I think the importance of discord cannot be understated at this time. Until steemit is richer in features, discord is still the best way to get notifications, communicate with other steemians, find community, and help spread the word about your posts. And these are all areas that I think can be frustrating for new people. I have seen multiple newer people who were unaware of how big of a part discord played and how much it added to the overall experience and they petered out pretty quick. Maybe some of the features that currently exist on discord will be integrated into steemit in the future, but until then, I feel that discord is really a must-have if you want any sort of longevity on the platform.
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This definitely speaks for the need of mentorship and guidance.
In other words, you wish new users would learn asap about discord. Is this correct?
Yeah, but not just learn about its existence, really be informed about how important it is to navigate the steemit world and the different 'features' that only exist on discord currently. When I first joined, @dflo told me, "you are probably going to want to get discord and by that I mean you really need discord." and she told me about the different groups and gina and all that sort of stuff. It was evident to me from the beginning that it was almost imperative to be successful. I don't think a lot of new people get that memo.
In addition to discord, there are a lot of other little features that make the whole experience more pleasant that aren't immediately evident to everyone. You recently turned me on to @steem-plus, which is absolutely amazing and really improves the overall experience and eliminates a lot of frustrations around the somewhat barebones interface provided by steemit. I have been on here for almost four months and somehow its existence completely eluded me.
I think the awareness of a lot of these third-party improvements could help retain people who otherwise might drift away.
@meno @veckinon Yeah i fully agree with this! Also I have been here six months and i have never heard of @steam-plus. And I will speak as a six-monther here and say that my enthusiasm and love for Steemit is still all here, but my engagement has indeed waned. I have gotten extremely busy in a good way in my real life, but when I think about it, thats not 100% the reason my engagement is waning. I posted about this a little bit today on my blog... which made me think about it more deeply... so I am seeking ways to again integrate steeming into everything else that I am doing , like I was before. None of what I am writing right now fully touches on why my engagement has faded a little bit either. Some of the loss of engagement has to do with not wanting to stare at a screen when I am "off work" because I look at a screen for hours every day . I mean there are a ton of reasons, and I bet there are interesting solutions and suggestions we could brainstorm for every single one of them.
The number one BIGGEST thing that is bringing me back right now is I am starting to really miss the connections and inspiration I find here.
But the flip side of that: I think another thing is there is just a flood of cool shit here and its so. freaking. hard. to keep up with all the new things. You have to search and study and spend hours here to really find all the advantageous things to join and use. That can be incredibly fun when you have time, but othertimes it feels like a firehose of information when my brain is already kind of flooded from my day to day life. How to curate and filter this is beyond me. I used to listen to the radio shows to get that, but now I don't always have time. I have fallen so far behind that some days I get discouraged about where to start picking it all back up again!
Anyway I am not complaining just trying to give a little more insight to another user experience that is probably common. Thanks for asking this question and trying to get underneath some of the current and common user experiences related to retention! xo