Can you pick me out of this lineup?
@joshman The Traitor!
Note: the following is all my unsubstantiated opinion, because I am about as far away from a professional influencer/content creator as you can get.
Let me state the title again: Authoring and curating STEEM agnostic content means it might be interesting to people outside of STEEM.
With that in mind, I started posting my articles on Publish0x.
Shameless referral link here: https://www.publish0x.com?a=LDdw0zMe1Y
I suppose this may not sit well with some of you STEEM maximalists, but I'm cool with that. Publish0x is not really like STEEM, because the reward pool is donated by projects (like BAT), and the voting system is completely different. I fully reject the notion that blockchain and cryptocurrency is a zero-sum game, so there.
Complementary Cryptos
I actually think the two systems are complementary if anything. Here is the system I am starting to use:
- Post to my website, push to STEEM via @steempress
- Post to STEEM for the 7-day reward period
- Look at feedback / engagement
- Make Adjustments
- Post to Publish0x for perpetual rewards
- Link content on other crypto friendly platforms like Minds
STEEM: You didn't build that
If all you do is post about STEEM:
- Nobody is going to come to your website or anywhere else to read it
- Unless it's marketing targeting users of the platform you are publishing to (like Publish0x), nobody is really going to care
- Your content is not portable and probably not worth archiving or cross-posting
- It probably won't be worth expanding upon or compiling later
This is why it's so important to create content that is STEEM agnostic. The content you create is literally your intellectual property. If you're on STEEM day in and day out posting about STEEM to the STEEM community, you are creating content with a limited shelf life. What's worse is you are feeding an echo chamber. Ask yourself if that looks interesting to the casual observer-- in other words, to someone who visits the Steemit website for the first time.
Creating Synergy
STEEM, like any other platform, is a tool available within your tool box within this burgeoning decentralized ecosystem. I believe you can help individual platforms by attempting to maximize your engagement on all of them. For example, if you had a hypothetical 'maximum engagement' on multiple platforms, it would be easier for you to use one platform to attempt to draw users to the other, and vice versa. Like I am attempting to do to you now with this shameless referral link: https://www.publish0x.com?a=LDdw0zMe1Y
Call To Action
Even if writing about STEEM is your favorite thing to do in the world, please consider creating some balance between that and original STEEM agnostic content. A 4:1 ratio of non-steem to steem would be ideal. I've been striving to do that.
Please reward STEEM-specific content less. I'm not saying STEEM-centric writers don't deserve your support, but that sort of writing needs to be de-emphasized for this platform to be taken seriously. Perhaps you should temper your enthusiasm for rah-rah STEEM posts and apply that enthusiasm elsewhere. Going forward, for the most part, I am committing to no more than a 10% upvote for STEEM-related content with possibly a few exceptions.
Please let me know your thoughts.