I know I say this a lot, but it always is good to reiterate: one of the fundamental needs of this blockchain is onboarding.
Onboarding is a more complex process than many people realize:
- You have to first introduce the concept to the new person
- You have to convince them of the reasons why it can be impactful in their life or business
- You have to teach them how to get started
- They will also need resources for advancement in knowledge that will aid their ambitions on the platform
- As apps, DApps and tools for the Steem blockchain continue to develop, we will have an ever-evolving need for comprehensive and up-to-date resources
Onboarding is more than just introducing the concept and creating an account. It’s about ongoing education and practical application. It’s one thing to get someone started on the blockchain, but it’s a completely different beast to motivate and reward them for continued effort.
Hosting the Party:
Hosting the party is a concept I’ve heard Gary Vaynerchuk, a famous entrepreneur and speaker, mention a few times.
Hosting the party is a simple concept — imagine a kid who is in high school. This kid isn’t particularly popular, but all of the sudden he starts throwing parties at his parents house.
This kid is the one with the leverage. He’s hosting people and giving them a platform to do what they want to do without any parental interference.
If you’re interested, here’s a great clip from a recent Garyvee video about this exact topic:
How Hosting the Party Can Apply to Steem:
I see this idea of hosting the party applying to the future growth of the Steem blockchain in a lot of ways.
For one, individuals can host the party. Individual Steemians can leverage their use of the blockchain to actually grow the blockchain and onboard people they meet in real life.
For example, let’s take an individual Steemian who travels the world. This Steemian has a powerful tool to onboard and educate and inspire a new user: their own success and use of the platform.
Anyone who has shown off their Steem account to someone who’s unaware but mildly interested knows how powerful a sales tool their past experience can be. When you’ve got experience with the Steem blockchain and you use the apps and have some sort of success with them, then people are immediately more intrigued to spend their time learning and creating an account.
That’s the power of an influencer — someone who’s been there, done that and can prove it in real life.
The next way to host the party is influencers going after influencers.
Steem influencers — people with a lot of leverage and attention on the Steem blockchain and other social platforms — can reach out to other influencers who are big on other social platforms and “host a party” for them.
They can invite these potentials to try the Steem blockchain and give them the space and leverage they need to be a success right off the bat.
We’ve seen a recent example of this in action by the Partiko team, who reached out to Tumblr NSFW blogs and “hosted the party” by backing up their blogs before Tumblr censored them.
This move by Partiko is a move that every dApp on Steem should be making.
I see a great potential for dApps and influencers on the Steem blockchain to reach out to influencers on other social media platforms and “host a party” and gain leverage with the influencers to join the Steem blockchain. Here are a few examples:
- Steem Monsters could reach out to Twitch streamers to play Steem Monsters and post a video on DTube or maybe even cross-stream to VIMM… SM could help to set their account up and give them simple instructions in just a few steps on how they could get up and running with no hassle to themselves.
- Actifit could reach out to fitness influencers… offer them something in exchange for using Actifit for 1 week and talking about it on their platform (IG, Youtube, etc.)… Actifit could create the account, set everything up and the influencer could just download the app and click a few buttons and be on their way
- DTube could reach out to Youtube influencers and set them up to cross-post to DTube.. The incentive for the Youtube influencer to talk about DTube to their fans is that having a great fan base move over to Steem who are already loyal to you could prove beneficial in the long-run.
There are so many more… I’m sure if you sit and brainstorm a little you can come up with all sorts of ways that apps and DApps could reach out to influencers and onboard them to the Steem blockchain by making it simple and clearly beneficial for them.
Questions
What are some of your ideas for onboarding and educating new users to the Steem blockchain? Do you think it’s all about making the benefits clear and the process easy?