1 MINUTE TO EXPLAIN STEEM - How can we improve education for new users?

in #steem6 years ago (edited)

How do you explain Steem to your friends? Let's discuss this and improve it.

Personally and with SteemPeak we're trying to figure out how we can solve some of these issues.
At the end I'll give my 1 minute explanation which seems to work wonders for me

Newusers.png

THE NEWBIE EXPERIENCE

I started this ride 7 months ago and it took me way to long to figure out Steem. I sucked at finding the right information to understand Steem AND the STEEM community sucked even worse at explaining it. haha Ok i'm over-reacting you're all lovely people and it's my fault for looking in all the wrong places. But the point is all the newbies are still looking in the wrong places. Personally I persevered and flourished. But some people give up because they are confused out of their gourds.

MUCH IMPROVED APPROACH

At first I replicated the trend of poor education taking like 1hr to poorly tell my first friends like @derekkind @sjarvie5 and @caseygrimley about Steem. But it was still better than the weeks of research it took me. 1 Hour to tell them about what I could explain in a couple minutes now. And half the stuff I shouldn't have to explain how to use the site should be almost entirely intuitive. (@steempeak is working on it)


STEEMPEAK OBJECTIVES

One of the big reasons I jumped on the SteemPeak.com team so we could work to create a front end intuitive enough that a new user could understand steem in minutes and not days. I was excited that we could use this platform to educate and answer questions about what is possible on Steem. The process to make everything more INTUITIVE is ongoing but I'm looking forward to the challenge. Problem is that many of us have forgotten what it's like to be new on the platform... for most of you it makes sense. That's why I love hearing from new users... so tell me which aspect was confusing most recently.

Jarvie    jarvie   SteemPeak.png


TIME TO INVITE?

I have tons of youtuber, blogger and photographer friends that I purposefully didn't tell about Steem because it was just too much for them and me. Now we're to the place where i can send them to SteemPeak.com and the time spent educating goes way down for me. I do tell them "steemit.com" was the original front end but they'll have a better experience on SteemPeak. And I propose they'll end up staying longer and have the tools to be more successful which is the real objective, if I those objectives would happen on steemit i wouldn't hesitate to send them there instead. But it doesn't help any of us if they come and go. We need people to stick around and create great stuff.


This image represents some of my Youtube close friends. Most of them have well over 1 million subscribers.

MY GOAL

My personal goal is to get them over here... if they come one by one they won't last because all they'll know is me but I'm slowly getting them introduced and it could be best to start them all at the same time.
As I've talked to them they need Steem to be simple not just for them but for their followers. So that's a big reason I joined @steempeak team to help create what I think they'd need to thrive on Steem. (it's getting closer)


1 MINUTE EXPLANATION OF THE ECONOMICS OF STEEM

Steem is 1.) a blockchain and 2.) a currency. As an currency it is INFLATIONARY there will be about 8.66% of additional tokens added in 2018. Where do the new tokens go? They go where those who are already users with a stake decide they should go. The votes are cast through those "typical social media thumbs-up-like interactions" we call votes ... so instead of a random heart on instagram these "hearts" act as a vote to where that day's allotment of new tokens will go. And those who have more vested have more of a say.

I have lots of recent experience using this explanation and it seems to work every time and it clicks... and it really is only 1 minute when I say it.

  • Figure out your audience and if you want to use the word Tokens/Units/Monetary Units or Money I'll use the word Tokens in the explanation pretending i'm talking to someone who is familiar with that world.

  • It's not just simple it's the correct definition. Be up front about it many view inflation as bad but we can confront it right away. Then say 8.66% inflation isn't bad when you consider there is over 100% inflation of the number of users this year already and that inflation is scheduled to go down each year.

THE INFLATION OF STEEM OVER THE NEXT 30 YEARS    SteemPeak.png

OTHER FOUNDATIONAL POINTS?

