So I've been considering for awhile what I can do about the issue of retention.
You've surely seen posts about the poor retention rate on Steem. People come, set up an account, and then never come back. They become dead fish. If you want to look at the research, pay a visit to @paulag's blog where you will find all sorts of back up data for the retention issue.
So what can I do? How can I convince people to stick around?
Welcome to my new Retention initiative, My daily Pick 5.
The basic idea is that I will spend some time each day going through the introduceyourself tag and looking for genuine introduction posts. I know there are other Steemians who curate the introduction tag. I'm not sure how they do it, if they just go through and give some upvotes, but for my purposes, I am upvoting, commenting and following. The goal is to pick five brand new Steemians each day. People who put together a compelling introduction post. People who show promise to be contributors to the platform.
Today I picked 6, tomorrow I may choose 4. It won't be consistent. And not everyone I follow will remain on my list. If they don't continue to put together original content, or fall prey to the dark side of spam posting, they will fall off my following list.
Ultimately, if I can help one of the five a day to have a positive attitude toward Steem, then I will feel like I have done some good. 35 people a week is WAY more than I add to follow currently, so if some of them stick, and grow to be valued contributors, that helps me too! Growing the Steem community grows the value of Steem!
Now this is not entirely altruistic. Most of the things I do have some sort of room for personal gain. As a Curie Curator, I am constantly looking for exceptional content from new Steemians. If I already follow a bunch of people from their introduction posts, I may just find curieable content in my feed. That benefits me quite a bit!
Still. Hopefully it helps the community more than it helps me. Because new, engaged, and invested Steemians are what we need to get Steem moving in the right direction.
Join Me!
There are plenty of people joining the platform every day for more than one person to find five people to follow. So I invite everyone reading this to invest some time in the introduceyourself tag, find someone that resonates with you. You don't have to commit to five, you don't have to commit to every day. But find someone every now and then who speaks to you, and follow them. You may have a brand new friend in the making!
Gosh @mikepm74 what would I do without you :) your post give me energy to try and not give up. I will resteem your posts because I find them extremely valuable and educational. I wanted to tell you that. I'm a bit scared that my comment may sound as some tacky flattery, however! The more I read you, the better my actions here on Steemit are. And after reading your Engagement Post yesterday I visited introduceyourself section, looked for the posts that will catch my attention, and write to the newcomers :) I think I will start to add a recommendation to visit your blog. I also suggest them to start with reading FAQ. The truth is, I was following your steps, as you were the first person to welcome and curate me on Steemit. It was a huge deal for me! :)
I've been meaning to come back to this comment all day and just never had time. Thank you for the kind words. Flattery will get you everywhere. Hahaha
You know, I didn't initially come to Steem to teach people about Steem, I didn't come to curate. I came to learn about crypto currency and write some fiction. But the more I got into the platform, the more it's well being mattered to me.
I'm glad you have found my stuff useful, that is what it is for! Steem is like a rough neighborhood with little cliques and bad areas, you gotta weed your way through until you find where you fit.
It takes awhile to catch your bearings, but with hard work and determination, you will do it! You already have the right mindset, and your art is really good!
On a personal note for you, one of the things that curators look for in the art category is new pieces along with some process photos. The process photos, or a video if you wanna go that far, are proof that the work belongs to you and you didn't just grab some picture off the internet and share it as your own. Unfortunately, that happens every day.
By all means share your older work, but also bring new things to Steem along with some process proof, then curators can really give you a decent boost.
That's a very good idea.
Even if everyone did only one per day, that would make a difference.
I will go to the introduceyourself tag now. Thank you!
Thank you connect! I hope the idea spurs other people to take a look at the tag as well.
Or better yet. I think I might try a Daily Digest of 5 new Steemians. I'll do the curating and find five people to highlight, then all you have to do is follow me and pick one or two of the people I post about and check them out!
Will give that a go for the next few days and see how it works.
