Improving content quality is my mission.
This mission is shared by many other Steemians such as @lukebrn, @gmuxx, and @aggroed. Lukebrn started a project to help grow and develop bloggers, Gmuxx founded @thewritersblock to create amazing authors, and Aggroed kicked off the @minnowsupport project. Many other users are doing fantastic work in their country to promote and grow Steem.
As a content creator of 15 years, I wanted to give back to the Steem community in a more significant, more direct way than doing a post twice a week about creating better blogs. My experience is not only in blogging, but also video creation, live streaming, and poetry. I love to teach people the tricks, tools, and methods behind what makes a great post.
About The Creators' Guild
So I founded the Creators' Guild, a group to encourage, support and increase the creation of quality content for all Steemians. It does not matter how long ago you began to blog or if Steem is your first attempt at the craft. We need people of all levels to join and help each other grow. Everyone has something they can learn from everyone else.
Currently, we have coaches, proofreaders, and moderators. The moderators act as the backbone to keep the chat friendly and spam free. Proofreaders' primary job is to proofread when needed, but also have the same permissions as moderators. For the coaches, the position is to be the teacher in a specific genre. We have blogging coaches, video coaches, music coaches, and live streaming coaches. These ranks also have the same ability as the moderators.
If you have a desire to teach a genre or be a proofreader, please let me know so we can chat about your experience and expertise. If not, that is fine too. We have a rank of active members, the main benefit of this level is to give those active a place to share their posts that will not get drowned out. There is a channel in the server for anyone to share a post regardless of rank.
Our goal as we grow is to help more people and improve the overall quality of the content on tho Steem blockchain. The Steem platform is never going to be 100% spam free due to new users coming in and not understanding what it means to be a content creator. However, for anyone looking to give back or improve their content this group is here to be the catalyst.
Experience
Discord
The Creators' Guild is not my first Discord group, and I have participated in many over the last two years since creating an account. At the start of that two years, I started up a group for the people who watched my live streams on Twitch and wanted further interaction. This group still exists today even though I no longer live stream on a regular basis.
Currently, I moderate for @thewritersblock and own or lead four other groups and have no plans to drop them. Most of the teams I run are not Steem focused, and using them as the base seemed to be a confusing measure. I could have the group that I started for my live streams and have an impressive member count as the start, but I chose to narrow it down.
Blogging
As I said above, I started my blog hobby about 15 years ago. I made every mistake in the book because back then no one knew what worked and what didn't. The number of blogs I started over that time frame is more than I can count. Every topic from an online "diary" about my day, to technology, to politics, to my faith. I left no interest of mine unturned.
It is through this experience that I am confident in my approach to building a great blog on the Steem platform. While it is not 100% the same as self-hosting or using something like WordPress.com, many of the rules still apply. Things like forming a niche or two, setting a schedule, and networking.
Why I Chose Community Over Development As A Witness
As many of you may know, the majority of the top twenty witnesses are developers for the Steem blockchain. They create amazing tools that we all use daily, and I am forever grateful for them. The only feature I have not found is a graph of my followers from the start of my Steem journey. The closest I have seen is Steem Followers by @shaunmza, but this cuts off at the beginning of 2018.
Even though I have the know how to program and it's been a hobby of mine since sophomore year of high school, I don't want that to be my focus. Steem has much more potential compared to traditional creation sites and even other blockchains. While we need innovation on the blockchain such as @dtube, we also need to think about our overall quality.
If we raise the base level quality of the content produced, everyone wins. The creators' win, the devs' win, and the investors' win. Look at Medium.com for example; many well-known writers and bloggers use that platform, and it is known to have quality content. Whether it is quality articles like Medium, or videos like YouTube, we need to strive for on the Steem Blockchain.
We can have all the tools in the world to show us stats about our content, but if the overall content on the Steem blockchain is sub-par, none of these tools matter. Steem is the blockchain of the future, and we all know that, but the majority of people have never even heard of this platform. It needs to be our goal, and I have made it mine, to be the best blogger we can be. Create the best content we can to show up in search results or pull in readers from Twitter, Facebook, or Google+.
Join Us
Join us over at the Creators' Guild Discord group! As I mentioned before, we are here to encourage, support and increase the creation of quality content. All are welcome to join and help others where they feel competent. If you have any questions, please ask them it the comment section below or send a direct message to jrswab#3134 on Discord.
