By Commodore Trevor

I have found that been taking some departures from our branded posts a bit to work up some opinion pieces about Steemit and our experiences on this platform vs other platforms. I just read a piece by @princewahaj about possibilities for improving growth to the platform via SEO. If you have not yet read piece I will link to it at the end.

First, I would like to say that his statistical insights are interesting and I would love to hear more about how we as a community can help build these inbound visitor numbers. Second, if he does have some actionable followups that we can help work towards as a community I would enthusiastically support that through our @raftingmagazine channel on this platform.

The Premise

@princewahaj offers the premise that if there are more eyes on brand that we will see a noticeable increase in numbers. He does use some admittedly hypothetical numbers that look very attractive. Numbers are critical in growing the user base there is no doubt about that and the more eyes on brand the better. There is the old sales adage that it takes 3 positive exposures to a product before someone will buy. While I believe that a volume based premise does help the situation I have to fundamentally disagree with this premise.

The Problem with the Numerical Premise

Twitter is a prime example of the problem with presuming a purely numerical based formula of getting eyes on brand will increase value and growth. Recently Twitter announced that there were 288 Million users, yet the P/E Ratio for twitter in 2016 was negative and it continues to trend downwards through 2019 according to a Nasdaq analyst. I know that I am using only one example here of why this premise will not work, but I think it illustrates the point nicely that there is an additional step missing in the formula for this to work.

The Solution

Steemit needs a serious look in the mirror to re-brand the platform for mass consumption. To paraphrase one of my favorite author's Simon Sinek: There is a group of people who just get it. These are the early adopters.

In fact everyone engaged on the platform right now is exactly that an early adopter. We invest our time and energy to grow a platform that can help drive cryptos into the future. There are two glaring problems:

1. As I mentioned in a previous op-ed cryptos don't pay my company's bills and they don't pay my brand partner's bills. I can't send 200 steem to a drybag manufacturer to buy a new piece of equipment for one of my sponsored athletes...yet.
2. There are people who don't get it but they want to get it. Unfortunately the platform is still in its infancy and is mainly devoted to cryptocurrency. Great if you are interested in cryptocurrency, but lousy if you are interested in much else.

The plain truth of the situation is that conversions are key. It doesn't matter if 200 or 200 million people are coming to the site if they do not convert to users or investors then there is is no value being built. I feel like @princewahaj's argument glossed over the fact that his value estimate is purely hypothetical. Unfortunately the platform is not well equipped to handle advertisers and ad space in a way that is an effective use of marketing dollars. When the platform makes sense from an advertisers perspective of drawing customers into their business then we will have a winning platform that will build some serious value.

At the moment my company and my team are not convinced that this platform is an effective use of marketing dollars...not that I'm going to stop posting. Unfortunately not being cryptocurrency focused we don't see really any traffic being driven into our business. The platform as it is heavily focuses on keeping people on this platform. The problems and solutions that we are facing as an advertiser wanting to delve deeper are beyond the scope of this post and are best reserved for a future post.

I look forward to seeing @princewahaj lay out his SEO marketing plan so we can see how, as a community, we can be more effective at getting people on the platform. As much as I love people trying to pump the optimism of the crypto market I just can't ignore the elephant in the room.

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Sources:
https://steemit.com/growth/@princewahaj/growth-idea-improving-steemit-s-seo-100
http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/twtr/pe-ratio

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