As I near my first 100 followers within a week of joining the platform I have been carefully planning a strategy which I am going to use to build up my Steemit profile. I hope that this will be useful for new members to perhaps get ideas or for experienced members to critique. But this is my personal strategy and I will be interested to come back in a year’s time to look at the results. Every 3 months I will also share a strategy update post which will outline what is going well and not so well, and perhaps any tweaks I have done to it.
Again I would like to thank @pennsif for bringing me on board!
The important point is that you need to be willing to adapt, businesses that don’t adapt to changes suffer greatly, people who can’t adapt to a new home also suffer greatly. It is adaptation and flexibility which will be a cornerstone to my strategy.
(Thumbnail used under creative commons - credit to gotcredit.com)
If you haven’t seen my 2018 goals on Steemit as a YouTuber post then here is a very brief summary:
- Upload YouTube videos a week before release on DTube
- Create 5 high quality posts a week (minimum)
- Reach 1,000 followers by the end of the year
I will refrain from adding any income goals because the truth is I have no idea at all what will happen and also with Steem being a cryptocurrency it is almost always changing value. However I believe that what you earn is a byproduct of what you do, create or give. Unfortunately YouTube is failing me and many other creators with that one.
My strategy consists of external and internal methods. External methods involve the following social media accounts:
Instagram - 1,811 Followers
YouTube - 71,215 Subscribers
Facebook - 72,827 Likes
Many of you will be aware of @steepshot which is an Instagram alternative that let’s you earn Steem. That is of course a huge pull however Instagram is huge platform with around 500million daily active users on the site so it is a great way to build up a following there and then channel people over to Steepshot or Stemit. Here are the steps I will be taking:
- Continue actively posting on Instagram for another 6 months to build up a following whilst in the meantime start getting a feel for steepshot
- If I enjoy the Steepshot experience then I will add a link to my Steepshot account on my Instagram bio with the attraction of Steepshot exclusive content
- Aim for 2-3 posts a week, nothing major but I want to keep it ticking over
YouTube
I owe a lot of thanks to YouTube, it has made everything else possible. It was quite simply a catalyst for opportunity, which has led to many things from freelance videogaphy to presenting on national TV. But creators are getting frustrated with monetization and censorship so along comes Steemit as a ‘knight in shining armour’ to offer creators something very different and truly unique. I still see a future with YouTube, but I would rather put 12 eggs into 12 different baskets rather than 1 basket in order to become more resilient and be able to bounce back faster if one of the main channels collapsed.
My latest YouTube videos:
I want to approach YouTube in a more direct way than with Instagram. Here is my YouTube strategy:
- From February onwards, I will upload a video on DTube a week before it goes on YouTube. This will be mentioned either in the video description, a pinned comment, in a video itself (call-to-action) or by adding a pop-up box in Premiere Pro
- Create a high quality exclusive series just for Dtube and announce it on my YouTube channel
- Use 10 past videos to reupload onto Steemit/DTube with a written article. This is to build up the content on my channel and to hopefully attract other Steemit users. I will do the reupload of my old videos as a series.
Thanks to a viral video (see a post explaining what I learnt from it here) my Facebook page is now my biggest social media channel. However I feel that the the bigger my Facebook page gets, the less people Facebook lets me reach unless I pay them, and there is a time and a place for promoting posts but not if I want to just share a video. In fact videos uploaded directly to FB are the only thing Facebook’s algorithm seems to really like, so that is what I have been doing. Often I will post a similar video on both Facebook and YouTube.
Here is my Facebook strategy for Steemit:
- Experiment with using it as a ‘middle-man’ and announce that a video is now available on Steemit but hasn’t yet been released on YouTube. I will aim to do this at least once a week.
- Add a link to my Steemit profile at the end of one post every 2 months (I don’t post that much on FB)
An example of one of my Facebook posts:
Collaborations
These are great because you can utilise the internal and external power. I hope to maybe do a collaboration with @daddykirbs on Steemit or YouTube and then we can both try and encourage our audiences to come over to Steemit. I will be working on recruiting some more homestead/gardening/permaculture YouTube channels to Steemit because the more people who see the name Steemit pop up, the more likely they are to give it a go and trust it. Also I would love to collaborate with @halcyondaze :)
Internal (Steemit itself)
My main focus on Steemit itself is to deliver quality content. I will measure this by the number or interactions my posts get. I plan to experiment with many different methods such as a well thought out comment on 50 posts a day for 7 days and measure the impact. Community building is key, and I am a member of a few Discord groups now where it is fantastic to meet and speak to fellow Steemians.
As for internal strategy in numbers I want to create a minimum of 5 posts a week (preferably 7) and also interact with as many other people as possible.
I want to concentrate primarily on homesteading and gardening as primary post tags however I do want to contribute with business posts from time to time sharing my successes and failures with content creation and social media.
A typical week using this strategy could include:
- 150 Well thought out comments on 150 different posts
- A reupload and post to DTube
- 3 Exclusive photos on Steepshot
- Upload a new (exclusive) video to DTube
- 2 Call-to-actions from either YouTube, Facebook or both
- 1 Homesteading post
- 2 Gardening posts
- 1 Business post
Estimated time spent = Probably too much, but hey, I might as well be doing something constructive in my evenings.
This is the strategy which I am going to attempt to use beginning the 1st of Feb. I have no idea what will happen but I will learn something from the process and whatever I learn I will share with you.
A warning to myself
I need to warn myself to not get drawn into Steemit 24/7, I still have other projects going on outside of Steemit such as creating courses, writing a book and a handful of freelance marketing and videography work. Having literally just turned 19 I want to keep doors open, and I am going into this with an open mind and as things constantly adapt I will need to evaluate my next moves.
I really hope you enjoyed reading this post :) Do you have any kind of Steemit strategy?