Steemit is a lottery. Nevertheless, I see a lot of eager content creators making the same mistake I often do - making their posts too long. A related mistake is putting too much effort into high quality content with a very low follower count. (In the latter case, I recommend posting high-quality comments in fresh threads in the Hot section. Like, really high.)
Steemit...I got a feeling about this platform.
From the Steem Whitepaper:
"...The economic effect of this is similar to a lottery where people over-estimate their probability of getting votes and thus do more work than the expected value of their reward and thereby maximize the total amount of work performed in service of the community."
The more entries you have to the lottery, the more chances you can win. Is a post that is doubled in quality going to have double the chance to earn large rewards? Perhaps if it maximizes quality and not quantity, but I think the limit to this is a lot lower than we may think. In other words, you are "overestimating the probability". Plus, you can only jam so much quality into a casually-readable post.
It's an unfortunate truth, but most of the social media audience is from the "ADD generation". Our attention span is very short owing in large part to the type of technology we've grown up with. You've got to be short and sweet to capture our hearts and minds.
I think the sweet spot for a post is 4 paragraphs or less, with 2-5 pictures. That's just a guess of where the best effort vs audience engagement (and thus reward) currently lies for all but the posters that already have huge followings. This can be a real handicap for those who like to explore complex topics or do a lot of research with citations. I originally planned to make my tax series one single post, but realized that I needed to split it into at least 4-5 parts or I would definitely lose the audience. Even then, you'll probably notice a dwindling in audience with subsequent parts of a popular post; it's very difficult to recreate the success of something going semi-viral each time.
Past results really don't generally indicate future ones...honest.
The Steemit interface itself is doing no favors to those of us who like to return to long posts to finish them, but I think the real issue is the audience. I, myself, have a noticeably shorter attention span than I had ten or fifteen years ago. I've had a number of jobs where patience was critical to the job - lifeguarding, data entry, poker, trading - and yet even after actively practicing patience, I am now part of the problem too. I am noticeably less patient thanks to the instant gratification that modern technology provides.
I can barely watch movies or TV anymore unless I have a laptop or other device available for looking up or taking notes on the many things that cross my mind. I recently went to see Baby Driver, partially after reading a positive review of it on Steemit. My girl loved it, and yet I was a little bored. There was no good reason, it was the type of movie I would like, full of actors I liked. I'm just used to the endless ability to move on to the next tab the moment my interest wanes. At various times in the movie, I wanted to look up something on imbd, etc...
Who watches the watchers...
As a result, when I open a new Steemit post and see the scroll bar is tiny, I feel a bit daunted and hope there are a great many comments instead of an enormous article. I often need to vote for articles I can't finish because I can tell they are quality but that, in terms of my lagging interest, I am the problem.
At any rate, I'm already well past my own recommended length, so I'll simply say I'm eager to hear anyone's opinions on the length issues in the comments. I won't fault you if you want to keep your posts long; maybe you will end up having better luck that way.
After all, doubling down certainly worked for this guy.
Sources: Steem Whitepaper
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