What's the number one thing Steem could do to make it's most popular Dapp, Steemit, really go mainstream?
Become more user friendly.
The first rule of marketing is
Know Your Audience
The second rule of marketing is
Know Your Audience
For Steemit to go mainstream - and make no mistake, it isn't mainstream now - it needs to start playing to the conventional internet audience. The way to get more members into the community who help the community grow while also helping to add to the Steem token pot isn't to gamify the system of signups, it's to offer something of value. And to make it easy to GET value from the Steemit Dapp.
Sure contests and reward systems will get new users, but Steemit needs ACTIVE users who stick around and engage and add their own value to the ecosystem. I love stats, and make it a point to visit Penguin Pablo's posts that list some relevant numbers about Steemit like number of new users, number of posts, power ups and downs and more. Check out his latest here:
https://steemit.com/steemit/@penguinpablo/daily-steem-stats-report-tuesday-february-19-2019
So with over one million users, there's about 12,000 posts a day. And an average of 2-3 comments per post, many of those bot generated. Compared to the conventional net, not too much engagement going on there. Not too much activity when compared to Medium, Quora, Reddit, Blogger, WordPress and all the other posting platforms on the conventional net.
What can we do to change that?
Let's look at both who is currently on Steemit and those we want to attract.
WHO is currently on Steem?
Demographically - mostly younger people for whom English is not the native language. Some people over 40, but the bulk of current Steemians are under that age group.
Interests - diverse! Photography, budding and established story writers, gamers, crafters, artists, techies, crypto traders, homesteaders - basically you name it - there's some interest in it.
WHERE do they come from?
Short answer - all over the world. From every culture, background, and walk of life imaginable. Some are active in traditional social and internet properties, for some this is their first foray into the interconnected society.
WHAT are they doing on Steemit?
Writing, blogging, live streaming, videos, participating in community groups made up of like minded individuals, and
looking for a way to make some money for themselves or charities and groups they support.
WHY do they come here?
To find a platform and a community that shares and supports their needs and ideas. And to make some money for and from those ideas.
On the conventional net side, every who, what, why and where is the same except the demographics are broader with a larger age group. So why aren't they flocking to Steem? Is it because they don't know about it? Partly, but with the speed that things on the net travel, that's probably not the number one reason.
The number one reason is usability. We've all become used to the quirks and hoops we have to jump through to make things happen here, and don't even really think about it much anymore. But pretend for a moment that you've come from Medium or WordPress. And you want to do one of two things - reach a new audience with things you write on "the other side" or just blog and make new friends and get paid for it.
Signing up is easy. Then you find you can't comment because you don't have enough tokens. So you need to buy more. Well that can be an exercise in frustation! You have to sign up for some sort of trading platform - many don't operate in every country so that can be a bit of a pain. The signup and verification process varies from one place to another. There's no easy 1-2-3 help doc in the dropdown from the Steem menu, and many of the articles written about that process here on Steem are pretty old and somewhat outdated.
But if you don't throw your hands up in disgust and walk away, you finally make your way through the signup and verification process and all of hoops the outside exchange puts you through and you can buy Steem and carry on with what you intended to do.
But wait, what? You don't have the little layout screen we've all come to know and love from Office and WordPress and Medium and every other document writing program out there. No cute little buttons that automatically assign a tag or make the selected text bold, or turn something into a numbered list. You have to use markup? What the heck is markup???? Soooo another chunk of time as the poor befuddled new user checks out markup.
But, but, but how the heck do I center an image? Or make the text flow around it to the left? Or embed a video? In WP that's easy! Just hit the right button. Maybe check a few options. Boom, it's done. You're telling me I have to use HTML AND Markup to do that????
Our poor confused new user from the "other side" FINALLY gets that post done, works their way through the tagging system and punches the Post button. But then the bots start hitting them in comments. Who are these people wanting me to give them money for their vote????? Where are the real people? How do I become part of a real community?
Ohhhh, I need to be on Discord. Wait - all the action is on Discord? WTF is Discord?????? I don't have a list of communities to join, someone has to invite me? How do I get an invite? OK, got one, now how do I use this damned program anyway? And rooms, which one should I post in? Where do I go? What do I do? HELP
So not only is Steemit different from what they are used to and what most of the rest of the world uses to post blogs and articles, the help is pretty unavailable and not contextual. It's not easy to use, and big chunks of the process and experience aren't even on Steem. The user has a very unfriendly, unsatisfying experience and they probably won't be telling the rest of their friends and cohorts how wonderful Steem is.
And heaven help them if they post an article or blog they've made somewhere else and run into Cheetah or Steemcleaners or something similar. I applaud these efforts to keep spam and content theft and plagiarism at a minimum - as a writer, author and artist I'm sick and tired of seeing my work stolen and posted under someone else's name. That really annoys me. But the poor new user doesn't know about them and can easily get caught up by them when they post their OWN work from somewhere else.
Why can't we have a simple signup sheet where originals can be posted with the Steemit user name and the original name if different? Or maybe it exists but it's not common knowledge because I'm not in the right Discord group. Or haven't found the right article about it.
Bottom line - if you want users to actually use what you've created you MUST MAKE IT EASY for them to do so. From working closely with programmers and devs for over 30 years I have learned one thing. Never ever ever have them write the UI or the help files. I love devs and programmers, and I respect many of them, but what is simple to them is arcane to most users. I actually used to list "dev interpretator" on my resume. It really is a skill to take what a user asks, put it into a way the dev understands and then feed that answer back to the user so THEY understand. Neither side really "gets" the other most of the time, so help screens, UI's and anything the user touches can become an obstacle rather than a usable interface with easily understood help files.
Remember too, many users don't like to read lengthy help files. Keep them short, sweet, and to the point! A page of text will soon have their eyes glazing over and running back to the safety and warmth of the programs and platforms they know and love on the "other side".
So the number one thing Steem can do to help Steemit go mainstream and reach its full potential for both individuals and small business which we need to survive and grow is to make things USER FRIENDLY. Oh and open a store that's a part of the interface - a button or link right up there next to Trending, New, Hot and Promoted. One that actually works well, and takes Steem and Euro and USD and PayPal. Do that and you'd have every one of the bazillions of disgruntled merchants on Amazon knocking on your door. (And I'd be first in line with a few thousand fellow authors, artists and crafters behind me!) But that's a topic for another day.
Kicking off Monday I'll be tossing out some tutorials starting with the dreaded three letter word SEO. I promise it will be painless and it will be easy. From there we'll move on to videos, images, writing and more. Yes Virigina, there is a Santa Claus, and producing good videos using solid SEO that gets results is something you can do!
All images courtesy of Pixabay