Hello everyone! I finally had some time to sit down, and think about ways to recruit in my area. After some brainstorming, I finally came up with an idea. My father (@remlaps) already discussed recruiting in Chester County in this post, and I think his plan is great for recruiting people in our area. My idea is a concept geared towards younger people in the area, and could be paired with some of his ideas to help bring them in. This is also a concept that can be applied to virtually any small community (and should be as I later state).

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A Selfie Scavenger Hunt

Resources Needed

First of all, whoever ran it would (possibly) need to set up a community similar to Delaware Valley Life but geared towards the Selfie Scavenger Hunt game in their community. Either that, or they could set up a Community exactly like Delaware Valley Life where users can submit to a selfie scavenger hunt contest. I like the concept of a Selfie Scavenger Hunt specific Community more.

Second of all, for my idea to run, there would need to be an account with a large amount of SP dedicated to largely curating these posts. The concept is to attract people in the community with decent payouts for posts that they can see themselves making fairly easily. This whole concept hinges on the allocation of a fair amount of Steem Power towards rewarding these posts. It might not be worthwhile to set up one account for one community. One idea I have is to maybe make the account for several Selfie Scavenger Hunt Communities for their respective areas, and have one representative from those areas have a posting key, and a fixed amount of maximum upvotes a day. My father suggested that this could be a problem if too many communities applied, or too many people posted in a community to keep up with it. I think the message of that is that the game is working, and maybe more resources should be allocated towards it (I.E. Another account set up, or an existing account given more stake).

Budget?

The amount of Stake in the account is a flexible concept. I think the more stake that the account has, the better for recruiting. People are more likely to stay after a 10 dollar upvote than after a 1 dollar upvote.

It should be stated that the previous paragraph was written with the assumption that Steemit does not want to be involved in curating these posts since they do not know the local areas, and they have a lot to curate already.

The concept?

Basically my idea is a game called "Selfie Scavenger Hunt". In this game, different landmarks in a small community would have different base "values" established by their community's representative. Anyone who posts a unique selfie in front of the landmark will receive an upvote equal to that landmark's stated value. For example:

West Chester's Old Courthouse - Could be worth a 25 percent upvote. . .

while

A picture in front of Samuel Barber's childhood home (much more obscure) - Could be worth a 75 percent upvote. . .

The cool thing about this concept is the percentage can change based on the instance. For example, if someone goes to a low ranked monument, but creates a unique and entertaining picture, the upvote could be more. Similarly, if someone goes to a rare monument, but does not put effort into making a nice picture, the upvote could be less.

Depending on the number of participants, a weekly challenge system might be appropriate (similar to what my father did in this post).

The Game's Effect on Curation?

Because the landmarks will have base values, it will be fairly easy for users looking at the community to predict which posts will payout most. This would probably make curating quite easy (and rewarding) in these communities. That curating would also probably increase the amount of payouts that users receive.

Why do I think this concept will attract new users?

Because it takes something easy to do, and makes it have value. In addition, it is something that a lot of people are passionate about, and something that you don't necessarily need to understand Steem to do.

One thing I think would be most beneficial for this game would be to reward proof of sharing to other social media (much like the diary game does). The diary game has showed me that people will actually click into these posts when they see them from their friends on social media. These Selfie Scavenger Hunt posts would be a perfect gateway into Steem because it is something that the nuclear people in someone's life are likely to click through and care about.

Is this something I am willing to do?

That depends. I have a lot of free time this summer, though I do have other responsibilities as a Steem Greeter. One thing I will say is that one of my biggest problems in recruiting people in my life has been getting them to stick around. I hope that this will solve the problem by creating a base-expected value.

If an account with large stake were to be setup to curate this concept, and the Steemit Team wanted me to run this idea and represent the Delaware Valley Area, I would be willing.

How would I get more people?

For recruitment, I would probably try to get some of my friends (or anyone else from my school interested) to do example posts, and slowly spread the news (with the example posts) to the younger people living in my area (mostly who are in college). I will say that I think now is the perfect time to do this since so many people are at home with nothing to do.

I have recruited several people from my school over the years, and most of them have left due to no payouts. I hope that they will participate in this when I promise them a payout for these sample posts.

Conclusion

This game would definitely be fun if enough people started participating. The best way to get people to start participating is probably to use some of the other ideas suggested in this week's challenge posts (such as my dad). I think this game would definitely help to spark interest in the outside community! Please feel free to discuss the idea in the comments if you have any suggestions (or ways of improving it)!