I have made a number of posts criticizing inactivity on the STEEM blockchain hoping that somewhere down the line, if people are "made uncomfortable enough" they would act..
We had the big forum a few days ago on PAL (wrote about it 2 days ago) and even though it was fun i was kind of dissapointed with not seeing anything concrete being talked about.
In one of the comments on my whaleshares blog where i repost some of my content, an individual said something i found very interesting... "He said that those get-togethers are starting to feel like fake news."
And to a degree i agree with him...
So lets see if we can turn that around.. Im going to do this post, and i already see it will be a long one that will take quite a bit of time, where ill list almost every single thing that comes to mind we could do as a group and as a community.
Ill try and be as concrete as possible.
I pulled out some of my old marketing books, browsed online, looked at successful examples of what i think we could do and ill list everything i could think of..
Some will be good ideas, some wont, but i think talking about concrete solutions is an immediate necessity and even if one thing works from all the ideas we might come up with, and we act on it, ill be happy..
So lets get into it...
1.
Before going into anything further, all these actions would require a completely new, externally focused STEEM promotion account.
I agree that @oracle-d and promo-steem guys have been doing a good job, but if anything is to be done it needs come from a newly awakened need to act by the community. And because of that we need a new start.
Before going into anything, the community (use radio shows for this) and large STEEM stake holders need to stand behind an account like that. Support needs to be found and arrangements made before starting anything.
This account wouldnt deal with internal competitions or rewarding writing about STEEM on STEEMIT. It would only and completely be focused on external action.
2. Introduce @musing type comment placement for fund accumulation.
Each post on this new account blog would present current budget requirements for current actions and projects. (SEO marketing, ads, twitter, facebook, youtube, etc.)
Since you can earn so much per post, introducing fund accumulation comments per post would increase gathered funds. (pretty straight forward.)
3. Starting from the bare bones basics.
First example i would like to add is the NETCOINS hype that was going on weeks ago. We won, and we won for a reason. I dont expect that getting added to NETCOINS will do much good for STEEM adoption, simply because people arent that familiar with Steem, but what that competition did do is show us that when we actually do come together and act, we get results.
Basically, if you know something works, keep on doing it.
This is where large stake holders come into play. Weekly or bi-weekly calls to action with a focus on external crypto related videos of significance and reach, crypto related Medium posts of significance and reach, crypto related news sites of significance and reach, email campaigns toward crypto exchanges like Coinbase... etc.
All of this coming from one main source with large account holders rewarding regular users (incentive) for "proof of action" comments.
This would in my opinion create a drive in the community towards not only creating content, but rather contributing towards spreading the word outside Steem related apps and frontends. Essentially instilling in the community the sense that "they will be rewarded if STEEM succeeds".
4. Basic crypto related ads.
If we should start somewhere, this is it. If you remember the ICO craze during last November, December you will realize that there was an amazing amount of ads for every crypto project, no matter how bad it was. And creating so many annoying ads worked for many.
There is this sense in the general public that Crypto is "new" and "new" is always interesting.
But lets start small. Cointraffic.io being the first spot since its pretty cheap. A CPM of 4$ is nothing the STEEM reward pool cant pay for.
All we would need is 1 trusted individual by the community to open a bank account in a non-regulated country where the funds accumulated would be sent to.
Having an ad budget of 400$ a week would get us around 100k impressions on Cointraffic partner sites.
We could then expand to Facebook and Twitter since it seems they have loosened up on their crypto ad ban..
The wonderful thing about STEEM is that we DO NOT have to sell anything.
We will not "sell" STEEM tokens in the ads. We would sell the earning potential and emphasize the lack of need to invest anything.
I know this isnt a "full disclosure" way to conduct the promotion campaign but as i said in the previous posts i made:
We dont need an honest, full disclosure approach, we need people that can get things done. "You can earn money, you dont have to invest, 60 mil USD payed out to the community so far." - Thats your hook.
A few months ago @ned went on a mainstream media show talking about STEEM. And he said something that made me facepalm. He pointed out the content placement problem STEEM is facing.
Now i can applaud him for honesty, but that has to be absolutely the single worst thing someone that wants to attract investors can do.
Advertising 101... Dont point out your flaws! EVER. Emphasize your strengths.
Bitcoin, if wer looking at tech, use cases, potential is inferior in every way to majority of other cryptos, Steem included. But what do BTC shills do when they talk in front of the US congress? They downplay its flaws and emphasize its strengths.
Being open is nice and you should never go out of your way to hide the problems. But in situations like Ned was in, with minutes on the clock, when you have a short time to present your pitch and attract investors to your platform, talking about surface level issues is a complete waste of time detrimental to every single person here. Bot lover or hater.