  • Steem is small only like 60-100k active users (and that means big potential)
  • Any format of content. Written, Pictures, Video, Audio
  • Use the word STEEM and not "steemit".
  • Steemit is the name of a company and the name of one (of several) front ends... not the name of what I use.
  • It's not just about how many interactions... it's also important to improve the quality of connections you make.
  • You have an incentive to help your connections so their vote helps you out in the future.
  • Honestly with my youtuber and photographer friends I set expectations I say in good months with daily content I make $200-400usd so... I don't want them getting disappointed.
  • I make sure they know it's NOT free easy money. There's strategy and work involved.
  • Lots more... let's hear some of yours.

RECAP

  • 1 Minute method to explain economics of STEEM to my contacts
  • What are your ways of explaining?
  • What are the more confusing aspects to a new user?
Sort:  

I was refused by them with the most common reason, it is scam!

WHAT CONCEPTS ARE MOST DIFFICULT FOR NEW USERS?

Share them below.

Actually finding content that is personally interesting to me. I have my Facebook feed tailored to my interests, and it does not consist of posts from personal profiles. It consists of posts in common interest groups and pages of people and businesses who produce content or products that interest me. This also provides me with some idea of how to target an audience with my own content.
This level of customization and targeting seems to be difficult to achieve in this platform. I would love to see the layout improve to the point where our Steemit is our business and designing that business includes plentiful dynamic options, as apposed to hunting down interests and hoping to find a targeted audience.

My comment from a few days ago, in another article's comment section:

Steemit now is a little place.
I think, most of new members come to earn. Earn fast, now, a lot. It doesnt work. But they dont know. They can see the trending page, a 5 min video in dlive make 500$, a two-picture post make 200$.
And they think, its work like youtube or insta. But is not.

I think, steemit its like a marketplace, but we are the seller AND the buyer, and the market-boss give for us a money every morning, "go, and spend this". Its a little weird idea (i like it btw), so its almost unbeleviable for most of the people, and for the new users. They can see the working, and they dont believe it.

If the community can teach this simple rule for every new member, we win.

I can understand... And while I'm not really a "Steemit" user anymore I can remember using that site.
I do agree that expectations are a little bit skewed from several things.

One of the things that make us decide to not use the term TRENDING on our Steem interface.
There's still some more things we can do to help people set their own healthier expectations.

'Flagging' aka 'downvoting'. It is not meant to be personal but a form of negative feedback.

Take this as an example:

Flagged for disagreement of rewards; take this flag to cover your post as well. If you want your comment to gain visibility you can use 'declined payment' in the options.

NEW USERS REALLY STRUGGLE WITH THIS CONCEPT

I use upvoting in comments mostly as a form of curating the order of the comments. Which is another concept most people don't understand. haha

Also another concept is that you can sort by other methods other than reward (chronological and by reputation)

Good answer. Have an upvote this time round.

Hi! i m a new user , i know it's really hard to find good good education for steemit , but you are a good explainer.

I think it's mostly the differentiation between Steem, SP and SBD, along with the rewards period of 7 days which looks kinda arbitrary to a lot of people, especially when they spend a lot of time producing their pieces / posts.

i think new users have cheetah bot problem
hahaha

I believe the concepts of just posting carelessly, commenting carelessly, following carelessly, voting carelessly, and resteeming carelessly is what NEW comers/users don't understand how it can reflect on them.

Posted using Partiko Android

people don't decide a particular niche and everyone write about cryptocurrency.

you do not make money from steemit everyone comes on thinking they will be the next youtube style star in steemit that aint true

Steemit is a website interface ... steem is the blockchain. Steemit doesn't give ANY money to begin with

exactly my point... What did you find difficult?? i think the voting power was quite difficult to grasp at first. Also maximing profits from votes, bidbots and delegation was even harder.

You are tackling or asking the right questions and I do think there will be a point where Steem doesn't really help itself to retain new users. Steem/SP/SBD with a 7 day payout, bid bots, (not free to register), awful UI on steemit at least and a small amount of content that doesn't really attract everyone.

