I was introduced to steem.it by a friend (who has been involved for a good bit of time) and the idea seems very interesting to me, but got me thinking on how we can increase the userbase very quickly, and in a way that seems it would be fairly easy to convince the entities in consideration, as steem has a lot of benefit to its use.
I understand many people are looking to replace things such as reddit with content creators and providers being rewarded in actual currency rather than karma. After all, who doesn't prefer the ability to do something with their "karma"? Steem provides the ability to take your "karma" and do something with it outside of the site itself.
I am still fairly (very) new to the platform so I do apologize if this topic or line of thought has been covered already.
Steem has potential to reward those who actually provide valuable content, even outside of needing to be popular before you can get sponsored (such as Instagram, which is one of the only ways to monetize that platform).
There is clearly desire for steem to be disruptive to how social media is used and consumed. My idea is one to boost just now many people are using the platform, and see how it can coexist beside the existing ones, while giving incentive to switch to it as well.
If a "valued community member" such as an Instagram name with a lot of followers, or a popular youtube channel - began using steem as well, in the situation that they actually are providing valuable information (content) rather than advertising for anyone who pays them(that is mindless shilling, not what we want to reward), it would potentially massively increase the number of people using steem, and increasing the userbase is one of the best ways for us to ensure steem sticks around for a long time.
Consider the situation: The aforementioned begins posting their content on steemit as well, or providing it in some manner, while encouraging their audience to check it out or use the same, the amount of content will be vastly increased (while the amount of voting will increase more so, as the majority of people are content with voting and maintenance rather than the creation itself) as well as the amount of users we have using the platform.
The quickest way to do this would be to get in touch with one of the entities mentioned and show them the benefits of using steem in combination with their primary platform - they are likely to quickly see the advantages themselves in the form of another stream of revenue for themselves, as well as increasing potential audience. If anyone has contacts with people of this caliber it could actually lead to steem "blowing up overnight" as far as increasing the userbase.
The content creators (popular channel, individual, etc) will see benefit in both using steem and getting as many of their followers here for the purposes of having audience on more platforms, which can then easily spill over into all the other aspects of steem.
I know this may not be desired by some people who feel the general populace would degrade the quality of content, but there are much more intelligent subscribed channels that are highly popular. I'm not just referencing getting puddypi in here (oh dear god no) and there is a lot of potential to bring in positive influences to the environment.
tl;dr - Steemit, if shown to the correct people, can have a massive increase in userbase in a very short time frame as the usage of steem almost sells itself as to the value of the website.
Unrelated - but speaking of instagram, who else was disappointed by the new instagram logo?