Let’s collaborate to create a piece of long-form content so good it goes viral and brings new creators to Steemit.
There I was, slogging through the conclusion of a 6,600-word introduction to Steem I spent all week working on and will publish Monday when it hit me:
Steem needs the highest-quality content. Therefore, we need the highest-quality content creators. We can get them to join Steem by showing them that long-form content — the riskiest kind for a writer to undertake — pays on Steem.
The Backstory
Long-form journalism is growing in popularity. Buzzfeed, the New York Times, Fast Company, Bloomberg and other big and growing media outlets are publishing more of it. There’s even a podcast about it.
Pocket, Flipboard and Reddit are all instrumental channels in promoting it. For example, here are two recent editions of email newsletters I get from Pocket (20 million users) and Flipboard (70 million users) with the latest and most popular long-form content on the web.
Watch for Steem here.
Highly-educated people — including thought-leaders and visionaries — are, I suspect, the primary audience. These are exactly the people we need to attract to Steem now.
Risky for Writers
But, long-form journalism is a risky undertaking for writers. Long-form journalism takes a lot of time to research, draft and place with a publisher. Travel expenses may be involved.
Create a 500-word blog post and you’re done in a few hours or a day. If you earn something on it, good. If you don’t, your losses are minimal.
Invest weeks or months into a long-form piece and, if you can’t finish it or get it published, you’ve lost a huge amount of time. The opportunity cost is high.
Long-form content is very risky for writers to undertake.
But Steem can fix this. Long-form content is a prime use-case for Steem, with its Medium-like format. Quality is rewarded at Steem and the long-form format is characterized by depth and quality.
Thus, we can collaborate to produce a piece of long-form content so good that it goes viral. When it does, we will prove that Steem meets the specific needs of long-form writers.
More content creators will sign up. They’ll create more quality content and attract even more users to the Steem network.
The Proposal
I’m looking for content creators who want to collaborate to create a piece of high-quality long-form journalism that will (we intend) go so viral that we attract more high-quality content creators to Steem, people with their own followings who will, in turn, bring their followers with them to the Steem community.
This is a project to promote Steem, to grow our community, to grow the reputations of the participating content creators and make us money (of course).
Not Just Writers
To get this done, we’ll need more than just writers. We need all kinds of creators, including: artists, videographers, researchers, photographers, marketers and more.
My skillset includes copywriting, content writing, creative writing, editing, organization and marketing.
Who’s in?
Please join me in the LongForm channel on Steemit.chat to brainstorm ideas and get this project moving. You should have a reputation over 50 and some quality content already published here on Steem.
To join, leave me a comment or email me@georgedonnelly.com with your username and I will add you.
