Three weeks ago, I watched @ned give a lecture at a conference in San Diego. Seeing his head projected from my laptop onto a huge screen made me yearn for Star Wars level holograms.

Despite, the our lack of holocubes, I was impressed with the talk, and intrigued by steemit. I've always strayed from posting very much on social media, because it seemed pointless, when it would just be overwhelmed by the hundreds of animal-videos, memes, and political nonsense that litter my facebook page.

I'd had my steemit account for about a month, but didn't really understand what was going on, and didn't post until Ned explained what the deal was.

Since the conference, I’ve posted content on steemit just about every day. Steemit is wonderful; a fantastic platform with exceptional people who get rewarded for exceptional content. Posting here is fun and the responses are thoughtful. Plus -- you make money!

Like anything I’ve ever been excited about, I’ve been trying to share it with friends. Many of my friends are writers professionally, or are aspiring to be professional writers — I’d like to get them all on Steemit, but I've had trouble convincing them to join. Which leads me to my question for everyone...

(Source: Shutterstock)

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How do you explain Steemit to people in conversation?

Do you have a method for getting friends to join?

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Here’s what I've have been testing --

First, I start a conversation about social media posts and the futility of online arguments. This brings up some problems that I know I'm going to try and solve by offering up Steemit...

Next, a casual introduction story for Steemit --

"A few weeks ago, I watched this tech guy, Ned Scott, give a lecture on a new site called Steemit. It's a social media and blogging network users can get paid for their posts. You get rewards for posting and rewards for voting on the content you find to be exceptional."

"Which means, the garbage posts from facebook would eventually get so little attention that the people posting it would have to step up their game. And, As you probably guessed, people who spent time creating thoughtful posts would make a few dollars for adding value to the network."

"In fact, they brought in one of the users @anwenbaumeister who’d paid off her college tuition with money she made from posting on the site. It was an incredible story. I honestly think could be the future of social media if it catches on."

Finally,I show them the platform, saying:

“I’ve been playing around with it for a few days and have already made a few bucks. Let me show you.”

A this point some people jump on board. I managed to get an entire group of friends circled around me while I toured Steemit with them. I’m sure a few will join over the next week or so, if they haven’t already.

On the other hand, and as expected, there are quite a few people who are skeptical. The responses have generally been: Well how do you get paid? or How does it work?

I explain that Steemit uses its own currency that can be traded for USD.

To many people a social media currency seems pretty strange and results in a plethora of questions: How does one create a currency? And why would people pay money for it? How is it regulated? How the hell do bitcoins work?

And, I understand their skepticism. When I first heard the word “cryptocurrency” I thought: Obviously, cryptocurrency is what necromancers collect to raise armies of the undead.

(Source: Bogdan-MRK @ Deviantart)

Most of the questions stem from a larger problem: People, generally, don’t understand how money works or what it is and I’d rather not lecture them on economics and the history of money all the way from barley to cryptocurrency.

Of course, many of the questions they have are answered in the white paper (and in various posts on Steemit) but getting someone to read a white paper is near impossible.

I’ve resolved that it’s best to go back to the old writing principle: Show, don’t tell.

If I can make enough money from Steemit to do something with it, and then show them how it was done — it would probably be the most convincing case for why they should join. But maybe someone out there has a better plan...

What do you think?

Thanks for reading, and please, share your knowledge. Steemit is awesome and I’d love to get even more people on the platform with exciting new content. Steem on.

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I’m Decimus.

I write, I teach, I tell stories. Read my intro post.