Three weeks ago I wrote a two-part series called Anti-fragility VS Uncertainty where the main theme was that the resilient survives and the anti-fragile gets stronger.
Back then the price of steem was low and the overall morale was a little affected as a consequence.
Here’s the thing, I’m not a philosopher. I like to believe that people like my writing because there is always some real work underneath that backs it up. You are the architect and the mason, it’s not an either/or.
But I did really mean what I said, not only that but I changed my focus to think about how we can not only resist the uncertainty but come out stronger from it, and for that to happen (without having to reinvent the wheel) we pretty much have to focus on our strengths instead of dwelling on our weaknesses.
Playing to our Strengths
Needless to say, the user base is one of the strongest assets we have in steemit. The success of Steemfest alone has no parallels in the crypto-currency world.
Whenever a problems occur, the community seems to pull together to provide solutions.
A few months ago, some of us got together and created Project Curie to help with user retention among other aspects, and then created The Steem Guild to assist even further as the users started graduating from Curie, and then we expanded to other tags and languages with the help of many collaborators that we work closely with on a daily basis.
Furthermore, we launched a new project just two weeks ago in order to help even further with retention and boost engagement and reward short and medium content as well.
And there are many, many active steemians that spend a lot of time and effort every single day to assit the platform from preventing plagiarism, to user retention.
This is truly amazing!
But the most important question becomes:
What if on addition to user retention, we made a similar effort for promoting and attracting new users?
This could be huge, would it not?
Without further ado, welcome the Steemit Outreach Program:
The Steemit Outreach Program
The first questions to answer whenever you are trying to launch any project, initiative or startup are What problems are we solving? and Who are we targeting?
At first glance, the second question seems to be a fairly easy thing to answer, the first thing that comes to mind is: Well, everyone, we need people from all walks of life, all ages, background and creeds… After all if we want steemit to grow, it has to be inclusive to all kinds of people, right?
While that is absolutely true, it’s still too vague of a strategy to build any base upon.
In the end, it’s like any business really, you have to focus on a couple of very specific niches first get a solid user base and expand from there. Preferably, you start with those who have a problem that you provide a solution to.
The Pareto Principal
In the early 20th century, Italian economist Vilfredo Pareto observed that 20% of the pea pods in his garden produced approximately 80% of the peas. This later became known as the Pareto Principal, or the 80/20 principal.
In short, the 80/20 Principle basically states that the 20% of the input or action will produce the 80% of the output or results.
Many successful entrepreneurs and businesses operate on this principal as they routinely try to determine which 20% of their customers bring in 80% of sales and which 20% of their costs lead to 80% of their expenses.
And of course, it's always the 20% of the members that bring 80% of the audience.
Suppose we launch some publicity efforts randomly, then in that case you have got to know that the chances of success are gonna be random as well, right?
You can’t expect aunt Sally who is not very tech savvy to get a hang on the platform at this stage before it’s more user friendly.
Not to forget, not everyone is open to adopting new technologies to the same degree. Some people have more pre-disposition than others and that's OK.
So what if the efforts were concentrated to reach the tons of content creators, bloggers, Youtubers that have already spent months creating content without much luck monetizing?
Better chances of success right?
Stronger Hands
The upside is that many of them will bring their quality content in the platform, they have been doing this for a long time, they learned to be patient with these projects so they are inevitably much more likely to stick during times of volatility than your average Joe.
And of course, they will probably bring their audience with them. Because not everyone is an early adopter, in fact, for most people they have to wait until they see either enough people around them or someone they follow for them to join.
Instead of going at it randomly, a better allocation of time and effort would be to be self-aware about the stage that platform is at this very moment and take that into consideration, thus understanding that most people are in fact followers and so we act accordingly instead of going against the current.
No successful marketer has reaped massive success by going against human psychology.
Plus, why not use the 80/20 principle to our advantage?
After all, the 20% percent of the people create 80% of the value, and 20 % of the creators attract 80% of the followers…
Now, we’re starting to use the numbers in our advantage.
Stronger Network
“Six degrees of separation doesn't mean that everyone is linked to everyone else in just six steps. It means that a very small number of people are linked to everyone else in a few steps, and the rest of us are linked to the world through those special few.”
― Malcolm Gladwell, The Tipping Point: How Little Things Can Make a Big Difference
Honesty Before Everything
One thing to keep in mind, is that as all relationships go, there is no substitute for honesty and trust, while we are aiming to attract content creators at scale, we are also solving a problem for them, monetization.
While it may not much right now, it sure can be substantial as we grow which means that the mutual interest for all is to grow the platform as much as possible.
After all, the best types of relationship is when everybody benefits.
The Power of Advertising
The reason why ads and commercials never run out of fashion is because they create brand awareness.
One way to promote anything is to try engage directly, straight to the point. Just cold approach people and tell them about your product.
The problem here is that you will probably have less chances of success than a Jehova Witness, since no one feels the need to respond politely to an email from a stranger.
Another way to go, is to use psychology on your side and respect the fact that most people respond better to things they have seen before than to things that were presented to them for the first time.
And since we are playing it smart, you know which route we’re taking.
Expect more ads, publicity and promos like this one:
Timing is the new location, we live in the direct to consumer era, and so the ads will have to be directed specifically to a target audience like the one described before.
And then, after that we approach them using official or unofficial steemit ambassadors.
At the time of writing this ads are being tested along with other tools that we will discuss later, but for now I leave you with this thought:
Is it time we launch a fully operational outreach program?
@the-alien, @donkeypong and Project Curie