Someone sent me a DM on discord linking to a post by @fullcoverbetting asking my opinion on his post with the same question in the title. It's something I've been meaning to talk about quite a bit now ever since the EIP and seeing some selfnamed influencers and how they treat the platform and/or the rewardpool.
I originally started writing an answer to this earlier but lost electricity for a second and when I came back it was cleared out from the editor, this was totally not worth the #busy vote to have to rewrite it. :P Maybe I can formulate things better in my second go, though.
Anyway @fullcoverbetting starts off with the amount of followers as that's what mainstream media usually points to when they call someone an influencer. Similar like on older social media platforms the amount of followers doesn't mean much. They can easily be gamed, as we remember here on Steem there were many accounts that used to game it by follow-trading or abusing the wild west of account creations we had prior to resource credits being a thing. Same thing happens on other social medias, there are even services that will offer you thousands of followers for a price, some of these services will even give you "active" followers that like and spam comments on your content. If there's a demand there will always be a business for it, hence clickfarms exist. If there's one statistic that would matter a bit here on Steem when it comes to followers, even though that's also very volatile depending on price of Steem and the activity that follows it, it would be value of followers which you can check here: https://steemdb.com/accounts/followers_mvest
and no, that's not just to brag cause I'm on the top10 list with @dtube being there just cause they autofollowed themselves with others authorization (:P), but the amount of SP (influence in a way) of your followers should be way more important than just the amount of them, especially after 3 years of Steem existing you'll want those who have not given up on it yet to follow you.
His next point is payout of posts, here I have to say I don't particularly agree with there being any closed circles anymore or at least not as much. There were a lot of efforts early on after the EIP to shut these off by using your downvoting mana and from what I've seen there are only a few still thickskulled users who keep attempting to game this and when it doesn't go their way they retaliate in return which just shows more about them than it does for the initial downvoters. Curation is happening a lot more now, almost to the point where it is really difficult to find underrewarded posts that deserve the rewards, although that is of course all subjective but the wisdom of the crowd is working somewhat even though only a few are using their downvoting mana I imagine the amount of attempts to abuse will go up proportionally with a higher price of Steem so hopefully those being inactive with downvoting now will step up when that time comes. They are doing the platform and currency they hold a disservice by not combating rewardpool farming, vote-trading and other close circle voting. Fear of retaliation should not be an excuse to not use your downvoting mana where you see fit and I hope in the future stake combating blatant retaliation will exist a lot more to counter this. Here one also has to be careful as a curator/influencer, though, you have to continue curating the content you are downvoting, if the user improves his content or the effort that goes behind it you have to know when to stop the downvoting even if they continue to downvote you back in retaliation or hold a grudge cause you put a stop to their low effort farming. It's not an easy task but that's what sets aside a good curator from just someone voting/downvoting. You gotta not make it personal and keep it professional with the rewardpool in mind.
To get back to his post, payouts don't mean much either as an influencer, there are still a lot of users who have a lot of authority over others stake or trail votes or autovotes they know will be there no matter the content so they post whatever 5 minute post they can think of just to get those rewards. The amount of payouts you give other deserving authors may mean a lot more and make you a successful influencer than just your own. Then again what rewards posts should have is all relative, most of the content here today may not even be worth a fraction of the rewards they get anywhere else and especially if those authors who call themselves influencers don't do Steem a favor by at least promoting it through sharing their posts on their website or other social medias. Oh well, we can only improve from here on out and the downvotes are a great tool that make sure improvement comes if used correctly.