Hm, that's also a good idea. And again, it's actually a great idea for anyone to copy, when they run out of ideas for original articles... Win:win!
I understand what you are saying. I really do.
But I find that people lose encouragement for Steemit SO quickly.
It's like if they haven't hit $100 in the first month, they become discouraged.
And somehow I think it's better than people stick around for the sense of tribeism we have here and not just for the financial gains.
Don't get me wrong, I think this is a GREAT iniative and I hope it works.
I guess I am using the comment space as a little platform to give my thoughts to this :)
And you are more than welcome to give your thoughts in any of my comment spaces ashley. It is an open format. Free use.
I know that most people will drop off, but perhaps a little encouragement will keep them here one more day, and then one more after that.
And with my place as a Curie Curator, if I find really exceptional people, they will get that $100 post in the first month. Or at least somewhat close to it with an approved Curie upvote.
If I follow 5 people a day, 35 people a week... The hope is that 3-5 of those people actually end up sticking it out and becoming regulars on the platform. Some would have stayed of their own accord. But if I am following them and giving little nudges here and there, maybe I can "save a steemian" who otherwise was going to leave.
I dunno. I just feel like I gotta try something, ya know?
YES!
For sure :)
And I commend you for doing your best. :)
On another note, wanna be featured on #HumansOfSteemit?
It's my brainbaba to build the community op Steemit!
hehe
Would you believe every time I have 'free' time I also go to the intro tag with the same aim as you have mentioned above. all good intentions but time tends to get in my way. I wish I had the curation skills you have. Keep up the good work as we need more people like you doing this
I dunno how much skill I have paula. LOL I got too many rejections last week and had to sit out the week for Curie. That's kind of what inspired this... I found myself with some extra time on my hands.
And yes, I fully believe that you are in the itro tags! You are a good Steemian looking out for the good of the platform, so this doesn't surprise me a bit!
I think this is a pretty genuine and helpful idea. I know I've been pretty active since I joined a day ago and frequently browse the #introduceyourself tag since I've signed up. I had a rather semi casual introduction with not a whole lot of interaction from the community.
For some that lack of interaction may raise red flags for new comers and for others they might not care. I'd rather see a very active #introduceyourself tag then any of the other tags on here simply for the retention rate and to be welcoming.
Kudos where they are due @mikepm74
The problem isn't an inactive introduceyourself tag, the problem is an abused tag. How many of those posts you saw were from people with a reputation of 45 or higher? Some people are using the introduceyourself tag just to reap little rewards from the bots that answer every post in that tag. Some people just put up crap posts.
I enjoyed your casual introduction, which is why you were one of my Pick 5 for yesterday!
Frankly, not a lot of good interaction happens in the introduction posts. Great Post, Welcome... these sort of responses are all you can expect really. Once you get out and look at tags like #discussion, that's where you will find real commenting and back and forth exchanges going on.
Yea I have noticed that a lot of the users with a higher reputation use the tag for things like cryptocurrencies.
I'd imagine it would be a rather easy and significant fix from the developers end for steemit to implement a block of creating a post in the #introduceyourself tag fro anyone above a certain reputation score. What that score is I don't really have a good idea. Maybe about 30 rep?
Thank you for selecting me to be one of your 5!
Tags will always be abused. Solid tagging is an art. A craft which first and foremost requires humility, humility in the sense that one should think whether their content truly fits under a tag. Not assume that because there is a tag, it also is available to them.
Who doesn’t remember all content given 357 gazillion tags? Even by professional media orgs.
Loving this. For years, decades even, I have manually curated and shared on multiple sites awesome content I discovered (no matter if written by pros or newer entrants).
The Internet, and thus also Steem, is, and has always been, about curation. While personally I think that we may make the issue of retention too big one, because there is the sign up hurdle, and somehow Steem is recreating a new - its own - Internet, much work can and still should be done.
