MY STEEMIT EXPERIENCE - Pros & Cons
Usually my posts are about my creative work, but today I would like to talk about my experience with steemit and some of my ideas that would improve this experience for me and hopefully others within the art community.
Social media platforms, in principle, offer good resources for showcasing one's work but each one of them has advantages and disadvantages.
Most of them require a lot of constant effort, and even with that, you don’t get organic visibility so you have to invest a lot of time and money to get your work seen.
I am not a fast learner when it comes to new technologies and I am rather impractical about the way I spend my time, meaning that I can work for 14+ hours on my art, focused and happy but I easily get distracted, bored and frustrated if I have to do something that I don’t like.
Producing quality work is important but unfortunately even more important is to reach an audience consistently. So “ ideally “ I would need to spent half my time working on my artworks and the rest working to share content on various platforms and still pay for promotion.
Since October, when I joined steemit, I neglected all the other platforms and tried to see if I get more visibility if I focus only on steemit because it is a decentralized platform without algorithms and without paying for promotion.
I was very excited to see that my following grows every day and every post gets a minimum of 30 viewers and 5 comments. It doesn’t sound like much but compared to other platforms it is ok.
I also observed that following is not as important here ( probably steemians check trending more than feed) because my following went from 0 to 1000 in 2 months but my posts gained more visibility only when I engaged in contests, collaborations or I was curated by @curie or other curation projects as such. This kind of projects are amazing to motivate authors to share quality content and for me it was a reminder that I don’t spend my time on steemit in vain. But still I have posts that took a lot to write and prepare and got the minimum 30 views. So what should I do? Post them again in hope that some whale or curation project will find them the second time :)
There are also the bots that could help visibility but in my opinion are not so user friendly because you have to go to discord - follow instructions and then to their site and follow instructions and back to steemit and back to discord and so on …
And I tried but as I said not a very fast learner or tech savvy.
And also their service looks a bit like the promotion service that other platforms offer.
Now that I compared my experience with steemit and other platforms, mentioned pros & cons, I will conclude with some of the best things about steemit and some of the things I wish steemit to become.
The best thing about steemit is that it builds communities and it has the potential to sustain projects within the community - that’s how the curation projects and the bots and other applications for the platform were created.
I could think of many ways how the art community could found projects within the community in the same way.
For example an illustrated novel could be created with contests for the best story, best illustrator, best character design, best graphic design and so on. And every individual collaborating on a project could get more visibility on their work and rewards if they add value to the project. Every brainstorming session and every engagement could source funds for the same project and everyone's imput gets reworded. Bots could be used to divide rewards between the participants.
And that could work for many creative projects like apps, games, comic books, children's books, product design, fashion design, educational materials etc
In case this kind of initiative already exist within the art community, please let me know, I would like to participate. :P
Another thing that I would love to see on steemit is a chat room within the platform with the same reward system because it would be way more user friendly and it could add value to brainstorming and managing initiatives for the platform.
I personally do not like discord it is dark and confusing :)) but at this point it brings the communities together which is great but it would be even better if that could happen here on the same platform.
I am sure there are many of you that know way better how to use this platform and could give me advice so please do not hesitate to share your thoughts.
The emoji set and page dividers I created, are free - so you can copy them and use them in your posts :)
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I too feel like there is something substantial missing in our cohesive collaborative efforts, but I haven't yet tuned into the answer. So since I don't really now how to amp it up, I continue to build community, one post and one artist at a time. I feel there is a very clever answer which has yet to come to me.
I feel your suggestion about collaboration with artists of many genres coming together is very doable, someone just needs to have an inspired project and instigate it.
I'm not very familiar with the curators like @curie, it does feel quite difficult to be seen, and many well thought out and prepared posts go unnoticed. Most people won't go back to older posts, reply to them, and especially not upvote them, so their value seems to wane in a few short hours. I would love it if there was a way to continue to upvote older posts so that content can retain its value over time, but I'm not savvy enough on the way things work to really suggest or enact change in that regard. I do, however, feel that would help A LOT to keep valuable content, no matter when it was written, on the surface to be seen.
Gratefully Steemit is still evolving and as we become more experienced and have a greater scope on what is possible, it will become more user friendly and open new avenues we don't presently have and opportunities we don't yet even know are possible.
I too have been on discord @alexandravart. I find it a dark and dismal place too, I imagine because I don't really know how to navigate it well and have not taken the time or interest to do so. There is a lot happening there for sure that I have yet to embrace, but it feels like a distraction to me as one could get lost in there!! I see you are on discord to talk about these things. When I hear discord I hear scratching on chalkboards!! I'd be happy for a room in Steemit Chat where conversation could be had simply.
we don't have a chat room here but we have a comment section that could be used just like a chat and we can unite everything under a tag like @steemitartgallery or something similar
As for the big answer it is just as doable as the different genres coming together we can create the exposure we had at ArtAtSteemfest by making a weekly or monthly exhibit - asking people to post under a tag and using bots to divide rewords between the artists
@juliakponsford had a similar initiative with her "Ocean of Art" series and I remember haw much her mention helped my post
Where is the comment section?
