Crowdsourcing the Future w/Marketing Plan Announcement

in #marketing8 years ago (edited)

Hello Steemians! Today we’re proud to announce the new crowdsourced marketing initiative for Steem.

We believe that the only way Steem growth can scale is for it to come from the community itself. So we’re going to create community-driven growth processes from the very start. That’s right everyone, we’re crowdsourcing growth for Steem.

The Benefits of Successful Crowdsourced Growth

  • Growth of Steem will become independent of Steemit Inc, distributing more power to Steem holders, and letting marketing as a whole scale with the community.
  • Putting control over the evolution of culture on Steem and Steemit.com in the hands of Steemians.
  • We’ll have developed a turn-key solution for marketing ANY PROJECT on the Steem blockchain, not just Steemit!

What We're Doing

  • We’re designing the protocols for effectively organizing the Steem community and optimizing the limited bandwidth of the Steemit Team.
  • Clarifying and publishing the methodologies specific to Steemit, to be used when Steemit.com is ready.
  • Accelerating the development of partner projects on the Steem blockchain.

We’re hoping to begin presenting these protocols to the community as soon as possible so we can start coordinating the early experiments.

Finally, for those of you who read to the end, the Steem Growth Plan for 2017 will be released early next week. From our perspective, Steemit is the navigator of Steem growth, but as you’ll see it will be a truly communal effort.

Mitchell Loureiro, VP of Marketing

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I think giant posts for collaboration will be a great use on Steemit. Imagine hundreds or thousands of activities building on ideas, organising community efforts, etc. So in my opinion, the best way to do this is to have a lively page, meaning new messages automatically update on page just like in chat apps. Not sure if such a thing can be pulled off, but a reactive page is what's needed for flow.

I like the idea of crowdsourcing marketing, and it would be great if the community directs a portion of their daily voting power for grassroots marketing efforts.

That said, it would be great to know what exactly is the bandwidth / resources available from the Steemit Inc team too. I think frequent updates via development blogs and constant interaction with the community will be useful to keep the momentum going. Despite notions of decentralisation and such, it will be nice to have a central on-going discussion / vision that's clear on this website.

Lastly, I think the best focus for any marketing and development would be to emphasise:-

  • Flow (as mentioned earlier, and I think is key for converting already existing chat groups outside of Steemit too - will elaborate this in a post. Also, a Twitter clone is pretty flowy too).
  • Accessibility.
  • Stewardship.

Let's supercharge these.

Edit: and not to forget user retention.. this is a more complex matter as it involves a level of utility, and I hope this will come in time.

Sounds good to me! Yes, the question isn't always "to decentralize or to centralize" but, "when is centralization helpful and when is decentralization helpful." Centralization by FORCE is bad, but if we as a community decide that certain things should be centralized for the sake of efficiency, I don't see a problem with that. That's what we mean when we talk about acting as a "navigator." A navigator is a centralized position, but it's not an AUTHORITY.

Thanks for the insightful comment Kevin!

Sure it can be done. Have a look at this page:
https://www.investing.com/commodities/gold-commentary

I would advise people to try thinking up solutions that can be implemented now using the tools at hand while considering that communities are coming relatively soon. TBH solutions that require alteration of the development pipeline are not just unlikely to happen, but not a good idea. Steemit.com is a content sharing platform with a filtering mechanism (stake-weighted upvotes), comments, and new features which will be coming more rapidly going forward. If the existing platform can be leveraged we will be able to move that much faster. Unless, of course, people want to build Steem-based apps that solve these problems, in which case we say, "Steem On!" :)

Perhaps the better question is, will it be too taxing on the network to do so? Not too sure about this.

If it's too taxing for a decentralized network to grow a network for which they derive most of the benefits, then we have a problem.

It's interesting, because this is also a simultaneous test of the incentive mechanisms of Steem. I'm placing my bets on the community.

If it's too taxing for a decentralized network to grow a network for which they derive most of the benefits, then we have a problem.

That's a great way to think about it. And I think it's possible on this network. Would be great to have designers, developers test / build certain prototypes out. But maybe certain parts of the community have been trying this out.. activities around are not always all that apparent :)

Would be interested to know this as well @andrarchy. Interesting thoughts @kevinwong

it needs definitely a dedicated page, or a forum. "Active project/partnership discussion" or something

Ah yes, a forum would be great.. @jesta has been trying that abstraction..

I saw it. Looks practical https://steemdb.com/forums

If anyone needs a domain I have steemitforum.com . I just have a sloppy forum up there right now :)

Yeah I like it too

Surprised to not see any comments from the Steemit marketing team to this top comment...

andrarchy is part of the team..

@kevinwong Thanks for letting me know! Where can I see a list of everyone on the Steemit team?

Can’t really say I’m over the moon with this update. For this reason: I had to listen to it 3 times and still got lost in what I can expect. I can’t make anybody enthusiastic with this. I don't even know what this means:

  1. Open market of growth proposals and Steem based projects

  2. Cooperative idea sharing driven by a community based decision making process

  3. Projects partnering with one another with the Steem community and with the Steemit team.

  4. Designing protocols that will help organize the Steem community

  5. Clarifying publishing strategies and tactics to be used once Steemit.com is optimized to capitalize on marketing efforts.

