Is Steemit a social media platform? Is Steemit a blogging Platform? Is Steemit a place to drop links, promote products or just stay in touch with Friends?

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Steemits home page states ‘Your Voice is worth something. Get paid for good content’

Why does this imply to you? What does this tell people signing up to Steemit?

I am asking you these questions because of discussions I have had with many other steemains. Over the last while here is some of the stuff I have heard that has caused me some concern.

‘How can I support all my friends?’

‘I need to vote for all of my community but I don’t have enough power’

‘No one sees my content’

‘Why would I post when I don’t earn anything?’

Let me try address some of these concerns and also answer the question, what is Steemit to me?

What Steemit is to Me

Steemit was the first decentralised app to be created on the STEEM BlockChain. To me Steemit is an online blogging platform. It is a place where authors can publish content. Personally I would compare it more to Medium than Reddit.

I would even compare Steemit to Wordpress and I would not class it as a social media platform, but a publishing platform. A social media platform is a place to distribute and discuss content, not publish. like a magazine is for publishing a shop is for distribution.

Steemit allows you reward your favourite authors and content with upvotes that have a value attached (by means of payment in STEEM and SBD)

Bearing in mind what I think Steemit is, now I can address some of the stuff I have heard

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‘How can I support all my friends?’ – Do all of your friends want to be bloggers and authors? If so you have your work cut out because at the end of the day, we all only have so many votes and can only spread the joy so far. If you chose to vote for all of your friends because you want to encourage their blogging then you need to decide if you treat them all equally.

Is it fair on the ones that really do produce awesome content that they get the same vote as the friends that do not? How do you make sure you do not upset your friends?

If all of your friends do not want to be blogger and authors they why are you voting for them? If you believe Steemit is to reward great authors and content then the issue of supporting ALL friends is solved. That is not what Steemit is for or about.

‘I need to vote for all of my community but I don’t have enough power’ – It’s great that you have a community you want to support and grow. Community is and will be the backbone of Steemit but not everyone in a community will have the ability to produce great content and as a community leader, you need to seek out the best authors time and time again.

If content is not worth the vote then don’t give a vote. Instead use the community to educate the author and help them improve their content. If they don’t want to be blogger and authors they will leave. To me this is fine, because Steemit is a publishing platform not a social media platform. A community should not be just about votes. If it is, then it’s just a voting circle, and not something I really approve of.

I have also noted from some community leaders that as they are such nice people, wanting to help, they get suckered. Wanting to help everyone in their community will lead to them being scammed time and time again because there are always people trying to take advantage.

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‘No one sees my content’ – Did you drive any traffic? There seems to be a misconception that Steemit will also bring the traffic and readers to your blog post. This is something I have do disagree with. This is something you use social media for. Yes Steemit has organic traffic, but you are in control of your destiny and should never give control to a third party (like Steemit, or even Wordpress)

If you start a blog on Wordpress, how do you get traffic? Do you sit back and wait to see what happens with the mind-set oh I wrote it so everyone will read it? Lol cos if you do then you have a lot to learn.

It doesn’t really matter where you publish your articles, if it is on Medium, Wordpress or Steemit. You should promote your own content. Promoting your content does not mean going to Discord and spamming every room and sending DMs to anyone you can. That is SMAP. You need to learn to use social media to promote your content that you have published. A little bit of social media marketing knowledge will go a long way here and I will cover that in a different article because there are ways you can easily boost the traffic to your blog.

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‘Why would I post when I don’t earn anything?’ What are you posting? Does your content interest me? Do you solve a problem for me? Is your blog entertaining? Because if it does not fit into any of these then I am not going to vote for your content. It does not provide any value. Steemit is not a social media platform but a publish platform. If you are posting snippets of your life, well unless you have an extraordinary life then chances are, most people don’t care.

But if you are posting great content and not being found then there are things you can do to, which maybe you are not doing. Like promoting your content and using social media marketing or being active within communities. And active means engaging, not dropping a link, saying a quick hi and then leaving.

Conclusion

Personally I think the home page on Steemit is deceiving. It does not talk about blogger and authors or publishing but indicates that anyone can earn by voicing their opinion. Ok it does say “good content” but that’s rather loose I think. And this had led to many people using Steemit like a social media platform and not a publishing platform. Now steemit is full of people sharing content that has no value, giving out they are not earning anything.

STEEM and Steemit are different, just like DTube and Steemit are different. DTube is for video and Steemit is for blogging. This leaves me with another question for you. Should Steemit only display posts made via steemit.com and exclude posts made via other DApps created on the steem blockchain?

I would love to hear your thoughts and your feedback on this. Please do leave your comments below, I can’t wait to hear what you have to say. What is Steemit to you?

I am also pinging @eastmal, @mrday, @said-nuruzzaman , @sevenfingers , @tezzmax, @steemit-jp, @midfrost and @abh12345 I would especially like to hear from you on this topic

Don't forget to vote for your witnesses - @abh12345 and myself run the @steemcommunity witness server. Please do consider us for your vote. You can use this link to place your vote https://steemit.com/~witnesses but as we are not in the top 50, you will need to enter our witness name @steemcommunity and then press vote