A virtual gallery would be awesome, especially since bots are so perfect at sorting and dividing rewards. I'll have to go visit @juliaksponford's series, I'm not familiar with that.
comment section is this one were we are talking :)
Figured that's what you meant, but was hoping for something I didn't yet know about. lol
the platform is ever evolving and our hopes for it might be achieved soon with better chat, filter and mention search tools
Gratefully we have some really skilled and involved people who can make that all come true.
I started discord yesterday and my experience is same as yours its soo confusing. I do not get how it works. At least you managed to get attention of curator but i still struggle for visibility and following. Active followers are difficult part.
I joined discord to understand the minnow support project I managed to register but that's it - did not understand what should I do next
I thought that's just me :))
Infact i believe getting onto trending pages doesn't resolve the issue. Two of my post managed to get on trending pages of fashion but number of upvotes was just 5-10. Dedicated followers are crucial. Mostly i have seen people follow thousands of people so it difficult to keep up with their posts.
the fashion tag is not so popular that is why if you get on the art tag trending page you get hundreds of views because there has been a lot of value added here - a lot of good content
Two days back two of my post made to India tag trending pages still the value of upvote was less 10-15. I have seen once one can network with people and have a group they upvote each other.
yes but still I believe in creating something valuable within the group , it is invested work that will keep the group together
Ofcourse value is important infact i find people like us and try to support them.
Hey this was very helpful. I am new to the platform too. Thank you for sharing this, I followed you!
welcome :)
Yes visibility is rather random here. Unless your post gets to trending there's almost no way to get noticed.
well as I said contests and collaborations are a good way to make your post seen by other people and sometimes it gets curated if it is original good content
we r brothers,we can work together, I like ur post,so,I will help u and u help me @alaminbappy
there are 4 people here two artists and fashion enthusiasts ( me and @rainsa) writers marketers and entrepreneurs and a developer - what do you think we can do with that ( my guess is a lot - but I am an incurable optimist ) instead of sharing votes and resteems together we can do projects with actual value that will attract visibility
We really need to work on fashion tag. Random photos of models with no description. A dedicated fashion tag talking about every realm of fashion be it trend or fashion theories.
I have a lot to share for the fashion tag but I was a bit hesitant because I wanted to make my blog more about my traditional art and because all by fashion projects are old work but I will post some more
I believe networking is important here. I too try to write about traditional fashion though i have keen interest in sustainability and fashion and its theories. But currently i still want to wait for some time till i have dedicated followers. I post about traditional fashion symbols. Maybe a steemitchat group of ours will be good for initial networking with people you bring originality and then we can add more people. Mutual recognition can help in future. This platform requires all kinds of efforts.
in the beginning I tough I should keep my best work and post it later when I had more following but it is not a solution, compare this two posts:
https://steemit.com/steemcreations/@alexandravart/daily-art-for-steemcreations-drawing-edition-2 (last month)
https://steemit.com/art/@alexandravart/nostalgia-artwork-and-process-video (10 days ago)
but enforcing communities is the solution
Went through ypur post. I get your point, it happened with me most hardworked thoughtful post went unnoticed. Anyway what do you think of a steemit chat group? Its just months that you joined and for me yet to complete a month here. We can become pioneers for other newcomers.
the steemit chat room blocked 2 of my emails and won't send me a new password so I don't know haw to join :(
I think there is untouched ground in the fashion community here is my facebook account so we can further talk -https://www.facebook.com/alexandra.vasile.design
that's a nice offer but I don't think it's the way to do this - 2 or 3 people sharing votes won't get my work seen by a bigger audience and that is my intent with this platform
Good suggestions I think. I am so new to steemit and still finding my way around. I can already tell there is a lot to learn. Still I think it can be amazing for artists. Remember steemit is pretty new. I think it will catch on and all the tags will get popular.
yes if you think haw much fashion related content is created on other platforms it is obvious that it will graw here too
me and @rainsa started talking here and just have created a discord chat room https://discord.gg/qWDmnc if you wanna join and talk more about fashion, design, art collaborations here we are ( shiny new) :)
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When I started thinking about steemit as a community is when i discover some keys to success here. In any community it is about connection. Get to know your neighbors and build friendships. Friends support each other. Discord does have a learning curve but anything worthwhile takes a little effort. good luck
that is so right :) since this article I put some effort into discord and it doesn't look so difficult anymore
Here is a cool community. Stop by and say hello https://discord.gg/efq4spQ
Haw did you get so many votes on this comment, I didn't have views on the post since you commented
You got a 2.56% upvote from @upme requested by: @alexandravart.
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