  6. Influence and outreach with the community…hone methods…AB tests…choose the right community…in advance (WHAT?!)

  7. Experimenting with methods accelerating the development of partner projects on the Steem blockchain.

It's just a bit too vague for me. I do love the enthusiasm you two clearly have for the platform but I feel that simplifying the language a bit would help a lot.

I have the same feeling when I'm listening to the politicians on TV. They can talk for hours and they are all excited. It's sounds great, but you can't understand or repeat a thing. To understand? No way. My take on this is more like : steemit hired two guys to tell us that marketing is our job to do and if it's fail it'll be our fault. But hey, who I'm here? And what do I know. I really hope that I'm not a bag holder here. Not sure at all.

I had 10000 steem waiting to power up after the anticipated marketing update this week, but after this train wreck I sold it all on bittrex, and will sell another 5000 on Friday when i get my power down. @ats-david needs to a blog post and rip these steemit marketing dudes some new assholes

I hope this is good enough for now...

SPECIAL REPORT

EPIC! ... and fun

Exactly how I feel! What did they actually say? I understand that much ....wait for new updates

The technical term is gobbledygook.

Hi @exyle as @andrarchy noted we're starting abstract. Yes, it can sound a bit vague now, but it will clarify later... this is about giving you a 'map of the territory' before we dive deeper.

Take #1 to #4... What does that mean?
It means developing a system for actually getting things done. For example...
Where do you post a growth idea?
How do you know if anyone wants to help you do it, and what should you do then?
How do we keep track of growth ideas?
How do we coordinate our resources (time, people, money) to ideas?
How do we judge the value of these ideas?
How do we vote on ideas? How do we stop failed ideas?

As you can see, the simple question of 'how do we organize the Steem community' gets very gritty, very fast. If we are asking and answering those questions for each idea, we're wasting a colossal amount of time and energy.

If we can make a streamlined system the first time, we'll be able to put all that saved energy into living better lives, and achieving more success.

The whole point of crowdsourcing is scaling, so we mind as well make it efficient from the start. But I didn't think it was appropriate to dive into this level of detail... which would be my mistake. Sorry for the misunderstanding, I'll strive to be clearer going forward.

MY brain would explode trying to decipher 1 to 7, this is the day I feel the worst ever about steemit , these guys better get thier shit together... or else

So freaking true @craig-grant !!!

Noted @exyle, thanks for the well articulated feedback. Not to make excuses but for stuff like this I think you need to start high level (abstract) and work your way down to the details. But we can always do better at simplifying our ideas and explaining them better. Thanks again, very helpful.

I call bullshit

A very good concise summary. Completely accurate.

I know what you mean Craig, however I'm witholding judgement, I have been highly critical at the lack of marketing. So some noise is good, let's hope in time it turns out to be the right noise.

Cg

they will figure it all out eventually, will take a few weeks it seems, the time they need for more development

Brian Page 2.0? Marketing "guru" tells us he will teach us how to market Steem but doesn't reveal how.

By that reference, I see you've been around (the graphene family) for a while. I'm beginigng tô get a strange feeling that Steemit is Bitshares part 2.................excelente superior technology, but poor business execution. Time will tell.

@exyle @andrarchy
This is how I understand it:

  1. Open market of growth proposals and Steem based projects
    = You can propose a project and the community will decide if you get the support/funding.

  2. Cooperative idea sharing driven by a community based decision making process
    = A place where ideas are gathered and then the community decides on the best ideas and on execution.

  3. Projects partnering with one another with the Steem community and with the Steemit team.
    = Bringing together people with one another and with the Steemit team, so that they can cooperate productively

  4. Designing protocols that will help organize the Steem community
    = The necessary infrastructure for points 1-3 to actually work

  5. Clarifying publishing strategies and tactics to be used once Steemit.com is optimized to capitalize on marketing efforts.
    = Better communication with the user base (you and me) about future moves

  6. Influence and outreach with the community…hone methods…AB tests…choose the right community…in advance (WHAT?!)
    = Ways to increase your influence and outreach with the help of the community / hone methods (no clue) / AB tests: test different designs of the Steemit website to see which get the most conversion / choose the right community (no clue)

  7. Experimenting with methods accelerating the development of partner projects on the Steem blockchain.
    = Find ways how to promote Steemit apps or other projects like Busy

Basically, they want to channel the energy that everybody is putting into helping Steemit. Until now, most efforts and great ideas have been lost into posts that have been long forgotten and nobody is reading anymore. A place where all this information is bundled, refined and used to build upon, will greatly help Steemit.

Hi @homosapiens,

You're on the right track with this. We have all this energy that's being lost into the void. That's just a waste. But a few guys will never be able to do what this community can collectively. And as said previously, us doing all the marketing alone won't scale.

So while the technology we need to have a more competitive product (communities, effortless onboarding) is in production, we need to create the protocols and systems that allow us to effectively use our time and energy.

