I agree with everything you wrote. We could develop a sales plan. Practicing on smaller groups would allow us to gather intelligence on what will and won't work. We can refine our sales pipeline to increase the effectiveness of the campaign.
One problem is that pitching Steemit is not on the MeetUps agenda. They are their to critique each others writing. You could be giving a billion dollars to writers, but that is not what they are interested in there. This is just human psychology and we need to avoid generating any hostility for any reason. I spent many years as a successful salesman and I am familiar with sales techniques.
One idea would be to present a piece of copywriting for their feedback. It would be a flyer processing (attracting) writers and artists to participate in Steemit. Since they are writers, they constitute a "focus group" in a guided discussion of our program to attract talent. If they ask if it is for real, one can respond with: "Absolutely! It is for all writers." The psychology here is that salesmen don't really "sell" anything, but people do "buy".
The proposition is spelled out in the flyer, they have analyzed it as per the procedure of the Writer MeetUp and they can take it or leave it. And importantly, it was all done according to the rules of the game, analyzing a piece of writing. The take away will be the writers' candid feedback on why the program does or does not attract them. They write their feedback on the copywriting flyer and we then use this intelligence to improve our campaign.
Brilliant ideas! I love that concept of not selling, just make it open for them to buy! I believe that's a great strategy. Perhaps it doesn't need to be sneaked into their attention though. It could simply be a writers meetup - advertised on and off steemit - that brings writers from both a local area and steemit to one place. From there, nobody needs to actually pitch steemit, they can simply do what they do at these writers groups - critiquing each others work, but since some of these writers write on steemit, it would naturally just pop up in conversation. Somebody might want to talk about a post that didn't get so many upvotes, somebody might say "I remember reading that on steemit". There may not need to be any sales plan at all. Just getting these people in the same room could spark some interest, and after that, if even one writer from that group joins, they will continue spreading what they gained from steemit at any other writers groups they attend!