Steemit Suggestion: Improved Post Promotion System To Benefit Steemians, Marketers And Investors.

in #utopian-io6 years ago (edited)

promotion

After experimenting with spending SBDs on promoting a post that had already received significant upvotes and payout hrough organic voting - I have found the system can be greatly improved. I used STEEMVIZ to find how much to pay to get a promoted post onto the 1st page of the Promoted section and got my post to appear on the first page there.

I found that in the few hours after I made the payment, the post received only 3 votes on top of the 70 it had already received organically and the reward level has maybe risen close to $1 as a result. I appreciate that the outcome of promoting a post is not guaranteed, but generally I do not feel that the significant cost of reaching the 1st page of the promoted section is justifiable, given the results seen and exposure gained.

Low Visibility Promotion


The promoted posts are currently shown only on their own page/tab in Steemit and I imagine that many people are not really so interested in opting to voluntarily view paid/promoted posts. Maybe we are just cynical after using Facebook, but generally there is an idea that if something is being promoted with money, it might be less valuable than something that isn't being promoted. Additionally, users might expect that great posts will make their way to the hot/trending lists anyway - so why look at the promoted posts?

Benefits of Improving The Visibility and Viability of Promoted Posts


I suggest that the effectiveness of the promoted posts would be greatly increased if they were integrated into the other pages of the site, where more people are going to see them. This can be done in an unobtrusive way and since they are posts that viewers can earn curation from, can downvote and can mute - they are not really going to annoy anyone any more than any other post - in my opinion.

Mitigation of Paid Upvote Bot Use


Optimal use/placement of the promoted posts will reduce the attraction of upvote bots and bring the system closer to it's intended design where payouts are given to the posters of quality content and not to bot operators who could be said to be 'gaming the system'. The ability to buy upvotes also means the ability to buy reputation, which is completely contrary to the entire design principle behind the reputation system.

Increased Income For the Steemit/Steem System


Presently, the Steem Eco-System is a bit intimidating to newcomers and not easily accessible to non-technical PR companies - hence they do not use it much (overtly) to advertise yet. While this is itself a good thing from the perspective of community building among real people - it is a lost opportunity to increase the value of Steem both as a currency and as a competing social network in the wider world.

Through improving the promotion system in relatively simple ways, the motivation to Power Up by advertisers will be huge and Steemit/Steem can then truly become 'the world's advertising platform' as (I believe) @ned described it.

Suggested Changes


  1. Insert Promoted posts at a fixed rate within post feeds - while subtly identifying that they are promoted posts using CSS styling borders or other accents. The idea is the emphasise the posts without them being annoying or overpowering. Posts can be targeted by keyword, so that only promoted posts that are relevant to the current context in the site are displayed.

promotion idea - feed

  1. Insert a small number of promoted posts at strategic places when viewing full blog posts. When the screen is wide enough they can appear to one side of the blog text and when the screen is narrow they can appear at the very bottom of the page. The idea is that they are visible, but not annoying and so do not interfere with the use of the site as it is currently.


    A suggested layout is below:

promotion idea

If you like what I do - you can consider voting for me as a witness - Thanks!



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[utopian-moderator]

oh, great - thanks @elear - i did wonder why it was so low. :)

I agree the promotion system should work in a way that you promote the posts to be more visible because that is the only way it will work since people don't really go to a page where the posts are pretty much just resteemed especially by a bot.

yes, it's a logical progression that's needed here for sure!

You've got to be kidding me! I am writing this same post right now!! I was going to post it today but ran out of time. I have a few additional ideas. I'll put the link here when I post it if you don't mind. Lets kill those vote bots!

hehe - sure, it's a fairly obvious omission from the design of steemit, so i'm sure many have thought about it and even posted about it already.

Love the suggested layout.

thanks!

It seems there are bunch of Steemians with parallel thought on the matter right now.

I am working on a similar proposal, and will adapt some points from your post and crediting you, with addition to my suggestions on how it would be executed if you don't mind?

My focus where I feel I will be adding value to this is the back end for the new 'Promotion' platform, where the promoter may choose specific targetting to ensure that the viewers of the promoted post will be as relevant as possible. This is beneficial to entire eco-system by delivering only relevant promotions to relevant viewers, or at least, as much as possible.

Targetting Settings :

  • Tags : Targetting tags relevant to the topic of the promoted post
  • Authors : targetting promotion towards followers of authors who contribute similar content to that is being promoted
  • Specific Posts : Targetting user who have engaged with specific posts of which falls into the same niche, genre and topic of the post you'd like to promote.

I will be including:

  • A price auction model as well, adapted from both Google Adwords and Facebook Ads wherein the higher your bid, the higher the rate of distribution of your ad will be.

  • Variable CPM costs, which adjusts the cost of the promotion per thousand views based upon the "Click-through rate" where the higher your CTR, the lower your cost as a factor of relevant delivery.

  • Daily Budget settings

Your thoughts and opinion on my addition to your proposal is also greatly appreciated!

Hey again ura-soul, I have just posted my proposal : Proposal for New 'Promoted' Function

I never actually visit promoted feed and I think I'm in the majority. It has to be embedded to trending feed to make it worthwhile for promoters. It's such a simple thing to do, just look how the Reddit does it or Instagram.

Yes, I can understand the general ethos here is to step back, rather than be obtrusive, so that people don't feel pressured in any way - but that can still be achieved while optimising the promotion system.

I agree with you here and on your suggestion. I'm sure it will eventually be implemented as promoted now is useless in its current state, devs are just too busy I think. I personally would hope to see beneficiaries implemented first to Steemit, I've heard someone is working on it. It would make a lot of things a lot easier.

yes, that would be great too!

Thank you for the contribution. It has been approved.

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Holy cow, this is exactly what's needed. I'm actually poking around doing the interleave, and it doesn't even seem that hard to do. I didn't see your issue but found this similar one: https://github.com/steemit/condenser/issues/1072 .

Incidentally, I already voted you as witness, otherwise I'd vote for you again if I could ;)

And as encouragement, it even seems that they are open to putting this in, from my reading of the thread...

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