I am, like the most members on here, very passionate about representing steemit and the idea of a decentralized social platform to the other people in my life, those who haven't picked up on it, yet. Now when introducing something radically new, many people will often react very unreasonable, and strongly disbelieve in the idea. Even worse, some people might openly start to insult you on a personal level just for trying something new. I would like to talk to you guys about my personal experiences made while promotiong steemit on a huge forum, disclose the ways I handled the open hate, and why I think I suceeded in the end.
Background - Why did I chose this specific forum?
It's pretty straight forward actually. The forum I posted in is the forum where I feel home, as I'm an active, contributing member for almost two years by now, and the community is very thankful. I actually got rewarded with a "Veteran" tag for my continuos contributions.
I think that is a huge factor when talking about steemit, you should feel comfortable, like in your favorite place. Also, without a bit of reputation, your words will not be heard.
Additionally, the forum's niche kinda matched, it's a forum regarding making money on the internet.
First Steps
Of course I introduced steemit to my closest buddies first. It's just so much easier to talk reasonably with someone you know for a long time instead of somebody who just joined, as you can't know how he'll react to what you say. So that's exactly how I did it, and I already convinced many members to give steemit a try, before even really starting to promote publicly. By now, most of them became very good contributors on here and post articles worth a read.
However, those were only a very small part of the huge community. Im guessing I reached about 50 members - more than 199.950 left, so I had to step it up.
The Big One
When making a publicly viewable post, I instantly got some backup from my buddies, which definitively was a huge help, and I'm still very thankful for that. It turned out that I had a really really huge front of sworn enemies in front of my way. Half of them were complaining that I was promoting another social platform (remember, it all happened on a forum), while the other half tried to talk bad about steemit for everyone. On top of that, there were nice members that were genuinely interested, which also turned out to be a problem: It's not possible to explain the world of steemit in 5 minutes. If you ever introduced anybody to steemit, you know that people have so many questions, it's not possbile to cover them genereally. And then there were repeating questions regarding the same topics, over and over again. "Show us a Payment Proof!", they asked. I explained that STEEM is a cryptocurrency itself, and showed screens of my wallet. Still, many were not satisfied, they just didn't want to be convinced. That's fine per se, but some took that as a reason to start hating on me.
Standing Up against the Crowd
By now, roughly 2 weeks after my initial post, I can say that it would've been better not to get angry about it. If I would do it again, I'd try to explain everything carefully and they always refer people back to it. And if there is a hate comment I'd just answer in a calm manner and try not to get dragged into a long, exhausting conversation, because there's no way to win by reasonable arguments.
However, I did not know all that back then, so I had a really hard time. However, thanks to the support of a few very close friends, I still got trough it. And now I can proudly say that I have helped to make Steemit a better place.