We could lay out documentation on influencer engagement tomorrow, but what would be the point? We have no way of effectively coordinating, no way of deciding where to focus our efforts. Meanwhile all the brilliant ideas go unnoticed, because it would still be a top down approach. So instead we'd like to create the structures for putting all the great efforts to good use.

Given your comments, it seems you really get that, so good on you.

You are correct. Stick to the game plan, there are a lot of naysayers.

Indeed. The plan needs more clarity in my opinion. I do hope that the "Steem Growth Plan for 2017" that is to be released next week is going to be less vague. Energy and enthusiasm is great, but what we all need now is a precise mission/vision, business plan, SWOT analysis and to focus on projects that best fit the core competencies of the Steemit/Steem community and leading team.

Cheers and Steem on!

I'm developing 2 project that I hope will be useful - and I'm going to ask the help of the community to have them working.

  • the first one is simply the Tutorial/Help website for italian user (www.steemitaly.it)
  • the second is a real shop to buy/sell things between Steemians, using the transparence of the wallets as a warranty (I'm still working on it, but it will have its showcase in www steemarket dot com)

This sounds great. Glad to see things like this being developed!

Sounds great. Feel free to use the comments of these posts to keep us updated on projects like these until we get a more robust and efficient mechanism in place for giving projects like these the support they need and deserve.

So, for two times in a row now, the major announcement has been that there's a major announcement that will take place in the future.

Also, what I got from this is that you guys have no ideas, and are placing the responsibility to come up with ideas and do the work on the community's shoulders.

Why are you two being paid again?

To be quite honest, there will always be future announcements, because I intend to share what we're doing here as much as possible. But that must be digestible, or what's the point? So it will always come in stages, in phases, if I can help it.

For example, I could give you an essay on the necessity of communities, on our current challenges with communities, on what kinds of communities are most likely to help Steemit grow, on how to reach those communities, on how to overcome the concerns of those communities, and how to organize the effort to actually pull on those communities... but what would be the point? Few would read it, and fewer still could act to solve the problems... or I could present the overview, and slowly dive deeper into each individual challenge, so by the end you know exactly what our challenges are, and what we're doing to solve them.

For example, we don't even have a central place to post marketing ideas, or proposals, or to coordinate our time and energy for those proposals once we agree we should be doing them.

So I'm focusing on laying the foundation. And that's going to take time, because we're building this to last beyond today, or tomorrow, or next month. We need a coordination system that can scale with growth. Because ideas, while great, are cheap, and implementation is very expensive.

I'm doing the implementation now, so everyone else can share the great ideas. Please bear with me while I lay this foundation.

Steemit - if you can't get paid for constructive comments get paid to troll instead :D

Implying this comment was trolling? It wasn't.

Why are you two being paid again?

You're right. This isn't an inflammatory rhetorical question surely.

I'm genuinely worried, because the STEEM blockchain is the most impressive out there, and I'd hate to see it going to waste.

STEEM is a much better currency than bitcoin, for instance.

And I personally want a financial revolution sooner rather than later.

Well we have 3 options.

We can sit and wait patiently, doing nothing and letting others handle the growth.

We can play our own part, spreading the positive message of what this revolutionary tool can do for us, as suggested by the marketing team.

We can put pressure on people who are doing the work for us to do our jobs faster so that we don't have to work or find the patience and we can just piss and moan instead until we get what we want.

Personally I see option 3 to be destructive to the cause. I won't pretend I think what the marketing team is doing is wonderful but it's a start and it's more than I'm doing since I'm lazy (well also busy of course). But I can only be grateful for what they do since I'm not the one paying them.

excellent beanz

Forgive my ignorance but who is the marketing team?

what i get from this post is that you guys are buying time, at least 3 more weeks before any more progress is made

Still such update is better than silence ☺️

i don't agree, silence is better than getting me all excited for a huge let down

Manage your emotions.

That is certainly not our intention. We are developing a system and trying to be as transparent as possible while gathering feedback from the community as we go. Change takes time and rushing to implement something that is imperfect and not a collaborative effort with the community is not a move in the right direction. We welcome any suggestions from the community that will help us accelerate the development of our system, because right now we're all working every day at maximum bandwidth.

I will be excited when you guys deliver something beyond words, until then these marketing updates seems like all a big waste of my time, and to think you are getting paid for this does not jive well either. Your videos would be better if you were looking at the camera lens more, reading is robotic

I appreciate your perspective and it's a reasonable one. We plan to deliver. Stay tuned.

thank you very much, I appreciate your time and attention

He is a day trader what does he know about communities. Don't worry keep chugging along.

They need to start somewhere....how about you give them a chance? Or are you the arbiter of truth and value?

I have no choice but to give them a chance, and a kick in the ass to get things going in the right direction

No choice? What on earth do you mean? What gives you the right to kick anyone in the ass? Do these guys owe you anything? They've had five frikin minutes, how about give them a chance?!

Suddenly steemit is full of marketing experts. I call BULLSHIT on every fucker who isn't being supportive and helpful. Anything that is not constructive is destructive and counter-productive. Give them a dam chance!

steem locked up in steem power = no choice
right to kick in the ass = crowd sourceing, and I'm in the crowd

well said @benjojo - let us give them the time, trust and support

It would have worked better if he had an ear piece.