His next point talks about the amount of SP one has. Yes, one of Steem's strengths is that you buying a lot of Steem and powering it up can quickly make you an influencer but here it also depends on what you do with it. If all you do is farm rewards for yourself/family&friends no matter the content and don't give a shit about content discovery/proof-of-brain and the sharing economy then you are treating Steem as just another proof of stake coin which won't set it apart from the rest much. There are some good examples of users powering up Steem and doing a lot of good with it though, one of the by far best examples of it I would say is what @theycallmedan is doing with his stake. He really shows what one can do with SteemPower and much more to assist this economy, build on it and at the same time abide by the EIP when curating. Once we get a few more of him picking up this cheap Steem and working towards the same goals a lot of others here with less stake have been I believe we will see a quick change in the direction Steem is taking and a lot of current dead-ends opening up through solutions they've created with some effort. Anything is possible with Steem, same can't be said for centralized giants.
Do we even have real influencers?
We do, there are many but there are also many fake ones. If I had a Steem for every past Steem influencer/ambassador who wanted to do so much but quickly/quietly left to chase other options when the rewardpool stopped rewarding them with as much Steem or its value was not as high as when they proclaimed themselves with those titles - I'd be back in the top100 SP holders.
I do think we need to be doing more as content creators and influencers. #posh initiative is a good start and I'm hoping more curators will take that incentive into consideration when curating content and I'm hoping with communities and everything being in the same place we're going to have an easier way to deal with all these initiatives and at the same time come up with new ones trying to one up the others and all working with the same goals of bringing more value to Steem instead of attempting to gain more and more from the rewardpool while there's no new users coming in or even finding out that something like Steem exists.
So to me, being an influencer is more than just writing content and getting high payouts. It's more than just curating and commenting on others posts and most importantly it's more than just calling yourself and influencer while in reality you are very shortsighted and just looking to take the next stop at the a new blockchain based social media platform being created to use your "influence" you had here as a way to get an advantage of taking rewards from that one next. These are what I call nomads that will just jump wherever there is money in question and they will never tire from it cause that's all they care about. Sooner or later most of these come forward and show their true colors, the EIP did help a lot with showing how some people behaved when the cashcow stopped coming in. The good thing is that there are also a lot of people who don't care about that, many who have continued using Steem the same way as they did when they first got here, the same way they did when they had no SP and the same way they will do no matter what happens to the price of Steem. Best part is that there are a lot of those still who don't know about Steem but with our activity we will make sure they will find out and join us.
Something funny the other day that someone mentioned to me was "wait, you can only claim 18 accounts per day with your SP? how is that going to be enough for mass adoption??" so I answered with: "yes those are free accounts though and the cost to create an account that can at least vote 10+ times per day and comment a few times even at 0 SP is only 3 Steem. There's 370mil Steem in existence and maybe 100 million of it is liquid on exchanges - do the math on how many accounts one can create with that."
Anyway, just some freewrite on what I think it means to be an influencer on Steem, I'm sure there's a lot of things in there that may not be completely correct or the way you see influencers here being or a lot of things you may not be translating the way I intended them to, but would love to hear your thoughts on it.
Thanks @the01crow for linking me the original post by @fullcoverbetting.
The term is wrong. We should stop caring about "influencers". Influencers are a stain on the Internet.
"Influencers" are paid shills who mostly struggle with disclosure about accepted subsidies to promote. They will whore themselves out to continuously land more "partners". Opportunity more often than not also supercedes morals.
"Ambassadors" are paid shills with an already existing profile. Their role as "ambassador" is usually know, and often also self-promoted because their vanity requires them to do such. Most "Ambassadors" work for only one, or very few, brands. These are often longer commitments.
"Advocates" are people who love [products] that much that they start "advocating" for them. Entirely voluntarily. Pro Bono.
So what's the "demographic" we are looking for, or should in relation to Steem?
Movers & Shakers
"Movers & Shakers" are creators who consistently (mostly) publish thoughtful, thought-provoking and/or guiding creations which has the capacity to improve the thinking of their audience or change their opinion.
Note: I used "creators" because the arts can also be critical commentary.
I like the creator role and I have a sense that "content creator" is entering into the mainstream dialogue more these days with it being more focused on individuals than production companies.
