What Does It Really Take to Onboard People to Steem?

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the main issue with onboarding people to Steem.png

Last night, I was helping someone with delegating STEEM POWER. I’m not sure how long he has been blogging on Steem, but it has been a relatively long period of time. Steem is complex and there are many mechanisms that are far from intuitive.

If delegating SP can be very counterintuitive to even an existing user. How do you think it feels to someone who is new to the blockchain?

This mechanism of delegating SP can be broadened to nearly all Steem-based activities. The learning curve here on Steem is incredibly steep and this is one of the fundamental reasons why this blockchain has such a tough time gaining momentum in the way of onboarding new users and content creators.

When I was on Pennsif’s show earlier this week, a few people asked what SteemLeo is planning to do to market Steem to the outside world. I have a lot of ideas and we talked a bit about them, but I didn’t have much time to go into the nitty gritty details of what I am doing.

We talked about SteemLeo content syndication and many were excited by the idea. In short, content syndication is curating financial authors from outside of Steem, posting their content to SteemLeo and creating an escrow account in their name which receives beneficiary rewards from the posts. We’ve already onboarded one author who has over 32,000 LinkedIn followers using this Syndication strategy. I’m working on a page right now that will explain syndication in more detail, but if you want to see it in action just check out the @leo.syndication account.

Content Syndication is a fantastic strategy and I truly believe that it will be a pillar in SteemLeo’s overall marketing plans to bring in new users. As we’ve seen, this can be an incredibly effective way of onboarding massive content creators to Steem. While many will focus on getting new individual users and readers to Steem, I think focusing on the authors is more important. They already have a motivated audience to bring with them.

This brings me to another fundamental issue on the Steem blockchain: documentation.

If you do a lot of google searches, there is plenty of content out there about the Steem blockchain. There are a lot of resources explaining various things such as the previously mentioned delegation mechanism.

The problem is that you actually need to know what you’re searching for and the content is scattered all over the place. There isn’t a one-stop shop to read, watch or otherwise consume documentation that will explain Steem to a new or existing user.

Some may know this, but I assume that most don’t — before SteemLeo, I was working on a website project that I called Steem Dashboard. My idea was to essentially create this one-stop destination of documentation for Steem. A place where new users can easily learn about Steem and all the various things they can use it for.

When tribes were announced, I realized that my focus should switch to building a tribe and then integrate Steem Dashboard into the tribe. The problem is that you can’t just launch a project and hope people will come to it. Oftentimes, the hard part is actually getting the attention and platform to make the project successful.

Bridging Steem Dashboard to SteemLeo

So now you see another of my points of focus. While I often feel scatter brained with all the crazy irons I have in the fire, I know that documentation is still something that needs to be created.

As I have worked with new users in trying to get them onto SteemLeo and using it regularly, I am finding so many holes in the ship of Steem. There are so many confusing twists and turns and mechanisms with little-to-no explanation attached. This is not optional, this is something that needs to be created.

The great thing is that this can be done simultaneously with the other onboarding strategies that we have in place. Twitter marketing is ramping up (steemleo is our username on twitter), the syndication strategy is expanding, native traffic from google is growing and I am even convincing people IRL to sign up to SteemLeo.

As these outward facing strategies continue to grow, we can work internally on this massive database of documentation for all things related to SteemLeo and the Steem blockchain. We’re talking thousands upon thousands of hours worth of hard work, research and organization.

This is why nobody has done anything remotely close to what I have in mind. It’s honestly overwhelming every time I even think about what needs to be done to make this a reality. maybe that’s why I’m sitting here ranting about it 🤷🏼‍♀️

Regardless of the magnitude of this undertaking, I believe that it needs to be done and the more I help people use Steem (existing users and new users alike) the more I believe in the overall need for it.

It’s hard to translate this idea from my head to paper, but that’s why I sat down and gave it a shot. Hopefully this idea makes some sort of sense to you. It will be a lot more tangible when you can see these docs in the process of being built out and expanded.



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To listen to the audio version of this article click on the play image.

Brought to you by @tts. If you find it useful please consider upvoting this reply.

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(Edited)

This sounds similar to what we are going through at work. I might get some crazy idea, like say, “What if we built up a chain from Cosmos SDK or Polkadot Substrate?” And then the devs might come back to me and say, “We think that’s kinda neat, but how do we deal with all the bugs we find?”

Most of the time it is not bugs they are talking about but just a lack of documentation that explains just how powerful these tools are and what exactly you can and should be doing with them. I recently went to a Polkadot hackmeet where they were explained how to use Substrate to spin up your own basic chain in 30 minutes. They told me that they’d had this capability for months! In fact, they built the Polkadot chain itself using Substrate. But it took them almost a year to get the documentation just right so that it could be useful to non-Parity folk. And that’s just for the English version of the docs. Now they gotta build those resources in Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Spanish, etc.

These are no doubt daunting tasks, but they have to be done in order to maximize the utility out of these complex software tools that are being built.

