A few years ago, a friend of mine told me about Medium, and suggested that I join. I didn't.
It's not that I didn't trust this friend. I knew he was probably right; however, when someone tells me to do something, I am, at times, reluctant.
Months later, I eventually decided to create a Medium account. But the reason I joined wasn't because anyone asked me to, it was because I noticed I was clicking on an increasing number of articles that lived on Medium. There were incredibly interesting pieces of content that I'd connect with, and it just so happened these pieces of writing existed on Medium.
I do "20 questions" for two reasons.
The first is that I strongly believe these interviews are interesting content. In my opinion, the eventual success or failure of Steemit will be heavily dependent on how strong and unique the content is.
The second is that I think there is a great opportunity to show influencers (as well as their thousands of followers) Steemit in a way other than saying: "Hey, you should go check out this site and create an account." As I mentioned earlier, a close friend told me I should check out Medium. This was a friend I trusted and someone whose opinion I respected. But I still chose not to. What are the odds of a celebrity joining Steemit due to an unsolicited request from a person he/she has never heard of?
But an influencer who agrees to my request is typically more than happy to share that content with his/her followers via Twitter or other social media networks after the interview. The result is: They are exposed to Steemit, and their thousands (or even hundreds of thousands) of followers are exposed to Steemit. And it's all because of good, relevant content.
The votes v.s. view count problem.
An issue that consistently happens on Steemit is that votes exceed view counts. I think it's obvious that these view counts look extremely suspicious to someone coming to Steemit for the first time. Why would more people upvote content than actually look at the content they're upvoting?
Take, for example, the #2 trending post at the time of writing this:
And look at the votes v.s. view counts:
This week, I came to a realization.
A couple of days ago, I penned this post about the fact my blog post had earned more views than the top 4 trending articles combined. The point of this blog post wasn't for me to complain, it was simply an observation about rewards v.s. actual interest in an article.
At the time, the view count on my interview was 500, but the beautiful thing is, that number has continued to grow at an impressive rate all week. And I feel very confident in stating: the people viewing it aren't Steemit users; rather, non-Steemit users who are stumbling upon this content elsewhere on the Internet.
As of right now, the view count on my interview with John Goehrke is at more than 1,700 views. (It went up another 400 overnight).
Keep in mind, this post has only been live for 4 days.
To put that into context... the view count for the 2017 Steemit Roadmap (an incredibly important document that many Steemit users would be very interested in reading) is just over 1,250. And this is a blog post by Ned and Dan that has been accessible for 24 days.
Where are these views coming from?
At first, I assumed that the traffic must have been coming from the Tweets I put out about this interview. I tagged both John and Genie in the Tweets, but neither one of them ReTweeted the link, so it was confusing me how this post was getting so much traffic. Here is a look at the analytics behind both Tweets:
It was clear that the traffic from this post wasn't coming from Twitter...
But then I noticed this...
When you Google "John Goehrke," the third link (it was second as of last night) that comes up is my "20 questions" interview with John. That means, one of the top search results for this popular name is a link directly to Steemit.
But will people even Google "John Goehrke?"
Yes. When a story is trending, people want to know more about the individual(s) involved. Here are some Google Trend maps that show activity behind the name "John Goehrke."
Past 12 months...
Past 7 days...
Why does this matter?
For me, this week has been an eye-opener with regard to what I do on Steemit. My "20 questions" series has focused on Steemit users and established influencers; however, I see the great opportunity to also jump on "overnight influencers" whose stories are trending. If these people were unknown in the past, there is an incredible opportunity to put content out there, which is 100% unique. Also, there is an opportunity to land on that first page of Google when Internet users begin Googling names they've never heard of, which are landing in their "trending" feeds on Facebook and Twitter.
At the end of the day, that unique content, which people can't find elsewhere, is what is going to bring new users to Steemit
I get pretty excited when a post of mine brings in a lot of Steem... but this whole view count thing is giving me a new buzz :)