I may dream f a better designed onboarding experience (no, not some tour to quickly jump through, something designed over the course of the first days, weeks, and months even) but curation will always matter. Not only to newcomers. It’s how the Internet functions, by means of links.
I would also love a reply function, an advanced trackback as such, and quote rather than esteem but that’s future. Although for the latter, I found space on an alt I started. An alt mostly to be slightly noisier, to share more than on my main account.
Keep rocking.
I think the thing I have to constantly remind myself of is that this is still a "Beta" project. We're all front runners, regardless of when we joined. If this takes off, (when this takes off?) everyone who is here now will be smiling.
I agree that the sign up process needs to be fixed, and hopefully HF20 does exactly that. But in the meantime, I think we do need to do a better job of keeping the people who actually managed to make an account and then proceeded to make a good introduction post. They've proven they are willing to go through the initial hoops.
Man... as far as really getting things started... My dream is to be a "Brand Ambassador" going to local colleges and having classrooms full of people. Spending an hour talking about STEEM, getting their accounts set up, first posts and first comments written, so they leave the classroom having a clue how to make hay in this environment.
We'll see if we can get there!
To be honest, I think the beta claim is something which is said rather to make oneself feel good than because this is beta. Also remember that the beta logo label was brought back during the DDOS/yussi issues not that long ago.
As somebody with a rather long tech background, I think more of Steem is beta in the sense that Gmail was beta for almost a whole decade (until they ditched it in order to sell more to corporations and government agencies). That would mean that the Beta label is a constant reminder to keep working.
Why does it make one feel better about ‘the state of steemit’? Just take a look at all condenser suggestions on Utopian and find the answer. They’re almost all like the unsolicited redesign which were popular and last and early this decade.
Because everybody thinks every site should have all features found elsewhere. Because we are creatures of habit.
Does it even matter that nobody knows what is the roadmap, vision for Condenser? Nope. Does it matter that sneak said at SteemFest that Steem Inc. learns from giants and takes the bits they think will serve best from all social networks out there? Nope.
We lack those features, and whether they have been tested and dusted in the past already, only to be ditched, doesn’t matter. This is open source and Steemit is beta. Now make it happen and gimme that Utopian bot upvote already. That’s the spirit.
Is steem beta? Darn reliable and fast for a beta me thinks. Proof of Brain is probably what is beta, other than that Steem is as Beta as Twitter was in failwhale era.
Never forget that our wishes, desires doth not necessarily be the vision of the company behind something. That, the lack of
kitchen sinkfeatures, doth not make a platform beta either. ;)all of this is understood. You are right on. The Beta tag did go away for a little bit when the new logo was unveiled, but then it snuck back in there. Not sure if the timing was exactly in line with the DDoS issue or not. Memory does not serve me well there.
One of the really interesting stats someone threw out the other day was that there are only about 6500 people with at least 1000SP in the platform. That blew my mind. I did go and look at my personal ranking on steem whales, and I am about to cross into the top 3000 with my 1600 SP, so I guess that 6500 figure could be right, or even too high.
Point is, there are still relatively few people who have embraced what Steem can be. There is room for growth. We all need to help promote the growth so that our STEEM value grows.
That is about ok, actually. If we go with the 30k daily active users it leads to the 80/20 principle.
Even if we look at total number of accounts that would almost/somehow/with some interpretation goodwill still fit in the 80/20 (18+2) online community activity matrix. 80% read/inactive, 18% active/upvote, 2% do all the work and make all noise/create.
I'm now here for a long time, subscribe, I have fresh material every day.
Thank you for Using #promo-steem tag, Promote steemit by inviting your friends and your family!
@mikepm74, Your contributions to our common cause have enabled me to help you with this up-vote! I very well remember that you started feeding me 40 days ago. Together, we both become stronger every day.
Yours, Spinny
I like very much when everyone who feeds me also reads my friend’s posts, so please visit @yandot and read what he has to say! Your name will also appear here. :-) Join my Discord server if you want to meet others: https://discord.gg/Mz2EZP3
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