I can understand why craig-grant said so, but to be honest... this is way better than it used to be. I appreciate every move that tries to bring higher transparency.

Only results matter. Words are just words until there are results to show. Demand results because they are being paid to produce results.

Thanks, this is really all we were trying to accomplish. I agree with users who want results, but I don't think that's mutually exclusive to adding transparency through increased communication, a/k/a "words."

Hi, I'm really happy that there is some positive communications coming from Steemit. I wish you both the best of luck. I'm sure you'll get all the support you need from hundreds of Steemians eager to help.

So far your message has been easy to get behind and I think you are releasing it in parts to enable the message to get out properly and to give steemians a chance to digest it.

There have been enough hints that you will be supporting marketing efforts, I assume from the steemit steem account. If this is the case, that is great news and spending it in a way that gets the most value for the steem economy is absolutely essential. I would ask though, is it your intention to be fully transparent and tell the community what the end game with the steem in that account is? Is it to spend it on development, marketing and incentives until it is a standard whale (possibly in equilibrium with steem price rises to fund development much further into the future,) or completely gone? What is the anticipated time horizon for reducing it's size? I think this matters a great deal to larger investors and companies who are interested in Steem......therefore it matters to us all.

I believe the steemit developers are to be commended for their efforts to improve steem whilst maintaining the core interface (steemit) whilst still in beta. For the most part (non developers) we've had a stable beta product to play with for over a year. Really impressive. The steemit developers are obviously a major asset to steem. I know there have been difficulties and challenges among some witnesses and third party developers with respect to HF's, comms, documentation, some existing code and code changes. I truly hope the clear indications you've given that these issues will be addressed and extended to everyone with integrity who wants to build on steem, no matter the history so the professionalism, integrity and talent of the steemit developers can be left in no doubt.

Just an idea. I would make a list of all the things steemit has been asked to improve and a list of all the marketing objectives. Make a post with these lists. In three months we can all revisit the lists and have a community vote on each item.....massive improvements / some improvement / minimal improvement / no improvement / don't know.

I think it would be useful to know where additional attention may be needed and where a firm pat on the back is deserved.

I believe in your approach so far. I look forward to things of substance coming out of it.

Happy Steeming

Thanks for the thoughtful comment. I'll definitely give these ideas a LOT of thought

thank you andrarchy. I really appreciate your efforts to take all our passion and thoughts and carve a meaningful, efficient and productive dialogue between us all.

Thanks so much. That means a lot

"I would ask though, is it your intention to be fully transparent and tell the community what the end game with the steem in that account is?"

Yes. Though we're trying to take things one step at a time, this is on the agenda.

This is great news. Thank you for sharing.

I know I should wait till early next, but couldn't resist asking anyway :) - Will Steemit Inc. offer financial support for community led marketing efforts? Also, any possibility of rewards for notable referrals?

Yup, you're going to have to wait :) What I will say is that IF we were going to do something like that we would first need to develop a robust protocol for determining what projects would likely produce a positive return and those projects will have to produce metrics which enable us to form such conclusions. I think it's safe to say that nobody wants us sinking resources into projects that will produce a negative return as that would be definitionally unsustainable.

Sure, no one wants to waste money on projects unlikely to produce a positive return. I'm willing to bet, a vast majority of crowdsourced ideas will be worthless. In the end, Steemit Inc has to lead the way. The community can help, but only to an extent. Every last one of the world's largest websites got there due to a single focused, efficient and motivated marketing team before attaining critical mass and network effect.

Hello @liberosist
Every last one of the world's largest websites got there due to a single focused, efficient and motivated marketing team before attaining critical mass and network effect.

That is only your opinion. It is not the case with Bitcoin or Facebook. It is the case with Amazon.

Steemit.com will be big when most people can get money in and out easy. The money you can use in the world easy is the money we all want.

Have a nice day

I agree. Though it has its place, the value of a democratic (non focused) approach to business initiatives is often overrated.

you use too many big words, it's not necessary and a big turn off to average everyday people

well, to the best of my knowledge.. i'm an everyday user... I haven't found any words too big to understand or that are a turnoff.

definitionally unsustainable

Pffft

quite clearly naysayers abound ... especially those who lack responsibility of leadership

They should have hired you for community outreach.

absolutely right....reputation, evidence, staggered support on delivery of targets etc

Sounds like you know what you're talking about. Want to chat in steemit.chat?

I'd like to invite you to interact with the Steemspeak Voice chat community on Discord. You will find a large community of Steemians eager to hear what you have to say, and share their thoughts with you.

https://discord.gg/qbrdCPU

I'll look forward to meeting you.

@andrarchy on this point I would point out when you take this to the extreme it kills innovation. If everything had to be costed, projected etc you lose momentum and great ideas can get buried.

Of course spend your money wisely but try to maintain a bit of flexibility and don't always get bogged down in metrics. Innovation especially in a new space cannot always be measured. And if unmeasurable innovation does not continue the sum of the parts will diminish.

A way to tackle this would be to have as part of the plan a fund for "interesting ideas", things that fell right but may not work out, an innovation fund which is assessed differently.