Perhaps in the early days of SoMe, influencer was a good choice as it was very obvious as a role, these days it needs to be more nuanced I guess.
If you're going down the "what defines an influencer", I think that the amount of comments received with a reply thread greater than 2 should also come in to it as it shows that people value your content and it opens a discussion around it all. Kinda how Asher (@abh12345) does his engagement leagues - I'd say that "influence" in this definition is probably more real than just buying up steem power and having influence in post payouts but it all adds to the definition of it.
I've pretty much carried on how I did when I had 15SP delegated from steemit when I set my account up to where I am now at 25k SP. The EMA community has been really burned by crypto and steem from pre HF21 (particularly the bid bot economy) and it's been tough to even talk about crypto in our Discord with platforms like musicoin, choon, dsound and others making false promises about "real rewards for musicians"...
But it's a tough one to play at the moment as a lot of musicians would say "I'm not getting paid with Spotify or Soundcloud", yet, in the same breath, expect money to fall on their lap without thinking about the actual business/marketing side of things. Having said that, you can't argue with the listener numbers - 350 million+ users on Spotify - compared to that on steem so the tactic from my point of view is to try and build up the following on Twitter from my music and slowly introduce the notion of steem in 2020.
If only Spotify embed players were a thing on Steem, seems it doesn't work on Steempeak or steemit when posting a Spotify embed player (only soundcloud, which is crap for artists, and youtube, which we have seen in recent weeks, is not helping the little guys either).
Anyway, seems I have rambled enough now, hope you had a good Christmas!
Hmm, I think spotify embed should be easy to implement, I'll pass the message on to someone who could do the code and see if they'd be up for it if there's a need for it on Steem/it.
Thanks, it's been chill and looking forward to 2020, hope you had a good one as well!
Ah thanks a lot man, hopefully the Spotify embeds would be easy enough to do, I keep getting the "iframe not supported" when I post from my WordPress blog via Steempress.
Yes it was pretty chill thanks, am off work til 2nd Jan so just going to hit the reset switch I think over the next few days!
Also already got a reply about the embed, a community dev said he'll look into it. :)
Hey there guys,
Total agree with Nick about the embedded players.
Yep, this is a great news if music artists could embed Spotify, and.. Bandcamp tracks. A big step forward to spread the word about music to music lovers. But also, a great step in tech terms for steemit.
Happy new year 2020!
All the best! :0)
Bandcamp was requested by @pfunk along with the spotify embed so it's coming soon too! :)
Hey man!
Great, great news!! Thanks for the details.
And..
Happy new year!
Merci beaucoup! :0)
Damn, that was fast! Thanks to your community dev! That will definitely make sharing/curating Spotify playlists a lot easier if they can get it to work 🙂
Nice, gonna do some gaming/streaming? ^^
I'm about to tuck in to some leftover Xmas dinner and then I'll come join your stream - CS today? Just don't flash bang your electricity supply to oblivion this time haha!
Embedding a Spotify playlists on steemit should not be difficult. Given that you already have an account with them, maybe you can try some simple snippet of code like this next:
[](https://open.spotify.com/user/1240132288/playlist/66gGvFcv4FwidTxe32Nc5f)What would result in this colorful link below. };)
The only trouble with that is that someone has to do an extra step to listen to the music with this approach (hyperlinked image). If it can be made as easy as possible to have the actual Spotify player embedded in the post like you can with Youtube and Soundcloud then it would be a lot better IMO - everyone knows Spotify and it's got a huge userbase.
But thanks for the suggestion :)
@fknmayhem might know someone
As a curator for c-squared and curangel I cam confirm that very little gets missed now. I'm generally just mopping up the ones missed by all the other curators who are more one the ball than myself. This has been my favourite thing about #newsteem and I hope it continues.
I'd say that the influencers on here are the ones who run the curation projects and the communities. They are the ones that just about everyone knows or gets to know soon after joining us here.