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That is a really great example of the broader issue in cryptocurrency. There are a lack of simple to understand docs for just about everything you can imagine. Ranging from how to store your private keys to how to build a blockchain from the ground up. The industry is still new, but I often wonder if anyone is actually spending a significant amount of time and resources on building out authoritative docs for the layperson. I hope to do my part, at least for the Steem blockchain.

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I just want a referral program that adds me as fixed beneficiary (1%) to a new sign up. Would be incentive enough to hard plug it to everyone

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I love that idea. I've heard it a few times now and have brainstormed a few ways of doing that. I'm not entirely sure how it would be done at this point. My thoughts are that it could be done at the condenser-interface level.

For example, Steempeak allows you to create a posting template with beneficiaries pre-filled in. I wonder if we can do something similar, but somehow automate it based on the referring account. It's a tough task, but maybe we can get something installed one day. I'll talk to my dev and see if it's a possible integration for SteemLeo.

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I believe Steempress have just released some form of referral program - although that is primarily targeted at Wordpress users.

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One factor of this project is things change so fast that you need to always update the database.

Posted using Partiko Android

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I've always loved the idea of syndication keep up the good work over at SteemLeo it is the gold standard for tribes.

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Totally agree, can't put the buggy in front of the horse and expect to get from destination A to destination B.

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Hi, @khaleelkazi!

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I totally agree that there is a steep learning curve for Steem and we really have to dumb things down by a lot to bring people in. The dashboard idea is great and I will love to see it.

Will be nice to have the dashboard separated into beginners, intermediate and advanced users. Basic users have to know things like how to manage their keys, post and vote. Posting and voting requires RC, hence that should be briefly described as well.

Intermediate users probably will start to be able to appreciate the concept of STEEM and SP, delegations, transactions, SE tokens and tribes. Advanced users will probably want to know how the blockchain really work, what's DPoS, witnesses and stuff like that.

The idea is to get users running as soon as they have their accounts. I am personally driving an initiative called #raiseto50. Details here. The idea is to delegate new users up to 50SP so that they can hit the road running without much friction. The delegator, at the same time, will serve as a mentor to the new Steemian forging new and stronger relationships

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Hi, @khaleelkazi
I agree with you whole heartily about this point; Steem is very complicated and there are several aspects to it that seasoned Steemians have never done and would be unsure how to find out. I frequently wrote posts I called Steemit Tools, which were reviews of the different aspects of the Steemit platform, like tips and tricks, plus I reviewed some useful dApps you could use on Steemit and why. I was happy to receive thank you comments from people who were new to Steemit. But what surprised me was I always got comments from people who had been here a couple years and were already successful.

Steemit is such a diverse ecosystem that you can write about its tools and different functions for a year non-stop. I once devoted the greater part of my blogging efforts to this area and continue to find little things to write about even now, 1.5 years into my Steem journey. I think a Steemdash board is a great idea. If you build it, they will come!

I also think onboarding authors is a great strategy. I have been trying to onboard YouTube Stars, but it’s hard to explain Steem, blockchain and how their fans will get on boarded to make this worthwhile. I am sure you know the drill. And I see you have already navigated that barrier, so congratulations!

✍🏼 @shortsegments

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Do you know about Steem Savvy?
https://steemsavvy.com/

It’s the same kind of idea, a tutorial for newbies to get the basics of Steem.

I’m trying to think of easy, simple ways of onboarding people via naturalmedicine.io also.... the reality is it’s not that simple. Looking forward to seeing some of your ideas! Following with great interest.

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Thanks for the read. Not everyone who joins longer is active too. Many been away for months same with me. If you do not invest time in reading and reading and reading, are not willing to join contests and comment to engage with others you will never have the contacts who help you grow. I delegate SP and invest a lit of SBI in people plus write all kind of tips and hist two contest (paying for joining) but people generally speaking are lazy, feel insulted if you give them tips or leave from one day to another. I no longer invest SBI in steemians who are not active and the SP I take back if they do not post.

giftgiver.me is still there if you are a newbie and low on SBI, @fitinfun writes tips, there is steem terminal and @steem-aide and you can always freewrite with @mariannewest to improve your skills.
It did help me and the community is supportive.

I agree Steemit (Steem) is not an easy platform to join,many rules and even more exceptions why you cannot post, comment and will not earn and most does not make sense to a newbie.

I wish you a great Saturday.

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I do not know where you friend was trying to delegate from @khaleelkazi, but it is simple on steempeak.

I agree with all of your points. I have been writing minnow tips here for over two years and the hurdles are immense. I have been blogging my natural weight loss message for over 8 years on many platforms. STEEM is the most complicated by far.

As much as I would like to see more people here, until we can help those that already stagger in the door, it's a waste to get more in to kill.

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Content syndication sounds like an awesome idea man...really cant wait to see that in full effect! Kind of makes it a no-brainer if you're a content creator on any platform...

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Thank you for coming on my TRIBE.talk show last week Khaleel. It was great learning more about SteemLeo. I hope you can come on again in a few weeks to give an update on progress.

Steem definitely has a steep learning curve. Good documentation is definitely necessary but I have always thought some form of formal mentoring or buddy scheme would be most useful as well.

Maybe you could try something like that on SteemLeo...

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