Sure, it's about measuring and balancing risk.

All of crypto is a moonshot, so were not averse to this approach. The value of metrics is that they serve as a selection mechanism... the kind of people who chart their progress are probably going to be able to run projects better, and therefore succeed.

That doesn't mean we won't support and nourish big, 'fun' ideas when we see them. An advantage of crowdsourcing is getting as many great eyes and minds on as many ideas as possible to find those worth trying.

Thank you guys for coming together and making an effort for Steemit

I look forward to hearing some concrete news on what Steem Inc and the Marketing Team have planned

For example, if you're making an official intro/promotional/tutorial video/s and want us all to upvote and share it, I'm sure the community will be behind you

If the developers are planning to roll out other platforms (twitter, instagram versions of Steemit) and wish for us to test them, or want us to spread the word, we'll definitely be glad to

Perhaps the developers are working on improving the features and layout of the main site by adding communities and more settings? Or improving coding to make it more efficient for community developers to get involved? Or ideas that'll improve the overall governance and efficiency of Steem Inc? Sharing these details will greatly improve our faith in the platform

There are some within the community who feel that the marketing direction isn't as clear as it could be right now, but make no mistake: everybody here wants this platform to grow and prosper. Hopefully when the roadmap is revealed we'll have something to rally behind and get excited about. Just give us something tangible and you'll have our full support

Well said!

This is exciting! Crowdsourcing growth and providing users with a package of resources should help this community's reach expand massively. Smart how it alleviates Steemit Inc. at the same time. Eagerly awaiting early next week! On the project front - I'll be sharing some good news within the next couple of weeks that @hansikhouse / @hitheryon and I have been working hard to develop in the design-realm of things. Steem on!

Have you guys ever tried your hands on UI designs? I think you guys will do a great job..

Yes! Interfacing both with digital UI and physically. Our goal is to get a design project integrated with steemit - in the sense of public art / architecture. We're in the process of forging partnerships to get the ball rolling. In a couple weeks we should have some good news to share!

I feel like both marketing announcements so far can be boiled down to "We have good ideas coming up, so stay tuned!"

I'm reserving judgement for the ACTUAL plan. Not just the vague platitude version of the plan.

I agree, dragging things out , I think they are waiting for developers, so we have to wait

Hi @hemattsokol

Rather than throw out a massive document, we're opting to release information in stages. I can understand not everyone is pleased by that; My only hope is that people actually understand what we're doing. What's the point of transparency if the understanding is lost in a 20 page document?

That said, next week we will be releasing a document that outlines much of our plan going forward, and while high level, it will still be considerably more detailed. I hope you'll enjoy that more.

Hi Mitchell, thanks for responding - I can see how there is a difficult balance between transparency and being super clear. Definitely looking forward to seeing your document next week.

Thanks for understanding, that's exactly the line we're trying to navigate. I appreciate your patience as we calibrate, and your understanding when we don't always "hit the mark." Over time we'll move in the right direction. Of that I have no doubt.

guys the sound is really bad in this videos (Mitchells, Andarchy is ok). for starters get a mic, dont just record to camera itself

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@zurvanic & @andrarchy, thank you for the update and for being transparent with Steemit marketing.
How are you guys collaborating with @hilarski on the social front?

I am most interested in budgets and campaigns for Facebook Ads for Steemit. As FB is arguable the best way to reach targeted demographics online in 2017.

Also we need some BAD ASS video campaigns.
Contact me on my website to discuss further: http://www.williamjohnsonlong.com/
I will be making some posts on my suggestions for Steemit marketing here soon.
Is there a tag we can use where you guys will see our posts? Maybe #steemitmarketing ?

Would be nice to have a tag where to gather proposals once the detailed marketing plan (and respective aim) has been announced, cool idea!

Hey I'd love to chat, could you DM me on steemit.chat?

This is certainly on our radar; It's just that we can't funnel specific demographics to high value niches without the communities feature. So we're a bit hobbled on this front.

Community driven? What about incentives? A referral programme could be the way to go. It works for the cloud miners.

A referral program is certainly on our radar, but the dev pipeline is extremely crowded which is why we are currently focusing on solutions that do not require modifications to code. The important point here is that if we can develop solutions that work without a referral program, then the implementation of a any code-based mechanism will MULTIPLY the impact of our solutions. Good question!

Is this because Dan Larimer left?

Every activity on Steemit is exposed to market incentives. Just like my vote here :)

Yeah, excellent approach! There have been uncountable little marketing initiatives developed by ambitious and creative steemians in the past. Bundling all these forces and "sub-networks" will be surely THE way to go.
All for one and one for all! :)
Looking forward to reading the detailed plan next week. Great job guys! 👍

What is see happening here with steemit's marketing effort is simple:
Ned Scott added, “By leveraging the wisdom of the crowd to amplify and multiply the impact of marketing efforts we’ll build out countless sub communities, each incentivized to grow until we join the ranks of the social media giants. The key difference is that the users really are the true owners of Steem and steemit.com.”

