These are just some baby steps towards my longer-term goal to increase my non-steem user traffic to my content and retention rates. This includes my daily activities towards information sharing with others, organization, checking out new services, and setting things up.

I’ve been on Steem for around 22 months and I’ve become rather complacent and comfortable. This contest gave me a bit of the kick I needed to put some effort and start setting things up. There is that fear and facing a reality that I’m just going down another rabbit hole of cost and time that won’t go anywhere I want it to. I’ve gotten rejection letters from companies in the past for not being a content creator that was worth there time or effort. From getting enrolled into alpha/beta testing to wanting to review a product.

Friday

Created a new discord channel and set some stuff up in an email service.

Growing Your Blog Channel

I created a new discord channel in a community I run and invited some people in to share their experience along with my own in growing ones blog out. The end goal for many of us is to have our own site and have our content still be shared to Steem.

Since in the long term this is going to be a lot of learning and costs at some point some of us went the cheaper route of creating individual blogs on the @engrave platform. With plans to expand out and grow as needed. This opens up some more options for everyone as well.

In there I shared some past failures by me. One such failure is when I reached out to a company to be added to their affiliate program. While I have over 1k followers on Steem it’s not on a platform they recognized as such I later got rejected. Which I wrote about the first part of applying two weeks ago in Support A Creator Program. This was not the first and it won’t be the last time I get a rejection.

Mail Chimp

I also looked into and even set up some template and did email testing for a future newsletter. I in part hope to use this to increase user retention. There still some legal issues I need sort out and It’s not a day one thing I plan to implant. Taking A Look At Mailchimp. Which I happened to post about 40 mins before this content started –doh!

While it’s not going be rolled out today it's close and good enough for the moment. It’s just one of many steps I’m taking to move forward and it was something easy to knock off my list up to the point I am at for it.

Saturday

A new channel was created for better organization for keeping track of helpful tools, links, and whatever else we find ourselves needing in this journey.

While we have some more basic stuff in there as blockchain explores. Along with the more known dapps like Dtube and vimm.tv since we are a gaming community and many of us are creating gaming sites. Other stuff as well that will aid us in our journey like Engrave, Share2steem and Steempress are listed there. For now, it’s more Steem focused but as we expand out and explore it will grow with non-Steem stuff.

The conversation also continued in other channels and DM’s as people start testing and moving forward.

Sunday

While I have a twitter account and in a recent month I’ve been attempting to grow it slow but steady. I did some engagement that day and before then as well. With the Super Bowl going down that day I figure many people are glued to their phones and I’d maybe get some attention.

Since last Tuesday I had my biggest impression at almost 8k. My plan for Sunday did not go as expected it was one of the lower recent days at only 2.5k.

We can see engagement really brings up those numbers in a hurry. I even got some follows, profile checks, and some clicks on to my blog as well.

https://twitter.com/EnjarGames 17 followers and growing! I know I can try and shotgun my growth my being a little follow and like spammer like all the ones I been getting hit with. I’m going to save resorting to that as option D.

Monday

It was time to set up my engrave site and get a post out. In no time, https://enjargames.dblog.org/ was born. There a few things I need to work out in regards to using this platform. As such there will be some trial and error moving forward.

This will help open up to me the world of data and SEO. You see I don’t have a clue outside of some votes that are not trail or auto votes or comments on how my content is really doing. If it’s being found on google and if I’m even moving in the right direction as a content creator.

For the most part, for now, it’s an empty space I now have a couple of blogs posted that I just write there. It’s going to have to be something I spend a lot of time growing. In part, I’m hoping to get a little traffic from twitter and maybe even Steem.

I played around with setting and stuff throughout the coming week and plan to do more so in the future. The main takeaway here is it’s now up and running. Even better sharing to the blockchain. I now have a spot that will just be about my gaming content. My own blog here on Steem is filled with gaming, community, life, and other content. For my future content consumer that just wants gaming, it’s all in one spot. I just need to learn to use it better.

Tuesday

Google Analytics integration and different kind of gaming content

Google Analytics

Hooking up the evil err I mean google analytics. Since you can’t do this on your Steemit blog it makes it very hard to reach out to the company saying you would be interested in doing a review of their game in exchange for a reviewers copy or applying to a company’s affiliate program that's outside of our Steem bubble. I already use Steem Monster’s and I’m not a fan of all the “gambling” sites popping up on Steem so I won't be going that route for those.

Companies want hard numbers. They want to know demographics, traffic, other stuff. Telling someone you have 1,400 followers on Steemit and get 60 to 120 upvotes with up to a dozen comments. Tends to not go very far. With engrave having a place to hook up google analytics and the ability to expand later on when needed is great.

I have a lot more to learn as they have quite the data. Interesting enough I am getting a small amount of traffic already. While some of it appears to be me the bulk of that is not. I know it’s going be a long road ahead here in both learnings how to use these new tools, making meaning out of them to hopefully use it to expand.

Different Kind Of Content

Some of the more fun topics in gaming tend to be rather time sensitive. By the time I get around to them, they would just be outdated and not very relevant. These also tend to be high short term interest and no one really cares about It later on. As such I tend to make excuses or I’m writing months later by the time I get around to it.

With there being a Steam Sale that just started on Tuesday I took advantage and made time to write about it in Steam Sale: Year Of The Pig. I have plans to bring more gaming news and industry content from time to time and this was just getting one out there.

Wednesday

This day was mostly an information gathering day. I know very little about search engine optimization (SEO) or how to use many of the new tools I now have access to.

Moving Forward

From here on out for a while there won’t be any major strides as I go back over and build up my own knowledge and start implementing what I’ve learned. Some of this will be around using Engrave better. Learning and deploying SEO tactics. Building up my engrave blog with more gaming content. As well as my social followings across a couple of platforms. Finally, learning to use the data I have to better understand what is working and what opportunity I can create for myself.

While a lot of this seems rather random and not everything is going to be used today. I’m looking to reach out far beyond our own Steem bubble. I want new content consumers. While some longer term stuff like monetizing that kind of traffic is still not in play (affiliates and other stuff). This is just a bunch of little steps marching me daily closer to my very long term goals. Having my gaming hobby pay for itself and be able to afford more games, computer upgrades, and other stuff.