”Welcome to steemit, we are glad that you’ve joined our community!”

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Most of us have heard the saying, “Steemit – Come for the Money, Stay for the Community” before. Time and time again, for many of us, this is exactly the experience that we’ve had. From elsewhere, we have migrated to steemit, often with hopes of making some $$$, and then, we found so much more.

Fortunately, many of us have been blessed with both STEEM and friends in our time here… but what about the newcomers?

n00bs

Each and every day, thankfully, new users are choosing to join steemit. However, this is an interesting time in the steemit ecosystem. With the recent whale experiment and counter-flag operations still running and now with the additional effects of the 7 day payout period and filling of the reward pool, the odds that a brand new user will immediately get a good amount of STEEM is minimal, if it exists at all.

That said, if they “come for the money” right now, they won’t really be finding it, will they?

Enter the Greeter

If someone comes for the money, there is technically nothing wrong with that. I’ve been there myself. But what happens if they do not find the community either?

I’ve seen whales, dolphins, and minnows standing at the entrance to steemit greeting the new users, and I believe that now it is more crucial than any other time that we intentionally greet the newcomers and officially welcome them to steemit.

I can’t recall the number of times that I’ve seen an introduceyourself post with a nice payout because a whale had voted on it. @blocktrades is the whale that immediately comes to mind as I recollect. Other times, many non-whale outstanding members of the community had taken the time to head down the intro posts and welcome the newcomers. @gringalicious, @rigaronib, and others have been good examples of this at times.

Each and every steemian can play a role in greeting new users. Whales and larger dolphins can bless them with some cents or perhaps even dollars on the post itself. Users with larger amounts of liquid STEEM and SBD could even choose to bless the newcomer with some of it as a welcome gift.

Recently, I chose to share some STEEM with a few new users with the image above on their intro posts. I know that this approach may be less common, but hopefully it can help with the retention rate.

For those without serious Steem Power or liquid STEEM or SBD, we can still vote and comment. The votes are nice, but the comments make sure that the user knows that you were there. If you look over the 14,000+ posts made from the @papa-pepper account, you will find that very few are actually greeting new users…

Time Constraints

I mention that last part to make a point. Each of us has limited time, and no one, except maybe @mindhunter, could greet every new steemian. However, if each of us took just a little time each week to at least greet a few newcomers, steemit would become a much more welcoming place.

If you think about it, there was an original reason that stores like Wal-Mart originally paid people just to be greeters. I know that these days they may be there to check receipts or act more like security guards in larger cities, but originally I believe that the goal was to make their store more welcoming and friendly.

Of course none of us has a full-time job standing at the doors of steemit welcoming the newcomers, but we can all share the work and get the job done. Hopefully, one day there will be more money to go around on steemit, but regardless of the payouts, steemit needs to be an inviting and engaging community if we are going to attract and retain as many new users as possible.

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I’ll keep trying to greet some n00bs every week, and hope that you will do likewise. Who’s with me?

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