Mitchell Loureiro concluded, “If two minds are better than one, what do you call thousands of minds dedicated to making content rewards on the net more fair? Innovation. This has never been done before, it comes after months of careful deliberation, and it’s ambitious, but I truly believe this effort will propel Steemit to new heights.” (http://paymentweek.com/2017-4-5-steemit-announces-new-vp-of-marketing/)

So basically, our marketing team is all in, for trying a new innovation with regards to marketing. Something fresh, something out of the box, not the same methods as is popular and admit that this ambitious. This will certainly take some time. We already have a core, a community of steemians; our marketers are steemians, so it is only nice to see them act as steemians regardless of their position or influence because in reality we same as them are co-owners. we should give them a chance to be steemian. What do we do as steemians or co-owners of steemit?
When we have an innovation idea, a big dream and especially now that we have a special resource, "the steemit community"; first we make a simple post, leave it out there and get feedback from our precious community in terms of engagement, upvotes etc. Then we analyse this feedback and eventually come out with the actual idea. Since we became steemians, we are incited to try new things, even ambition things and we always have access to a community to virtual test run our ideas. It is time we start seeing ourselves and other steemians regardless of their steempower, secular position on steemit etc as a steemian. This is the whole model on which steemit or its technology is built. If everyone is the best version of steemian and builds his own portion of steemit however small, that how will anything entirely fail. We need to make use of what we have. Our core and already existing steemit community is definitely key. The conviction of this existing small steemit community in the future of steemit is keyest in the growth of steemit. If we are convince without our cores that being the best steemian is what will make steemit never fail, then steemit will have mass adoption even without marketing.
The simple fact that our steemit marketing guys choose to fully involves us, is evidence that they don't see themselves as holding steemit positions but as steemians like you and me. Let's give them a chance to express their steemian same as we are allowed to express ours everyday. @busy.org is doing their work on the side. We use to celebrate them as an interface that will make steemit stickier to regular internet users. Let's wake them up again.
Hahaha and if we are great marketers, we go marketing using our strategies but to sell steemit, we need to believe that this thing is the best. Many of us admit that it is the best!
Let's be the testimony of steemit, the almost perfect steemit story; the story of how someone did go to school or know nilch about coding and got on steemit and became a coder; or how a janitor found steemit and took his janitoring to CEOing etc and others will see it and join steemit.
Let's teach newbies what we can and hit them up with details that we had to suffer to get after months of being lost in wonderland without knowing how things work. Newbies that come in now shouldn't have to go through similar journeys as we did because we are here.
Steemit needs videos, killer explainer videos etc?
it is we who experienced the ups and downs of steemit within this beta stage that can make the best of such videos because went through ups and downs and can empathize better with a newbie or potential steemian. we have been here, we know how things work. Our marketing team (steemians) want to try something new (a new way of marketing), let's them be steemian. They have a base steemit community on hand, let them use it. They aren't clear in their terms, at least give them luxury to test run same as we have the chance to each day!

Thank you! This is exactly what we are imagining. We have a great platform here where people can share ideas. We just want to help those people with the best ideas who are using this platform to its fullest. You rock!

@surpassinggoogle said:

What do we do as steemians or co-owners of steemit?

And then, regarding get feedback from our precious community..

"the steemit community"; first we make a simple post, leave it out there and get feedback from our precious community in terms of engagement, upvotes etc.

Eeerm.. well, then I think this would be better.. if I allow that my very first article ever on Steemit, 8 months ago, should be the one which takes charge & shows more clearly my opinion and the rest of my comment here about this New Marketing Effort suggested on this post.
¡Going with the flow will get you nowhere if the water is in a still pond!

¡Running with the pack often leads to conflicts you are not prepared for!
¡In order for a dream to come true, you must have had a dream to begin with!

..¡Yeah! meanwhile, lollipop pacifiers for everyone!! :)

What ?!
this is disappointing !
It remains expandable.

I must have the wrong kind of education, the wrong set of skills, because I can't understand your words.

Then it's my fault for not being clear, not yours. Sorry about that. :(

Developers: complicated stuff about how they aim to improve Steemit and make us buy Lambos.
Random user 1: Why aren't you looking in the camera?
Random user 2: Why don't you change your posture?
Random user 3: I studied discourse analysis, so you are not legit.

On a side note, Is there a female face behind Steemit?

Having these announcements from marketing is great for the moral of the community. The diehards are still posting away and hopefully these updates will help the less enthused.

Keep up the great work!

It would also be good to have more updates/info regarding hardforks when they happen.

There is too much uncertainty, rumour and drama whenever there are changes. Good communication would go a long way.

If we succeed we will all do it together!

Agree completely. The whole team is on the same page regarding improving communication around the hardforks. We WILL do better on that front in the future. Thanks for the feedback!

fDzM81OYrNjJC.gif

Lol so is that a good thing?

yes of course! :-)

I guess we have some people who aren't fans of "Assassins" starring Antonio Banderas, Sylvester Stallone, Julianne Moore and a script by the Wachowski's.

lol, I wondered the same.

I'm ready! Let's do this. :) Thanks for another update and the call to action. I think this is an excellent direction to be moving in and I look forward to coalescing a grassroots marketing effort with you all!

That's exactly what we're looking to promote!