I think developing the new frontends that perform well compared to steemit allow new users to transition to use Steem and see its value.
(Steepshot for instagram users, Dlive/tube for youtubers etc)

I also think the worse thing is to give too much information to the user straight away and building a great WIKI/video resource for all the information would be beneficial. Linking Steem based communities in all the discord channels and groups that might make the new user feel interested in contributing to a particular cause is paramount to user retention.

Although the amount of hand holding you have to do for a new user - if they aren't interested they soon find it easier to drop the idea of Steem.

Contests are always a great tool to keep users coming back! :) The 1500 SBD prize for writers for Steem Monsters is amazing.

Hey thanks appreciate the feedback. And extra points for keeping the words steem and steemit seperate and used correctly. hahaha

  • Overload is a real thing for sure
  • And hand holding as you call it... yep takes way too much time and commitment to keep them here so i'm waiting to do my inviting when the things are in place for them to be excited to be here.
  • And yes front end has to be where education begins because if not then people will go learn in a thousand different places and half of them will teach wrong things... not just different things but actual factually wrong stuff. (i know because my introduction to steem was by someone who taught completely wrong things) but hey i'm still glad i was introduced at least.
  • Contests are great

Steem/Steemit is used interchangeably by many people unfortunately. Extra points yay! :)

Blame the teacher -not the student!

I'm thinking of doing a starter guide that will be ready for new users I invite that contains enough information to get them started and understand how they can make best use of the blockchain. I'm not great at writing content in the slightest but want great content creators success on its many platforms.

Something like a condensed FAQ to get them signup quickly and staying for good :)

1. Steem New User Guide ( First few weeks )

  • Steem UIs (Platforms) *Targetted towards their interest.
  • User Signup
  • Posting Basics
  • Curator Rewards & Payout
  • Wallet Security
  • Communities / Discord

2. Active User ( If they are seeking more info or are doing well)

  • Bid Bots
  • Witness Voting / Proxy Vote
  • Third Party Steem Apps
  • Other Steem UIs once theyve bought in to their first one.

Do you think there would be more interest in additional invite services like Steem Invite and Anon Steem?

Steemit allows you to do the things you're already doing on other social media sites but you get a financial incentive to put out good content.

Instead of getting meaningless "likes", upvotes have an actual monetary value that you can cash out once your post is 7 days old.

Now for the confusing part:

  • Steem
    • Steem is the main currency of the steem blockchain. It is traded on exchanges so its value fluctuates constantly. You can cash this out at any time.
  • SBD
    • SBD (Steem Based Dollars) is a secondary currency, it's usually worth around 1$ of Steem.
  • Steem Power
    • Steem Power is essentially Steem that you lock up to power up your upvotes and increase their value. You can "power down" at any time and wait 30 days to get it back into Steem.
  • Voting Power
    • This is your energy bar. The lower it goes, the less your upvotes are worth. This is true even if you have a lot of Steem Power. Every time you upvote a post or a comment your voting power goes down a bit. This refills at the same rate for everyone.
  • Steemit
    • Steemit.com is one of the front end for browsing content on the steem blockchain. (It is similar to reddit in design.)

I hope that helped someone!

Much love <3
@Chiren

Yeah I still wonder how early to drop all that on them. haha


Also i wonder how we can use the interface to make it more intuitive.

STEEM POWER? (they don't get this)
... do we really need to call it that? We could change it to say something different:

  • "Power up your STEEM VOTE"
  • or Just "STEEM VOTE" and then they can see oh I can increase my vote by doing this action.
  • "Increase your STEEM VOTE"
  • VOTING POWER ... why do we have to call everything SteemXXX if we just call it a vote I think they get the picture even better.

SBD
Yeah we should stop telling new users SBD is worth around $1USD

We can tell them they get two currencies when they get rewarded for posting... YAY! ( they may find that interesting there's 2 and not 1 but it's still inuitive.