5. Round up high sub youtubers and Steem users with large followings on Twitter, Facebook and create a template for them for STEEM promotion..
I have no idea why no one has yet used the promotion potential of high quality creators that have an external reach. I think i could name at least a dozen creators that cumulatively have at least 100k youtube subs and facebook followers.
Now we can say: "Steem isnt ready for mass adoption"...
But if we go that route we might as well quit right now.
There is no success for STEEM without moving towards the mass market.
During the time when STEEM was around 4,5,6 USD there was a lot of controversy with accounts like @adsactly. People werent happy with them upvoting certain individuals over and over again, but no one asked themselves "why do they do that?".
The clear and obvious answer to that question is: "Those guys that were upvoted must have contributed to Adsactly in ways that wasnt clear to the community from simply looking at their blogs."
This is another shift in the way we think that needs to happen here. Contributions towards a project arent (and thats a good thing) only based on what you do, openly, on the STEEM blockchain
My point is that we need to stop treating STEEM as a closed off system, basing our conclusions on: "look this posts looks better then this other one with more rewards".. If we can utilize the reach those quality individuals have outside STEEM, then they can/should be rewarded regardless of specific post quality on the platform.
6. A non-Jerry, Jerry.
This took a bit of looking back on when i came to the STEEM blockchain initially. I was browsing online looking to understand what was going on with Bitcoin, what it was, and how i could earn something from this "craze".
Then i stumbled upon Jerry Banfield.
Crypto is highly speculative and i didnt want to invest any of my money in it so when i saw Jerry talk about how you dont have to invest anything and you could earn crypto, i was instantly drawn in..
But there was one thing i didnt like...
Jerry just seemed to be a dishonest, fake, sweet talking insurance seller.
That made me extremely cautious and even though i created an account here, i didnt really trust it....
In the end, he got the job done and to this point i bought in around 2000 euros of STEEM..
But what if we had someone that didnt give off that vibe? Someone that didnt look like an offspring of a aquatic salamander and Steve Buscemi? Someone from inside the community that spoke in easily understandable terms, gave off an honest vibe and was trusted by the community?
Then we might have something. We need a new face of STEEM and it doesnt have to look like Jerry.
There are some amazingly committed individuals on the STEEM blockchain that have qualities to continue the work Jerry has been doing.
7. Cross-crypto platform promotion.
Since i already included in points 1 and 2 the need to have a designated account for this kind of promotion, the next step in the evolution of this endevour would be cross platform promotion.
There has been a love-hate relationship when it comes to other platforms promoting themselves on the STEEM platform. We all remember the bytecoins thing. (or whatever its called)
But in my opinion thats a good thing.
So why not do the exact same thing?
The "new project name" could be transferred to other platforms like "WHALESHARES", "MINDS", "SMOKE", etc.
Ive used MINDS to promote another account there and in less then a week i managed to get 4 posts in the TOP trending page of MINDS. I accumulated a few dozen MINDS tokens that can be used to promote, whatever, to high up on their trending page.
This ofc would require a community designated PR manager but i dont think that individual would be hard to find.
8. Turning focus to politically active ALT right creators, figures. Individuals with high level social media status that share the core ideals of decentralization and removal of censorship.
This is probably the most controversial point ill be making here.
What i think is most important in a time like this, is not focusing on our small petty differences. Focusing on whos extreme in their views and who falls into the "mild" demographic. We need to look at the core ideals.
And i think everyone here shares the same core ideals.
When trying to attract individuals that might not be buying in and powering up large amounts of STEEM, but do have a large following, we need to "play" towards what we know they stand for.
So really, if we want to get the word out there we need to:
- Find like minded people.
- Be smart about what we want to sell them.
- Dazzle them.
This does seem vague, but it really isnt. I wont mention the names but there are content creators we know of that have large followings that have been kicked from youtubes and facebooks, guys that are fringe in mainstream. Individuals that have issues with centralization and censorship.
And we know there is a particular group of people that share our values outside the crypto market. There is no escaping that. We are a community in its infancy and if we want to approach the mainstream, we must approach it in such a way that we go to those that share our core values the most.
There are many kinds of people in this world but realizing that most are completely one-sided in their affiliations is something that we can use to our benefit. So we start there. Its easy to sugarcoat it, its easy to say that its not a moral thing to do but adjusting our rhetoric to expectations is nothing more then playing by the rules of those whose attention we need.
Anyways.. I hope i managed to provide you guys with some ideas as to what i think can be done and as always...
"Keep on Steeming!"..
Ill just add one more photo for @paulag :D