Yes... I really quite a little bit understand about your marketing plan, okay I will wait about your next update. Nice ! :)

sweet now we are cooking

@andrarchy, I can see from the poster behind you that you are a "marketing gladiator"! 😉

cycles-gladiator.jpg

this "crowfunding in the community" sounds a bit alike the Dash Budget Proposal think http://dashvotetracker.com/

I think that the nature of cryptocurrencies effectively require approaches like these. They're open protocols whose development is crowdsourced after all. I like what they're doing at Dash, but there are some differences which require somewhat different approaches. But we're certainly aware of what other people are doing and trying to take the best approaches and innovate on top of them. That's actually what the devs do too! All cryptocurrencies, after all, are derived from Bitcoin.

Will this be a decentralized method of crowdsourcing? - will this be built into the steem blockchain some how?

I too like the governance aspect of DASH. I am a supporter of both DASH and STEEM.

How decentralized or centralized it is will likely depend on the response of the crowd. Our goal is to guide and help organize the crowd so that the method can be as decentralized as possible. We don't want the marketing methodology to create additional load for the developers as we want them building out the features the users want as rapidly as possible, but I believe that we can use existing tools to accomplish this and that the existing product pipeline (e.g. communities) will work synergistically with such a strategy. So yes, it will be decentralized, and yes this will be built into the steem blockchain, but it should not dictate what changes are made to the Steem blockchain because development of the Steem BC should be entirely dependent on building the best PROTOCOL we can for app and business building.

Thank you for that response brother @andrarchy

My pleasure, thanks for contributing to the conversation!

some constructive criticism...
Next time @zurvanic record landscape and not portrait
@andarchy lately you are not looking at the camera on your videos, probably the text you are reading is not on the right place.

was looking for a comment about this.

This is my bad. Still learning the art.

lol, exactly ^^^ :)

Thanks for the feedback! Professional newscasters use teleprompters which project the text onto a clear surface positioned directly in front of the lens. Unfortunately, these setups are quite expensive and the only alternative would be to place the text directly behind the camera ... which would of course block the text. So, not really many options other than putting the text as close to the lens as I can.

I used something similar like this build for few bucks:

How To Build An iPad Teleprompter For Under $5

I really recommend this or similar setup! :)

I was going to suggest the same thing. GJ!
Still can't get around to understand how is it that the camera deoesn't pick up the text:

Mind. Blown. Of course I should have searched YouTube. New rule: ASY (Always Search YouTube). Thanks!

We should invite him to post his tricks on steemit and get paid for it! ;)

Just mentioned because this time it was easier to observe ...

Yeah, thanks. Good to know. Hopefully I can rig up the prompter set up!

Nice! Excited to see where this goes. I'm as excited for this marketing campaign as I am for "the Fabric" coming.
I made this short video for "The Fabric" technology back in March.

Awesome! Excitement will fuel both the development and the marketing. I think FABRIC is going to be a big deal too :)

From our perspective, Steemit is the navigator of Steem growth, but as you’ll see it will be a truly communal effort.

Way to go, Mitchell & Andrew

Thanks, we'll do our best. As far as I see it, we'll just be putting more power in the right place.

Ok I think a lightbulb just went off for me but I want to check to see if I am way off. I have been thinking of marketing as only related to steemit (the blogging site) but your team is thinking bigger than that. Your team is anticipating that many companies and developers will want to use the steem blockchain. You are trying to build a strategy that can apply to any new project using steem. Although it is true that steemit (the blogging site) could just throw up some billboards and create some internet banners and ads, those methods might not be very useful for a startup who creates an app that uses the steem blockchain (because they wouldn't have the money). If we figure out a way to effectively market the steem blockchain using steemit (the blogging site) as our guniea pig… then we will be able to transfer this strategy to anyone who wants to start a business or develop an app using the steem blockchain. That way, when we are targeting companies and developers we can say “Oh by the way, our community will market the hell out of your business/app. You should really use the steem blockchain”. Am I close or am I missing the point?

@hanshotfirst You are spot on. :)

It's not about today; It's about tomorrow, next month, next year, 5 years from now. This is about setting the foundation for a marketing system everything on Steem can use.

100 billion dollar market cap by 2020 :)

Here's a simple fix.
Remove trending, replace it with promoted.

Allow us to burn steem when running ads / promoted, let ads float to the top based on how many steem are burned by the ad. Set self promoted posts to auto-decline payouts and instead burn the steem directly.

Do that and steem and steemit become juggernauts.

This is actually a really interesting idea.

We've avoided the ads route, for obvious reasons, but this is a far more ethical way of doing it.

I don't see how this would lead us to market adoption (it doesn't solve the fundamental problem of Steemit as a social platform) but I could see it being a feature worth discussing. Do send me a message on Steemit.chat. :)

It leads to market adoption because it reduces the supply of steem thereby driving the price in dollar terms of steem up. This increases the size of the rewards pool in dollar terms. Each person would then earn more per post. The increase in rewards would lead to more users and more importantly, more active users.

Advertisers would buy steem because when push comes to shove, the demographic of this place is an advertiser's wet dream.

