ENCOURAGEMENT & GUIDANCE bots to solve user retention problem & help minnows progress faster ๐
Examining the accounts of the people I have followed over the last 14 months, 5 things became immediately apparent.
1 - Many have amassed huge followings yet appear unable to achieve a single decent payout.
2 - Some clearly don't understand the resteeming system, using their accounts to endlessly resteem to a small group of followers. Which would make some sense if they at least had some Steem Power in their wallet.... which they don't.
3 - Many have not added a profile banner yet.
4 - The overall standard of post quality appears to have dropped over the last year.
5 - Many people seem to have given up altogether after not posting or resteeming for a number of months.
Take a look at these three accounts:
Example 1 - 3899 followers - $0.34 on last post - inactive for 3 months
Example 2 - 1734 followers - $0.00 on last post - inactive for 2 months
Example 3 - 1123 followers - $0.00 on last post - inactive for 1 month
These people have a large number of followers who appear completely uninterested in supporting them. I suspect this has happened due to the current minnow trend of exchanging follow for follow, without any real interest in what the other people are posting.
It is possible to see how many of your followers are inactive using THIS SITE
So, high number of followers doesn't equal high payout.
I can only imagine how depressing it must feel to have loads of followers but no upvotes after months of work and this is clearly going to discourage them from continuing with Steemit.
Those who are resteeming endlessly to a small following with no SP simply need educating.
The idea is to collect as many followers & as much Steep Power as you can, upvoting and resteeming the articles which you believe have merit. Only in this manner will you actually earn from curation.
Those who have not added a profile banner
Perhaps they simply don't know how to do this? Or perhaps they are lazy or unsure of what image to choose? My advice is to not over think it and get an image in there immediately. Just hit SETTINGS and insert your url into the correct box. This is a big factor in helping people decide if they want to follow you or not.
The decline in post quality
Again, I think it boils down to getting a better understanding of how to maximise your Steemit experience. Consistently quality posts, examining interesting subjects with lots of pics & information are much more likely to do better than a single image or Youtube link with a few words under it.
Those who have stopped posting altogether
Well...these people are most like feeling quite discouraged about their experience with Steemit and will clearly not be encouraging their friends to sign up.
WHAT IS THE SOLUTION?
User retention will continue to decline if something is not done about this and the solution is simpler than you might think.
Just last week @arcange created a bot to warn us of potential scammers who have recently been sending us 0.001 SBD with a message to try and trick us into various schemes. His bot uses the same system and sends out a message to your wallet immediately after you receive a transfer/message from a known scammer, warning you of what is happening.
WE ALL NEED ENCOURAGEMENT & GUIDANCE!
So, wouldn't it make sense if we had a bot which recognises the above factors and sends out a wallet message with some words of encouragement and advice regarding their specific situation?
For example, if someone has under a certain amount of SP & followers and they are using their account to endlessly resteem without ever posting, the bot could politely clarify the situation for them.
And if someone has amassed thousands of followers, posting hundreds of times without seeing more than $0.50 on a single post, again the bot message could congratulate them for their efforts and guide them towards a help page where they can learn what it is they are doing wrong.
Those who have not yet added profile banners could be gently reminded of the advantages of doing so.
It is my belief that with bots like this in place user retention will increase and many more people will find themselves moving quickly up the ranks with ever increasing payouts.
Perhaps someone out there knows the right dev who might be up for this challenge?
Let us work together now to help this huge number of people who appear lost and somewhat alone on this platform.
Who is @samstonehill?
Currently based in Bali he travels with his partner & two children. With no bank account he has been living on STEEM & crypto for over six months.
All content created for this account is 100% original (unless otherwise stated), produced by @samstonehill who invites you to use & share freely as you wish.
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The people with huge following are people who would do some kind of follow for follow scheme. Probably using a bot to follow many people automatically and those people would follow back.
Interesting! Was not aware of this. Doesn't look like it's working out too well for them. Again, I wonder if a bot could spot what they are doing and inform them that the system they are using will not help them?
Yes I agree about that, for newcomer they do that. Someone followed him and he followed back. That is happening now in steemit.
And now with bots to do it for them. Completely pointless! Hopefully they will learn in time.... :)
Quality post, quality post....I am very thankful to the people who take the time to upvote my work, I can't give justice to this post and you are addressing a very serious topic "Retention Rate"....I am very concern about the volume of dead followers I currently have, people that has simply given up, I try my best to upvote and engage those I see producing daily but its getting increasingly difficult to get upvotes as the volume of users increase and the amount of people holding significantly SP willing to look for post is decreasing. I surely wish that this can be address and more engagement with users would be beneficial to the overall community...because we can see a trend of lots of users joining but very few staying as their time and effort does not translate into something meaningful...I believe once we find a balance we can see some sustain growth which can translate into the price of Steem on the market
Many thanks for your words here my friend. It does seem to be a problem worth addressing.
I am told there are solutions coming soon to Steemit :)
Happy days!
Well we await to see what the team has in store hopefully its for the better and overall upgrade to the user experience
It's not about the number of followers but about the quality of followers.
The best way for a user to get the most out of their Steemit experience is to join communities. We're part of one for silver/gold stackers and for army veterans, for example. Those curate posts and morale alike.
If you have a plan for a bot I can help you get it built. You can find me on Steemit.chat.
Absolutely. Just five followers is enough if they have a bit of SP behind them and they all support the message you are sharing ;)
I will contact you on steemit.chat to discuss your bot thoughts...
Thanks!
Thank you for sharing with us i want to see more
Pleasure. Looking forward to sharing it with you :)
great stuff !!!! keep it coming :)
Many thanks... I will :)
Thx for the link & info... Good one =)
XXX's
Thanks bro :)
Useful information here. I tried with the header image, however steemit hung no matter how small I shrunk the size in k. It also slowed down the page loading, so I went back to the original blue background.
When I first started, I did more resteeming, due to my low post count. Now I write each post on my page, and rarely resteem, in order to motivate me to create new content.
I recently had my original "donated" SP taken away, which may make me less attractive to potential followers (from 25 SP to 15) however, this will push me to purchase more, so I have some skin in the game.
I believe in this platform. Steemit makes blogging fun, so if you're new, don't get discouraged. Make use of the resources, and STEEM ON! Upvoted.
source
You said it my friend. "Steemit makes blogging fun"
And it sure beats Facebook!
Many thanks for the comment... and steem engine ;)
Good one Sam - I felt like you were writing this for me! Even after our chat, and a lot of reading, I still struggle to understand the upvote, resteem, Steem Power v Steem, Witness and Whale dynamics and interplay. Perhaps some simplification and transparency might work, as well as a few friendly bots? My belief in human nature is that the more complicated and opaque the 'game', and the more focussed it is on being rewarded by getting followers and votes, then the more likely it is that certain kind of financially motivated people will remain in order to game the system. This inevitably results in a dilution of quality from those that remain, and a dilution of quality contributors who drift elsewhere. That is certainly my feeling in my initial weeks into the system, and may explain some of the trends you noted in your post - more and more people signing on, more and more dead accounts, and a dimunition in quality of what is actually posted. Just my minnow thoughts ...
All good points. Which are being addressed as we speak... by those who are very aware of this problem and have the ability to put solutions in place.
I was just bringing it back into the public eye, in the hope to spur this process on a bit!
How you getting on with my tutorials?