Guys, I love Steemit. I also love The Rolling Stones, hits from the bong, and masturbating, but if all I ever talked about was those things I would be surrounded by stoned, hippie, perverts and limit my horizons.
If Steemit is ever going to go mainstream we need to stop talking so much about Steemit. I know, like you, I love this platform and all the new developments and projects happening here. I've met so many interesting people and love supporting new projects that come online here, but like someone who only talks about themselves at a party, talking just about Steemit related things can get a little boring to new users coming to the platform.
I understand that Steemit-related initiatives help promote the platform and I'm not saying otherwise or discrediting their value, but it's not the only way. There are other ways to attract and retain large audiences to a platform that have existed long before Steemit was even a thing and we should pay more attention to those methods too.
Imagine if Facebook or Google mostly posted things about Facebook and Google. How long would you stay on those sites? I'm not saying we should stop talking about Steemit altogether just maybe we could post more about other things too.
One factor that draws people to a site and keeps them returning to it is posts in niches that interest them. Yes, of course, there are sites centered around specific niches of interest to that particular group of people, and Steemit is expanding and new communities are forming every day, but I have noticed something over the last couple months.
For the last few months (until this post) I stopped making posts or commenting on posts about Steemit itself and my rewards have not been as great as posts I make about Steemit. I may be mistaken but it appears that Steemit related posts earn more than those of other topics which tends to perpetuate the tendency to write more about Steemit.
If earning is all you care about fine, but there's more involved with a site reaching a larger audience and gaining momentum than just the potential earnings. People return to sites that are of interest to them.
Steemit is very interesting to me and others already on this site, but to the larger audience we need to reach it may not be as interesting to them as we think.
Is Steemit revolutionary, innovative, and changing the way we interact with social media? Yes, of course, it is. But to a first-time observer, it can be very intimidating and appears as if you have to already know something about posting, or crypto, or Steemit to really be a part of it.
Perhaps that is one reason why the site has a retention problem.
I've signed lots of people up to this platform, at least 50 people, but only a handful have stayed on the site. When I ask them why their answers are something along the lines of:
- I was making money at first but not as much now.
- No one seems interested in what I'm interested in
- It seems like you have to write about Steemit or crypto to make money on your posts.
- I haven't found a community that supports me.
- It seems like I have to create something for Steemit to make consistent rewards and I don't know how to do that.
There are a lot of creative people who develop lots of great projects for this platform and they are to be appreciated and supported, but people with those skills make up a small minority of internet users.
To reach a larger audience we need broader communities based on more topics and people willing to post about and support those communities. This is what will attract people to the platform and keep them here.
It also has the added benefit of reaching a larger audience by ranking on search engines for a wide variety of topics. This is beginning to happen but would happen much quicker if writers posted about more topics besides crypto or Steemit itself and if we all started rewarding those who do to incent them to do so we would grow a lot faster.
Another thing I hear a lot from new users is;
- I can't seem to easily find communities here that are interested in what I'm interested in.
My sympathies are with them and I point them to the tags in hopes of helping them find communities of like-minded people, but the way the site is designed using the tags doesn't make it very organized for them to find their niche.
I think there's a solution for that and would like to partner with people interested in helping me solve that problem. I've already started and thought it would be more fun to partner with people because that's part of the fun about Steemit, crowdsourcing projects. If you're interested let me know.
We have to admit that Steemit tends to talk about itself a lot and I for one am committed to changing that. If we continue to post Steem-centric posts we'll remain a community based mainly of Steemit users when we could be reaching ever-growing communities across the internet. We can start by posting and upvoting more posts that are about other topics.
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