initiative and turns the marketing outward, which will be much more efficient. But there are more steps we could take. I've often wondered for example why it is so hard to keep up with STEEM development? There seems to be no central discussion forum, or central 'news page'. The answer is usually to follow @ned or get on discord or steemit chat. But again that pre-supposed people are already Steemians and even know who @ned is. For example, the news about SMT's was widely discussed on Steemit but I did not encounter much if any news about it outside of Steemit.

Maybe some people don't want to use other social media platforms because they feel it's 'better' to just use Steemit instead, and I can understand that, but we'll end up creating a closed circle of the same people and not drawing anybody new in. So the next time you make a post on why Steemit is so great, consider posting it on Facebook, Medium, Reddit or other social media as well (or instead)!

Ideally, there would be a way to link Steemit to other social media platforms. Similarly to how some platforms offer a 'Share with Twitter!' button, or how Youtube lets you embed it's videos on other platforms? It would be lovely if Steemit posts could be shared on Facebook in similar ways. Perhaps Steemit could offer an easy copy&paste script to embed Steemit posts onto other sites? This way we can more easily breach through on existing platforms as a brand rather than an URL.

These are just some of my thoughts as a user of Steemit, hoping for the best for this platform.

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You are absolutely right - I try to promote Steem in some communities I am engaged in, because I think so called warm acquisition is more effective than cold acquisition...

Anyway, this was one of the first issues I mentioned as a newbie in steemit, that there is not much promotion outside...

Maybe because of still beta or people think they found a gem which they don't want to share...

That is quiet comprehensibly to some extend - but I guess in the end we all will just profit of a growing community...

I did this quiet in the beginning of my career here on Steemit ;)

Ideally, there would be a way to link Steemit to other social media platforms.

On steemit.com you can click on the share icons on the lower-right side of each post.

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Or are you referring to something else?

Holy cow, you're absolutely right. I can't believe I've never noticed this! Thanks, haha

These are super handy @pandorasbox when you use the Twitter link, I always hashtag #Steemit and add @steemit to the end of the post to get more traction.

Using Facebook post, you can post to your page (or business page) and then go back and post to places like We Love Steemit (once you are accepted by the owner of that page).

For exceptionally good long detailed posts such as @jerrybanfield whitepaper post suggestion I post that to LinkedIn as well.

Quick and easy sharing is available, everyone just needs to learn to share.

while watching the new autoshare feature at https://SteemThat.com I seen this post and it got my attention for sure. You got my resteem also for writing this excellent post. You bring up points that I have made since day one. There are so many great people involved in Steem that is what is keeping it alive and growing. I honestly think that Steemit.com is the proof of concept and the other places being formed will be devour this portal as they grow. Steemit.com will be dwarfed over time and will rarely be used. Once we at SteemThat.com integrate more we will keep gobbling up the traffic and offer new ways to interact with the block chain as they have proven the concept will work.

Or places like @busy which has made huge gigantic leaps and bounds over the Steemit user interface. I prefer busy over Steemit in a lot of ways. Maybe the two will merger the best of the best and run it under both domains. That would be interesting.

@jerrybanfield 's post was thrilling and you talking about that post is exciting. The more people that get engage in these types of conversations the better for the platform. You are right about the chatter external to Steemit. Recently I help @sydesjokes launch a bot to compliment one that he is using to spread steemit posts across twitter. We at https://SteemThat.com just launch an auto posting feature to facebook and twitter when someone writes a post on SteemThat.com if we can do it Steemit.com could do it.

Thanks to https://steemworld.org I now have alot of stats to make decisions based off of. I'm happy to say that Steemit will probably break the 500,000 Members mark around the same time we break the 500 members mark if trends continue. There are alot of people working outside of the Steemit dev folks pushing hard to bring in new members and help new people learn about Steemit.

Under the promote post button on every post there are some small icons to help users share posts on the popular networks which is good but it blends in with other stuff and is hard to see. It would be nice if it were big and bold and maybe above the tags line at the end of the post.

Howdy @steemthat. You know what would be really fantastic? A "compose post" app that would send directly to the blockchain, and then generate share links for your favorite steem powered site.

I really like this idea and we have done this for when folks submit posts to SteemThat.com. In phase 2 we will start working more on the Submit To Steemit page. It is from old school. Busy and others have nice ones for publishing to the block chain but do not autoshare... But if we made it like The steemthat one so when you sent it to Steemit it would auto send to twitter, facebook, etc that would be sweet. Good thinking @relativityboy !

Wow, thanks for the long reply! And it proves that you do really curate all of Steemthat, haha!

But yes, I do think Steemit is a 'first attempt'. It's a nice start but there are so many improvements that could be made, and also I sometimes wonder if this 'style' is really the most effective form for STEEM. I am hoping that with the coming 'communities' feature, and Zappl, we're seeing more styles emerge that may be more successful.

I also think we need to have some kind of 'Steemhub' where all these extra third party tools are linked and easily discovered by people. Rihgt now there's a huge learning curve to Steemit because not only is the Steem power stuff confusing, you also have to do a lot of manual discovery on tools like Steemthat or Steem.supply or steemd.

Sometimes I feel the problem of STEEM is that it's too decentralized. A little centralization, from a user-experience perspective, isn't always a bad thing.

I'm working on compiling a ton of articles and how to guide on the best tools so that at least there is a solid place that links them all. I would love to develop more tools or have developer bring there tools over and we host them so that there are at least all of the rudimentary things one would need to do Steemit. We have alot of the pieces of the puzzle I just got to keep tieing things together and get more people on board. I agree 100% on the user experience issues. I'm working on solving some of these issue and maybe one day all of them.

Yeah I just wish it would all be integrated somehow onto Steemit. Like a STEEM 'app store' of some kind. Or perhaps a page on Steemit which acts as a 'startpage' like from back in ye olde days of the internet when those were popular. Something that gets people started in navigating this web 3.0 mess! I would call it 'Steem Plaza' and allow people to add their projects, similar to app stores, and the most popular ones would be shown at the top for easy finding. Hell, we could even introduce upvotes on them so we could support our favorite projects easily.

edit: also the steemit sidebar is terrible. I never open it and often forget it's even there. Worst place to have links, IMO. Worst place to put a Steem plaza too.

I feel the same way and alot of people do. I can't develop for Steemit and redesign their website because I'm not smart enough. I'll just build stuff that I can handle and fix what I can. I wish it was all built in too. I wrote a post about this and was told how difficult it would be...Then I thought, let me see how hard it would be and started building steemthat.com. If I can build what we have so farat steemthat.com in 2 months the people that are alot smarter than me can put some links or image links in all of this white space to make it easier for us to navigate and find stuff.

The same problem happened to flickr - we can't compare a block chain and a social networking portal, but both needed more publicity

Good mention of flickr... whatever did happen to that? I used to run into links here and there before, but nowadays I never do

Yahoo! happened to them :) - well they got acquired by yahoo and then got mismanaged to death. But even with all the mismanagement for a decade and more, I think its still the largest collection of photographs on internet.

Great ideas @pandorasbox 👍 we do need more promotion for steemit.!

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You've got some good thoughts. The SIO buttons in particular.

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