Mop up @travelshots. Pro-level cityscapes, rewards quite low.
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Thank you for the heads up. I'll take a look.
Thank you so much for your support! 🙏🙂
Not sure if this really answers the question of what makes an influencer. This is a tough arena to get a following. I do not think it is easy to see find quality content with only hashtags.
Being a consistent contributor of quality content surely is a good start.
I feel that there can be many kinds of "influencers" for instance take my own case. Started in June 2017, never bought a vote and worked my way up slowly with quality content. Now comes the influencing part.
Kindness and using nature as a teacher, or as a joke, has positively influenced many that visit my posts. Yes curators are scarce on my blog, but that has never deterred me from my concept of kindness.
This world is a tough place and many follow only rewards. Many of us also face tough issues in our own lives and just by bringing a smile to a troubled soul is more that enough influencing for me.
Just my own 2 cents worth here!
Blessings!
Your right there, I try and find them all the time (when I have the time) and if it's decent, one of the curation groups jumps on it.
I have seen a few new accounts pop in in the last few weeks, it's promising that they are no longer getting ignored.
However, many are still the same old shit posters without long content and it sticks out a mile. They are so easy to spot.
Well @SlobberChops, thanks for acknowledging me as creating good content valuable for the Steem blockchain. Your upvotes don't go unnoticed.
I keep resteeming photography posts that I deem underrewarded. Stay tuned.
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I recently joined steemit since December start and I find this social chain an excellent place for the geniune content creators. I try much to make my content creative attractive and appealing for everyone although I am very tiny right now but slow and steady win the race. I create travel vlogs and food hangout which we daily do in any restaurants. I share all my trip and thought or daily activity in the steem alongwith share my memories too. I have good collection of coin but I will start little later this series. The main objective of mine to create post creative and meaningful. I have little steem power but hopefully whales seeing my content and it's enough for me that I am being noticing by some good fellows on steem. The future of steem is bright and we all will work to put great effort for the success of steemit platform.
Nice article and totally taking into consideration what it means to be a part of community. Influencers has been a abused word by pop culture social media and i think we need to coin a new word as many alphas make up a hive here.
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Great post, way better than mine with lots of valid points!
Maybe the reply I did get from @abitcoinskeptic maybe comes close to it:
Happy holidays!
Cheers,
Peter
Yeah that would be for someone who creates really great content, unfortunately not a lot of those here on Steem where you really are looking forward to their next posts. There are some though and some that are constantly improving their writing no matter the payouts.
I bet im one of those you cant wait for to post. haha.
Who are you? New to Steem? Welcome, I suggest you start with an #introduceyourself post!
🤣 🤣 🤣
The banter is strong here haha!
Happy Holidays as well! :)
Having a decent stake can help to mitigate fear of revenge downvoting. There’s little that the retaliators can do about your curation earnings.
When you say jump, we say how high...that or quality engagement and interaction.
But the ultimate is starting and setting trends. How many unique hashtags did you get and how often were they used?
Unbelievable
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@tipu curate
I still think that your own amount of SP is quite important to get attraction... People tend to upvote bigger accounts easier, that’s just a fact... But perseverance is key here on Steem! !trdo
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What's influencer? I still don't understand about that.
I have always been interested in these debates and of course others regarding the platform, because I personally recognize that there are users whose skills and abilities, which also occupy different roles in the community, is not the same opinion of a wintess, whatever the position at the top, or someone who manages a project is large or small, or users who are part of that team, or dapps developers, are different views and that is striking perspective, the publication of @fullcoverbetting , was an opportunity to read those opinions, they sent me answers directly in the discord, where they did not consider themselves to influence even when their content or the way they have faced certain situations is the quality of a community leader, others that do not consider themselves to influence because they do not see many comments in their posts, but they are followed silently, at least by me and I know that it is a mistake I should comment more post, the words of @acidyo in his publication have been accurate.
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