As soon as we get the crowdsourcing protocols out there, I'd love to see this in a proposal. It sounds like you have a clear conception of how this could work, which deserves to be shared around.

Please keep this idea in mind, because it's sounds like something worth trying.

I think I missed the actual marketing plan/strategy. Can you give me the tl;dr version...maybe some bullet points? What exactly will Steemit, Inc. be doing to market their website and to promote the blockchain that they essentially control? Is there a plan/strategy?

Yes, that's what we'll be publishing early next week.

Thank you for the update. I'm keenly awaiting the substance of this plan.

Will there be an analysis of what exactly you are marketing (blockchain, Steemit, Steem currency), what markets there are for the three of them and how they interact, how to approach these markets using your strong points and contacts, what to do about competition, etc., you know, marketing stuff? Or has this been done already or will this be crowd-sourced as well?

Good questions. While you'll have to wait for formal announcements regarding specifics of plans, I would say that our strategy is going to be about giving people the resources to do the stuff they want to do, not offloading tasks that are better handled by Steemit, inc. So if people think that something would be better off handled by the Team, and they're right, then that's probably what's going to happen :) Thanks for engaging!

I didn't understand any of that.
Sounds like bafflegab to me.

Whilst this is all great, it does not address the issue of the fact that Steemit inc is not marketing itself, despite having more than enough resources to do so.

I must also agree with other commentors, that a lot of the language you use is vague and confusing.

The post is signed by the VP of Marketing, yet after reading the post 3 times, I still don't see it talking about marketing Steemit, which is ultimately the driving force of the Steem currency.

I am prepared to be wrong on this one, maybe I'm just not getting it...

Perhaps when the first examples happen it will be clearer?

Cg

Thanks for the feedback (and good to see you again Cg :) ). We promised more transparency and regular updates and that's really what these videos were intended for. Early next week Mitchell will be releasing his more detailed growth strategy.

No worries; it's good to see you getting involved with this, I've always thought you're a savvy marketeer, and I hope they utilise your strengths properly :-)

Cg

Crowdsourcing will be the core means of marketing Steem going forward.

I say STEEM instead of Steemit, because the two go hand in hand... but in the event we create value on another app using Steem, the benefits will flow to Steemit as well.

Steemit Inc is here to make the Steem blockchain a success. Steemit.com just happens to be our first use case, and hopefully the first major success on Steem.

The initiative presented seems excellent to me, we must create a community stronger and pro active, that allow the platform to grow more quickly, good work friends.

Thanks! We hope you, and every user, can help us move this plan forward by thinking and posting about potential solutions to these problems.

If I give up my address can I get some steem stickers?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2007_Boston_Mooninite_panic

you don't have to give up your address. Use a forwarder, something like Shipito.

Hold on, is there a steem stickers giveaway??

Lol, I been trying to get stickers for awhile,....

I don't mind giving up the address, it is much cheaper than paying someone to pay a lawyer to fight the subpoena that will get complied with anyway,....
Not many social revolutionaries out there running businesses are willing to go to jail over protecting 'criminals'.

Long live Berkman!!

Looking forward to harnessing the power of this great community to move Steemit to the next level!

Nice to see username titles appearing on the screen this time @andrarchy - An excellent concise vid from yourself and Mitchell. I feel well updated on Steem and Steemit Inc :)

Haha yup, definitely trying to learn from the feedback :)

No worries @andrarchy. I'd say were only 10-12 moves into the opening of our chess game to be honest. Very few will see the bigger picture. I do look forward to our middle game and endgame attacks in the coming Alpha phase years!

Interesting way of thinking about it! FYI I'll be monitoring #marketing in steemit.chat if you want a more direct way of engaging with me, making suggestions, asking questions, etc.

Thanks @andrarchy - I'm on Steemit.chat as chat_mindhunter if you ever need a fresh view on anything your doing or need a senior posters view - I will try to be balanced ;)

Let's make history!

TEAM STEAM

Way to go!

thx steem jedi's

LOL :thumbs_up:

Thank you for the update. I look forward to the release of the marketing plan. I believe it is important to develop this platform and future apps, but would like to see some focus remain on Steem as a digital currency. As a currency it has a lot of desirable attributes speed, cost, SBD, interest, the fact it is mined with human labor...I believe it's utility as a tool of exchange is a feature we should not forget. Keep up the good work.Thanks, Digi

Thanks for the feedback. Good points

I did a few mock up promotion designs for Steemit to inspire people in the marketing push.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@digicrypt/steemit-marketing-post-designs

This Andrew guy seems tense as fuck.

haha that's a new one, I'll try to relax :)

Good you have a thick skin because some in this community seem relentless and highly critical. Good on you :)

The thickness of my skin is proportionate to the steemians who support me and have a genuine interest in engaging in productive dialogue intended to move the platform forward :)

One more tip...
Next time just publish the youtube video on top without the image... same effect.

That's a good suggestion, thanks! @andrarchy

When you do this a black bar appears at the top of the thumbnail and cuts off the bottom. For example, check out the thumbnail from @fyrstikken's post here: https://steemit.com/marketing/@fyrstikken/nothing-stops-this-train.

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