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or my witness please feel free to message jrswab#3134 on Discord.
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Great post @jrswab I have always known you to be a hell of a good content creator. All the best in making the creators guide a positive group on discord.
Thanks for the kind words <3
Hi @jrswab
A great initiative!
I agree with your reasoning, the future of Steemit and the world as a whole depends on the quality of the content, and the quality depends on the personal development of the steemians. I'm sure that your work will bring a lot of beauty and joy to the world!
Resteem and following!
Thank you so much! Feel free to stop by our Discord group and say hello :D
My suggestion : To help everybody to write high-quality posts, we need to improve the editor.
Integrate or create something like grammarly for grammar & plagiarism. Besides that, a tool like yoast to improve readability is also great, though it is an SEO tool.
Also, if Steemians could add extensions as per their requirements, it would be awesome and developers could develop extensions for the editor.
These are all great tool suggestions! My goal with this group is to teach the fundamentals and in that process share tools that help speed up the creation process.
Great initiative! Anything that raises the quality of content on steemit is a good thing (or conversely, removes the junk). I say hi on your discord server and see what's up!
Love to hear that! We could use your mod experience there for sure.
Sounds great, similar to the original purpose of guilds centuries back, to protect their work.
Yes! Let's help each other as guild members. :D
interesting articles. your experience as a blogger for 15 years, very useful in this platform. I hope to contribute with you on this platform, I'm also a blogger, but not as experienced as you are. I hope I can learn from you friend, and also work in groub Creators' Guild
It would be great to learn from each other! Feel free to contact me on Discord anytime!
cool post bro, i like about what you do in helping the beginner steemian
That's what it is all about. The more people I can help the better off all of Steem will be.
I have also been so but alas I do not have the strength to continue to support them one of the ways they are excited that is by getting upvote though small
Do you guys have any Open positions for anything? I have a lot of spare time to get involved in something socially enriching.
Yes! Shoot me a message on Discord and we can chat about you areas of expertise/comfort.
I gave you a witness vote and have joined discord.
I am a long time content creator, starting at a website called Epinions in 1999. I'm not an awesome content creator, but I am consistent. Glad to offer advice, and humble enough to receive it.
Great to meet you and thank you for the witness vote, it bumped me up a level :D
We can chat soon about how you feel you can best contribute to the group.
I think it's always the right way to fix things because the saying goes the way it can be and where there is a will there is a way
Cheers for the mention @jrswab. You do some excellent work for Steemit, and I think that quality content is extremely important!
Glad to see you using your experience to improve the platform, and best of luck with all of it.
Great idea! My posts improve all the time, in my opinion, but it would be great to have feedback from others on what they look for in a post and what they stay away from. I am a member of the writers block and find it very valuable in developing my writing. I confess I don't join the discord channel as often as I could. I am involved getting my projects in the community ( #steemitstar and #ukiahhaiku ) recognized. Learning how to format posts more interestingly would help. I'm 100% in agreement with this post and will be looking into the discord channel to see what it's all about. Thanks for your efforts in making Steemit better!
Thanks for the well thought out comment and I look forward to getting to know you more!
Vote me please
Awesome! You'll definitely be seeing me in the proofreading room. :)
We need all the proofreaders we can get!
This is a fantastic initiative and I am honored to be part of the group. I am a huge believer in learning from others victories and mistakes. I look forward to working with you to build better content and ultimately increase the value of our Steemit blogging. Thank you my friend!
Glad I met you mate. You make some really cool work here on steem. Please let me know if you ever need anything.
great project, greetings
Thanks sir!
Interesting information here, hope to know more and more about this "new" world. Thanks for sharing.
Thanks for reading!
Interesting project. Is that coat of arms from your family or did you choose it for another reason?
I just chose it to go along with the guild theme :D
It would be interesting to find out what it was, it definitely has a meaning.
It turns out that half of it is the cost of arms of Wałbrzych County in the south of Poland, everything except the red tongue.
I couldn't find where the whole coat is used or where it's from.
Oh interesting. I happened to look on pixabay for a coat of arms that I could use royaly free and loved the one I found.
I think that's a really good approach. I agree, without a good community focused on producing quality content and a quality atmosphere for creativity to flourish, no amount of tech and utilities will make STEEM and Steemit grow.
images that are meaningful but difficult to interpret.
Vote me guy please
Very good, please vote me master....