When entrepreneurs talk about first mover advantage they are talking about a product that hit the market first but may not be better than later ones. In the eyes of entrepreneurs and VCs gaining organic growth is extremely difficult when you are late to the game. Most of the time better products will lose out because of first mover advantage, but there are still ways to fight back.
If we think of our competition today who do we think it is? Reddit? Facebook?Even Myspace?. The truth is all of them because each has more funding more, more resources and more users than all of ours combined. The traditional way of marketing a platform is using the two following methods
Search Engine Optimization
Advertisements
Each one of our competitive platforms can beat us in traditional ways of marketing. We can’t outspend them but we can out maneuver them. If we are relying on word spreading by mouth there are cheap alternatives to the money problem. The following 3 tactics are my suggestion of how to move forward in gaining users.
Community Outreach
News Outreach
Partnerships
Community outreach to start can be a very effective method of free advertising. We can see this taking place already but there are ways to increase it. For example I suggested we make an official Meetup.com group where developers and users can engage with each other in real life and entice outsiders to explore and eventually join the community. Although other ways like using our competitors like reddit or bitcointalk to bring people over is also a free way of doing community outreach. The downside is community outreach relies heavily on the existing user base to come together and spread the world themselves.
News Outreach is just as, if not more important than community outreach. We need to spark interest in people by getting into various cryptocurrency media outlets like coindesk.com or other podcasts. The developers should be working hard, but they should take time for exclusive interviews or at least designate a well versed public relations person to do it on their behalf. At the current time the most promising market is in other crypto users, as they have already taken the plunge.
The last tactic is partnerships. With partnerships come news and with news comes more users. If we partner with other companies within the crypto space we are able to both benefit from exposure to new potential users. There are many potential use cases for Steemit and there are companies within and outside of the crypto space that will see potential.
We have a tough uphill battle ahead but not an impossible one. I like to end on a motivational quote so here is one from famed animator Walt Disney
“The way to get started is to quit talking and begin doing”
-Calaber24p