I read your post from beginning to end and I must say that I'm totally in awe of your constructivity in addressing a major and vital problem that will most likely kill the main purpose of this community.
When I was first introduced to steemit, they told me this is a platform like Instagram and Facebook, except that I will earn money instead of the likes I was aiming at in these other platforms. I'm a singer, so the first few weeks of joining steemit, my aim was at competing in the open mic competition, not because I loved to sing, but because I will get paid if I won. Although the fact that I can't play a musical instrument eventually limitated my participating, I already was willing to stop trying after not getting the wins I joined in to get.
Now let's be honest with ourselves. Nobody does anything without a form little of distraction which in the end turns out to be their focus or goal.
For instance, I'm a mechanical engineering student. I don't really like school per say. But I will still read books. Not because I want to have knowledge, but because I want good grades. Why do I want good grades? So that I can be employable. And when its not just good grades that will get me employment, I try to get the actual knowledge. Why do I even need a job, because I need money. So when I want to sustain the money I earn, I work hard. Maybe I need more money, I work harder at my job. Now in the process of working harder, I will probably have been able to impress my superiors, delivered better service to humanity, and even earned the respect of coworkers, but that was never my aim. I always wanted the money.
Now this analogy may not be true for everyone, you'd agree with me that this works for over 80% of people that end up on steemit. They want to earn. And they want to earn easy. They will like to see their efforts pay off, and that's what will keep them in. So it is safe to say that the Blog, Vote Earn anthem cannot be just thrown away. To be honest that's the only way to make people join the community in the first place and do things on it. Else they will rather be on Facebook and do things for fun.
It took me till January to finally make a post on steemit, and 4 more months to know I can sing everyday and post. When I started singing regularly, I withdrew every reward I earned as soon as I claimed it. I needed to flex and enjoy. It took me a few days after to figure that I could actually save this money and attempt to use it to improve what I give the community. So now I sing everyday for a purpose: To earn enough money to buy me studio equipments and cameras so as to post better content, which ofcourse will mean me earning more money. The only other way I can get these things is if I end up requesting publicly. And whether I like it or not, the fact that I sing everyday because I want to save up for my future equipments is actually a way of me investing into the community, but really, it wasn't really my plan. I don't know of you get the point I'm trying to make.
So if we're aiming at get people to actually invest on steemit. If we're aimed at having as much steemit users as the accounts are, we should be ready to device means to entice people into this community. The people that introduced us told us we get paid for the same content we put on Instagram that earns us nothing. We should on the other hand develop this concept, and be able to make people work hard without them knowing it, giving them that little distraction. We can't just stop the idea of "Blog, Vote, Earn." That is why we're hear in the first place.
Personally what I do tell my friends when asking them to join is to google about everything that they want to do on steemit. You want to post on dsound, google how to do it. You write songs and you want to make money from it, google how others have done it. Find the right tags for the post you have in mind. Everything is possible in here. You don't get money the first time, try again, do it better than before. What worked for someone may not work for you, so be innovative.
Feel free to read it in your spare time.I know you said to be simple, I've probably written enough to land me an A if it was a high school essay, lol. But I'm glad you raised this issue. And I actually now follow the writer you mentioned, @NoNameLeftToUse. He's writing is amazing. I once wrote a post on possible means to engage people in the steemit community, and I included a few of my achievements here on steemit as well.
And I will love to continue this sort of conversations with you. You obviously are a very bright mind and I will love to have you as a friend. I will like to send you my discord if thats okay by you.
Cheers @lordjames