Thinking of Steemit and content that could bring in a new wave of members
The @cryptofiend put out a thoughtful post: Have Your Say - The State of Steemit this Christmas, as he so often does, and as I so often do, I replied to it.
And that got me thinking.
What sort of content is missing from Steemit?
What sort of content would draw new people to the platform, that would not normally be attracted to it. So we are talking about people who don’t blog, write, paint, photograph, create content, and who are not into the crypto world.
There are quite a few people like that, apparently.
It got me thinking about how I use the web, and one of the things I use it for a lot, is reviews. If I want to buy something, anything, I first look up the reviews and see if it is any good or not. Indeed that’s what got me watching videos on YouTube.
That was my main driver for being there. Of course, now I also watch other videos, but my initial need was to find out if the pack I was going to buy was any good.
I think if we had some well formatted reviews on Steemit, that would attract people who are not interested in blogging or crypto, but are interested in finding out if what they are about to buy is going to work for them.
Think of it as using product and service reviews to market Steemit. If the posts are formatted in a consistent way and ‘branded’ to catch the eye of people researching, then this could be a very powerful tool for getting people interested in Steemit.
Each post could have a tagline in it along the lines of: Steemit Reviews – reviews you can trust.
We could have standardized tags as well. e.g. product-review, service-review, movie-review, music-review, food-review etc .
I’d love to see a rating system using badges along the lines of the awesome ones developed by @elyaque here .
Here is a standard template we might use for reviews. This is not carved in stone, merely a suggestion.
I would see this being used as a guide when filling out a review so you can fill in the bits that are relevant and delete the bits that are not. But the main thing is that all the reviews follow a similar standard format so it is easy for users to find the information they are looking for.
My comments and explanations are in italics and are not intended to be part of the template.
#Post title
in the format of: Review of – product/service/app/movie/etc
Product / service details
one or two lines detailing things like model codes, year, size etc.
IMAGE
either an image of the product or a default image for products / services / music etc
##Summary
###Rating
rating images for: overall, value for money, fit for purpose, quality of service etc
#tag line
trying to keep the above content ‘above the fold’ and have the tagline visible before a user has to scroll. This is our brand so we want it ‘in their face’.
###Description
a short description of the product and reasons for the ratings.
include pros and cons
##Reccomendation
either telling the viewer they should buy the product or not
##Detailed review
go into as much detail as you like about the item being reviewed
add more images here
##Other reviews and information
add links to YouTube, Amazon etc that review the same product, book etc
##Other options
discuss other products / services that might also be worth considering.
The next part of this post will be a sample review as a demonstration of what I’m proposing.
All suggestions for improvement are welcome. You can leave a comment here or email me at: [email protected]
Review of – The magic wallet
Classic magic wallet made from leather with room for four credit cards
Summary
Rating
| Overall | Value for Money | Fit for purpose | Service |
|---|---|---|---|
 |  |  |  |
I've used these badges just as an indication of a fun ranking system
Steemit reviews – reviews you can trust
Description
I like this wallet because it is very small and minimalist. That means I’m not carrying around a bunch of junk I don’t really need in my pocket. It has four credit card slots, and you can easily get two cards in each slot if you like.
The inside has enough storage capacity for a few notes and I even have a couple of business cards in there, and they don’t fall out.
Puting notes into the wallet is a breeze, once you get the hang of it.
| Pros | Cons |
|---|---|
| Cheap, small, lightweight | easy to lose, cards can be hard to get in and out if you have more than one per slot |
Reccomendation
If you want to de-clutter your wallet and carry around less bulk and weight, then this is a nice cheap option.
Detailed review
This is so small that it just fits really nicely in my pocket. You can fit it in either the front or back pocket of a pair of jeans easily and it is not uncomfortable. It also slips into the waist band pockets on my daypack as well, so I have plenty of places I can stuff it.
The only thing I found was that the RFiD blocking doesn’t work. That may be because the one I bought doesn’t have that technology though.
I was looking at so many wallets at the time it is quite possible I got them a bit mixed up.
I’ve had my wallet for about six months now and it has really made a difference to the amount of crap I carry around with me.
I’ve not yet run into a situation where I wished I’d had my old wallet.
Other reviews / information
YouTube video about the magic wallet
another Youtube vieo about how to use a magic wallet
Other options
There are lots of other minimalist wallets on the market now.
Here are just a few:
5 cool wallets
5 futuristic wallets
So what do you think?
Do you think this is a good idea or a bad idea?
Do you have any suggestions to make the template better?
Let me know and let's see if we can start getting some more people interested in joining Steemit and upvoting our posts :-)
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Thanks very much :-)
Good idea, will try
Do you have any suggestions to make this work better?
Everyone's an expert in some field. For example I work with audio, so I can review some audio hardware and software that I recommend.
Oh that's an awesome idea. We could have levels of reviewer.
So if I review audio gear I'm just going to talks about how cool it looks and that it has nice sound. I don't really know what I'm talking about.
But for someone else like me, that review would be enough.
But you could to an expert review and that would appeal to others who understand all about the intricacies of audio gear.
So, I think we also need an expert badge :-)
Thanks for your input :-)
It's a good idea and I think it would draw people to Steemit through the search engines. It will be a bit of a copy/paste nightmare for the SteemCleaners people in that a lot of the reviews you find on the web are copy/pasted from some marketer's promotional material. If that drawback could be overcome, it would certainly feed the attention economy.
I agree.
My hope is that bloggers here will actually write their own content, instead of copying and pasting.
That's where the value lies, in that the review is done by real people excited about a product or service, or movie etc.
And the better their reviews are the more people will come to look at their reviews, the more they get paid.
Copy and paste (hopefully) won't cut it.
This sort of content might also increase the viability of extending the payout period beyond a month, as this sort of content has a really long use by date.
I love this idea! This would be a really useful resource. I think reviews would definitely drive more traffic here long term. Also love your mock review format. Brilliant.
Thanks for that.
I think it still needs some work. I'm getting some good suggestions also.
I might try out a few reviews over the Christmas break (if I can squeeze in enough time!) and see how they go.
OK :)
This idea has potential!! good luck with it :)