Hi, my fellow Steemians. Here is something that i am missing on Steemit, that is imho very very important for any content creator. Long Tail - let me explain what that is and why i think we need it.
Short Tail
The Graph below shows you what Short tail look like. The idea of Short Tail is that you do something that gives you a large benefit over a short time. In the case of Steemit, most posts, even if they are very popular are only shown for a short time. After that you can only find them if you actively search for them, go to the blog of that creator or see it mentioned somewhere. So, basically, your efforts as a creator are dead in the water within of days - but for must of us within of minutes or seconds. After that, there is not much of a way to earn anything with it. And that is a huge problem for quality content. It is indeed a huge problem for most creators here, because most will see single pennies for even the best effort they put into their content. (post a "that's me" in the comments, if you feel like that applies to you) This problem is further increased by the curator timer that only gives you any creator benefits in the first 30 minutes - we don't need to change that, but there should be a Long Tail option to get rewarded by our fellow steemians too. curation doesn't end after 30 minutes. Some content needs time to gain appreciation.
Long Tail
Now, let's look at Long Tail - the concept where quality content can hold it's value and increase it over time. So you are not just rewarded by the people how happen to be online within the 30 minutes after posting, but by all the people who enjoy your content. And most importantly everyone can still see it, find it, appreciate it - because it is not hidden somewhere i the vast and growing steemit universe. You still have the initial short tail gains, but now you also have long tail gains. This is beneficial for a lot of reasons.
Benefits:
- it encourages creators to make better content and spend more time on their content
- it enables steemians to reward you long after you created the content
- it help good content to stay visible
- it helps slow content to grow attention over time
- it enables niche content to gain traction over time
- it gives content with lasting value (like tutorials) the chance to be accessed again and again for years
- it rewards people who create content that has lasting value in any area
- it helps your followers to support you, when they find out about you and just now start to enjoy all your old content
- and many more reasons
How to implement Long Tail
There are many ways to implement Long Tail, but one of the easiest is to suggest similar older content on the page where you consume the content. You know this from youtube, where this is displayed in the sidebar. I created videos for youtube and one of it has 169,719 views - not in one day, but over years. And i have earned for that video over these years. Just cents at a time, but ultimately several hundred dollars. Of course Youtube does pay for Ad Views, not for votes. But the principle is the same: If people could see your content even years later and if they could support you financially even years later, it would not matter if you make much of an impact in the first 30 minutes or not.
Long Tail would help all creators and reward them for the real value of their content, even if that value for the community only came over time. And of course these would benefit the creators and the readers/viewers/listeners
A second function that i would love to see on steemit is a list of other posts by that same person. this could be included at the end of every post as a "footer" and automatically list to 3-5 posts form that person as text links (ideally with a choice to show the best, the latest or the post regarding a certain keyword - which would be especially useful for building different content serieses). You can post links to your other content now in any post - but it doesn't update over time.
What do you think? Post it in the comments
And as always: LOVE YOU! Thank you for reading and see you on the Flipside.
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