Why sharing links to your posts on X is absolutely useless—even harmful

Why sharing links to your posts on X is absolutely useless - even harmful

I remember from old times, and I still see it in some communities, that users are repeatedly asked to share links to the contests or their publications on social media, mostly "X" (Twitter, after being sold to that jerk). I don't know if anyone ever created the account here, just because they read on Twitter that writing about their dog can get them 6 STEEM of reward (less than one dollar). I honestly even doubt users can see those shared posts. It surely is considered by the algorithms as a spam with external link to click, and appears on a very few walls, where it's later ignored.

Don't get me wrong. I know Steemit needs promotion. It needs to be stimulated in every possible way to get investors, good quality bloggers, active members who will upvote, comment, interact... it needs apps, games, initiatives - all what steemitblog is talking about. I know that the tendencies are worrying, and a number of active users is smaller each year. The list of top 1000 users from 3 years ago, when compared with the list of top 250 users from this month, shows some good and bad tendencies. Some users accumulated plenty of SP, becoming new whales (without delegating to upvote bots!), but many simply left the platform. Quick look at the stats confirm that the number of whales based on effective SP increased from 33 in 2022 to 46 in 2025. Unfortunately, at the same time number of orcas decreased by 54 and dolphins decreased by 198...

So we need long term investors, and writers who will create the content for some extra savings, but mostly for fun. We need users who are not treating Steemit as the main source of their income. Choosing the way we promote the platform, and channels to do it, will definitely have the impact on who will join us.

Let's think where, and what kind of content can we share to get more active users on the platform, starting from the most obvious: I honestly feel ashamed I have to explain that posting anything, or even having the account on X is ethically doubtful nowadays. While having so many alternatives, it's ridiculous and evil to choose the website of the guy who performs roman salutes, attacks Ukraine, destabilizes Europe, threats Canada, Greenland, Panama and Mexico and who, while being a multi billionaire - (not for much longer) the richest person in the world, takes the money from the poorest by cutting, already one of the worst and most limited among well developed countries, social help and free (or partially free) health system benefits. I believe deactivating the account on X is what everyone should do. It's difficult sometimes, as we built the communities there, but I don't think keeping the account in 2025 will get old well. I know it's not easy, I had over 10k followers on X, more than on any other platform, but I couldn't sleep knowing that I legitimize what Musk is doing by simply ignoring his behavior and letting him earn some extra money on my activity.

I'm not the only one. X at the beginning of this year had from 611 to 909 million users (different data from different platforms, links to the sources below the article), and it's estimated that since he became right hand (or maybe I should say far-right hand) of Donald Trump, 46 million users left, 115 million killed their accounts. That would leave the platform with lest than 500 million users, as much as Printerest, or Snapchat, way less than Facebook, Instagram, or Tiktok.

The platform is with relatively small community (speaking globally, in comparison to the others), it has the highest gender gap (only 40% of the users are women, while 60% men. Obviously, non-binary people are invisible in stats of the platform owned by the guy who attacks and bullies his own transgender daughter). The users remain less active too. While average Tiktoker spends 34 hours monthly on the platform, Youtuber 28 hours and 5 minutes, and Instagramer nearly 16 hours, average time spent on X is just 4 hours and 40 minutes.

Knowing that sharing promotional content on X is the worst possible solution, from both: ethical and business/practical reasons, is not enough. We need to define the target and find the best platform to spread the news about Steemit there. I would say our perfect social group is a middle class, well educated, interested in cryptocurrency or blogging (ideally both), preferably 25 - 49 years old person of any gender. It's tricky to find information about financial status of the users among various platforms (I found data from 2023, but it's too old for dynamically changing situation), but we surely can track their age.

Most used social media by age

Age	1st place	2nd place	3rd place
18-29	Youtube 93%	Instagram 76%	Facebook 65%
30-49	Youtube 94%	Facebook 78%	Instagram 66%
50-64	Youtube 86%	Facebook 70%	Instagram 36%
65+	Youtube 65%	Facebook 59%	Printerest 22%

• On Facebook, with 2,1 to 3,1 billion active users (depends on the data source), 31% is at the age of 25-34 years. That is 650-960 million users. They spend on average 32 minutes daily on the platform
• On Tiktok, with 954 million to 2 billion users, 35% is at the age 25-34. That's 334 million to 700 million users, who spend the most time on their platform among all people who use social media (47 minutes per day). 63% use to platform for news, 77% for product discovery.
• On Youtube, out of 2,5 to 3,9 billion users, 21,7% is in our targeted age, which gives us 542,5 to 846,3 million users. 51% of the youtubers prefer longer content.
• Then there is X with mentioned before 500 million users, 36,6% in the age 25-34. That's barely 183 million users.
• the biggest age group on Instagram is younger, 18 - 24 with 31,7%. The group of 25-34 years old users is 28,3% out of 1,6 to 2 billion users. That's 452,8 to 566 million users - 61% of them is using the platform for product discovery.
  Notice the detailed stats I have found does not include people in age 35 - 49 which also are a valuable target for Steemit. As you can see on the first table, they mostly choose Youtube, Facebook, then Instagram. They also are quite active on Printerest and Tiktok.

Summarizing, there is no one platform that would be the best from the business perspective. One of them is definitely bad though. The differences between facebook, tiktok, instagram or youtube are small, and adjusting the way how we promote our platform would be more important than choosing only one channel to do it. I don't recommend promotion on X though

Platform	Estimated group of users (25-49 y.o)	Average time spent on the platform	Tips
Facebook	960M	32 min/day	More on the 40-49 y.o. users side. Comments, links can be effective
Youtube	846M	49 min/day	Longer content, tutorials, simple explanation what steemit is and how to earn money/how to invest
TikTok	700M	47 min/day	short, catchy videos about Steemit, earning, blogging, community. 77% of users search for new products on the platform
Instagram	566M	32 min/day	Reels, short videos, insta stories, infographics. 61% use it for product discovery
X	183M	30 min/day	Have a dignity, just don't use this platform at all

Okay, so while we have described the platforms, we didn't talk much about the content we should use to promote Steemit. I'm sure sharing links to the contests is not effective at all. Sharing links to the interesting articles may slightly increase the website traffic (more, if it won't just be a raw link, but invitation to discussion, let's say link implemented in a longer post on facebook), but I doubt anyone will open the account or invest money on buying STEEM thanks to that. It may seem the best tactic for Facebook though - first, starting a couple of discussions based on articles from Steemit, then sharing a link to some articles about opening the account and earning the money on our platform, or trading STEEM. It could be also shared in some writing- or cryptorelated groups, but always as a part of conversation, never simple "leave the link and disappear".

I believe the most effective way of promotion would be making TikTok and Youtube videos, preferably with premiere here, on the platform, so the creator could announce from which account and when exactly the content will be published, giving a chance to other users massively reacting with likes, shares and comments in the first few hours from publishing (so the content can be noticed by algorithms and shared more widely). The more of that kind of content, the better. It could even be generated by AI (while we don't like AI to write articles for us, there is nothing wrong in using it to boost promotion a bit). Personally, I am thinking about creating one in the nearest future.

I'm curious of your opinion - what's "do's and don'ts" while promoting Steemit?

Check my other articles, select the category:

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