Recently I wront and article which examined the link between satisfaction and retention on Steemit, and it has got me thinking about what the more ‘experienced’ members of the community can do to help Steem grow and increase user retention. User retention on Steemit has been notoriously low for some time no, with around 6% of accounts transaction on a daily basis. It seems that the reasons people leave are quite universal, such as lack of rewards, moral issues and lack of understanding (of Steem, and also understanding of crypto as a whole). Let's explore some of these and what the community can be doing to help Steem grow.

Lack of understanding

Understanding Steemit

Steem is a bit confusing for newbies who just want to start blogging - from the different currencies, to resteeming, voting power and bandwidth issues, it's a lot to take in! Along with the ‘fundamentals’, there are also many areas up for debate such as the use of bid bots and flagging.

The first thing I would recommend new users do is to read the Steem FAQ, which acts as a road map and has the information needed to get started.

I find that if I learn something new about Steem, then it's a good idea to write a post about it and share this with my followers - and the results have been positive with loads of discussion and learning going on. However, not everyone is interested in blogging about Steem and helping other users out in this way (which is fair enough!). Another great way to help educate new users is by being active in the chat rooms (steem.chat) and the various Discord servers helping out new Steemians and offering advice. On top of this is a great way to build new relationships and meet new people.

There are people such as Hive account@sykochica and Hive account@suesa who are wonderful in helping new Steemians find their feet (and were super helpful to me, so thanks!), but I feel others can also offer a helping hand, and this is what I am doing more of. Steemit isn’t like other platforms in the fact that it doesn’t have any ‘official’ help as such and relies on the community to help out new users.

I have never been much of a user of more traditional social media, but I notice new users come to Steemit and often mass follow and leave ‘generic’ comments such as ‘nice post’. I have thought long and hard about this and have tried to help people and direct them in the right direction (telling them - rather than leaving a comment such as ‘nice post’, just upvote the post, and if you want to comment then make sure it is related to the post) I have had mixed results with this - some people take it on board and are grateful but others have been quite hostile. I would be interested to hear others thoughts on this!?

Understanding crypto

Another area in which I think scares users away is their lack of understanding of the crypto market - investing in crypto (and yes by earning Steem you are investing!) is a long term investment. I see many people coming in and expecting to make some money quickly and then leave. The value of your account (in FIAT) shouldn't affect you to much (especially as you start out), as you are essentially ‘mining’ Steem.

Right now is a classic example of this - the price has taken a massive dip over the few weeks - I have seen at least 30% wiped from my accounts value (in terms of $FIAT) - and I would lie if I said this isn’t a bit hard to watch. But if you believe in the future of crypto and Steem (like me), then I believe in the long term Steem will show some massive growth - its only 2 years old and in Beta, and has huge potential!

Having at least a basic understanding of crypto and the volatility of the market will help people in sticking here through the rough times.

Lack of rewards/slow to get started

There is a lot of hype and expectation when new users come to Steemit after watching Youtube videos from Steem whales who makes it sound much easier than it is in reality to make money on Steemit, or by reading news articles making it sound easy to make a load of money. Unfortunately the majority of people fall back to earth pretty quickly when their first few posts only make a few cents/dollars. Some people ‘get it’, and realise that Steemit is a social media platform and is about being social making friends and interactions and takes time to build an audience.

Unfortunately there isn't much we can do about where and how people heard about Steem and what information they were fed and what expectations they came in with. However, we can be realistic and honest with people and let them know that it is a grind at the beginning and might take a few months to gain a following and have posts that consistently make a few dollars.

Moral issues

The morality of different activities on Steemit, such as the use of bidbots, spam/scam content, the content that makes it to trending and also the amount of bots on the platform has led people to leave the site and not return. Because Steem is essentially a ‘free market’, where there are no real rules, it is ripe for manipulation. Alot of people are against bid bots (I wont get into my argument here!), and there are new communities supporting those who don't use bots, such as using the tag #nobidbots.

My advice to people who are new here and have moral issues would be to stick to what feels right for them - if they are here to make loads of money and want their posts on trending then they will probably have to use bots, if they are against bots then simply don't use them - there are consequences of the decisions you make on here.

In general I try to stick out of the moral dramas and arguments on here and just do what works for me - at the end of the day I don't really have to justify what I am doing to anyone! Also do your research on which witnesses you vote for - some witnesses run their own bots, and are more about profit, whereas others have a much more community focus (and are the witnesses I tend to vote for). Think hard about who your witness votes go to, as they are the ones that make decisions on our behalf.

Conclusion

User retention is a massive issue here on Steem, and could affect the long term success of the platform. However, I believe that more experienced and knowledgeable Steemians can play a part in educating and helping out new users which will make them more likely to stay for the long term.

Remember - Steem is a long term investment, and short term fluctuations shouldn’t affect your overall approach and strategy!

As always I would love to hear your thoughts and opinions on this!