VOTING POWER
Yeah this isn't inutitve enough in my opinion it needs to have a name that educates the user.
Thoughts?

STEEMIT
Well for my big influencer friends the only reason for me to mention steemit to them is so they don't get confused if someone links to a steemit.com URL. I'll let them know there's a couple places to view the content of STEEM because otherwise they could get real confused some day.

And honestly we can do that tomorrow if there's a really good solution.

I think a good fit for STEEM POWER would be INFLUENCE. That is a word everyone would understand. I think both in STEEM POWER and VOTING POWER the 'problem' relies on the 'POWER' word. That's a gaming word, IMO.

I still don't know what would be a good replacement for VOTING POWER though.

it was take long time to understand the basics terminology of steemit

It's really hard to explain steem to new users.

But STEEM is a currency
SBD is a currency
These are basically money.

Steem power is locked money. It is like you can invest into something.
The more steem power you have stocked up the more your upvote is worth.
You can always take your steem power back into steem but that will take 13 weeks. you get 1/13 every week.

Steem power creates bandwith for you, so you actually can make posts and comments.

You have voting power what will go down every time you vote someone making your vote worth less.
But over time that voting power regenerates by itself.

Are those the points you like to go with? I'm not sure if those would have been the right ones for me when i started... we need some newbies to come in and let us know.

The best kind of explanations are the ones that empower the learner to figure out the rest of their questions themselves. so trying to work on that.

WOW. steampeak has some excellent features. Thanks for sharing. I love the dashboard. All the things like voting power in one spot.

hey, dude @jarvie you are doing good to helping new users .
and obviously i also agreed to you but there is a problem that is i didn't get you title bro that why education has been bad for new users ??
also i want to tell you that i becoming #fan of you .
because you are a great #blogger..

Maybe could have worded that different... but i did want to challenge people to share how they think things could be better. I am a fan of revisiting and rethinking how things are titled. So maybe I'll think about it again.

UPDATE: the direction of the post has moved in a particular direction that made me also want to change the title. So thanks for the push.

I wrote this explainer piece 8 months ago, which was well received.
Like anything, there are a few things I'd put slightly differently now, but I think it stands up reasonably well.
I had an excellent response yesterday actually; using desert nomads as an analogy.
Living on sand has limited what we can build, we've always just had tents; but some guys have dug down and found bedrock, so now we have a foundation to build huge, permanent structures online.
So far, they're only small, from a distance they don't look much different to the tents; but the potential is there to build amazing new structures we've never imagined before.
That's my blockchain go-to. If they follow that okay, I branch off into Steem specifically.

I love your piece @mattclarke, it's so helpful, I joined Steemit moths ago and I still don't have a clue, I only wrote the #introduceyourself blog and upvote every now and then when I like something, but I do everything just because, I've read a lot of information but like @jarvie says I guess I've looked in the wrong places. It's all very confusing for me for several reasons, like I'm not an englishnative speaker so many times I get lost on translation, I know nothing about criptocurrencies even when I somehow have managed to get bitcoins and have some steem but I don't know what to do with that. I have so many doubts that I would never end if I start asking but I'll follow you both @jarvie and @mattclarke and I'll read every word you write for now on and maybe, MAYBE a hundred years from now I'll undestand something :-D thank you very much

Stay curious and you'll do fine.
You don't need to understand the nuts n bolts (I certainly don't), just be kind and supportive and insightful and it'll all work out.
And don't lose your password.

Haha how funny I take it the person you were explaining it to was very creative / imaginative?

Quite clever but she's convinced herself she's not 'tech-savvy', which is a pity.
You can understand the concepts without knowing how to code.
It can be daunting to learn new stuff, but if you're always last to learn stuff you're never going to benefit from information asymmetry.

Fuck Facebook and Instagram i am in love with Steemit!