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As we all know the first few weeks on Steem can be confusing and offputting. If a newcomer isn’t lucky enough to find, or be found, by a friendly community, or at least a helpful guiding hand, there is a high chance they may give up and leave the platform. This is one of the main reasons for our low retention rate that clearly needs to be addressed. Improving the onboarding process and setting up a full mentoring system are areas that are being looked at - but they will take time. In the meantime we’ve come up with a quick fix that we can implement straightaway. But we need your help - and we can give you a reward for helping! --- ### The Newcomers Community

We are setting up a Community for newcomers to the platform. This will be a place with instructional posts, friendly faces and helpful upvotes. Newcomers will be encouraged to post their ‘introduceyourself’ posts so others can come and meet them. Established Steemians can come along and give tips and advice in comments on their posts, and maybe even invite them to the communities they are involved with. The Community will be part help centre and part welcoming committee. And the aim is to do it all on-chain through comments and posts without the need for people to join Discord that can be both confusing and offputting. We need people to help with this new Community, particularly to go out and find the newcomers and invite them in. --- ### Steem Greeters

We need Meeters and Greeters. **Steem Greeters**, as they will be badged, will be expected to go out looking for newcomers to the platform, and invite them to join the newcomers forum. The Greeters will be expected to provide a number of services within the Community including… * giving advice and tips on writing a good introductory post * general help on post formatting, markdown etc * answering questions on technicalities such as powering up, Steem v SBD, upvoting and downvoting etc * guiding newcomers to established communities that may be of interest. The Greeters will also be encouraged to create how-to, help and guidance type posts for the newcomers community - particularly for any areas not already covered in existing posts. These posts will likely attract extra vote rewards from Steemit accounts. --- **To encourage people to volunteer as Greeters we will be giving each person selected a direct delegation starting at 1000 SP.** The delegations will be direct to their account and will be ongoing as long as they continue in the role. Greeters can also make posts introducing the newcomers they have brought to the Newcomers Community each week, and giving progress updates on previous ‘recruits’. These posts will be rewarded with votes from Steemit accounts. They will also be used, along with other observations, to assess how well the Greeters are performing. The plan is to have an increasing delegation scale to reward the efforts of the most dedicated and hardworking Greeters. --- ### How to apply to become a Steem Greeter

If you are interested in becoming a Steem Greeter please make an application post giving details of… * your experience on Steem * any languages you speak, and the level of fluency in each * what country and timezone you are in * any communities you are actively involved in * why you would make a good Steem Greeter. Please tag your application post with #steemgreeterapplication and put a link to the post in the comments below. In the first instance applications should be made in English, but we will be expanding this to other languages shortly. We will be recruiting more Greeters each month, but for the first round applications should be posted by midnight UTC on Thursday 30 April. Four Steem Greeters will be recruited in the first round. --- --- The Newcomers Community and the Steem Greeters is a new venture so it will likely need some tweaking and adjustment as we go along. We welcome any thoughts and suggestions on the project. The hope and the plan is that this project will help to make newcomers feel more welcome on the platform, help them better understand how Steem works and encourage them to stay. This will be one part of a strategy to improve the retention rate. Thank you, _The Steemit Team_ --- --- ### Notes from the Community...

#### Steem Power Up Day on 1 May

New organiser of the Steem Power Up Day, @kiwiscanfly, has posted a reminder that the next SPUD is now only five days away on 1 May. There is a growing treasure chest of prizes for the best SPUD’ers on the day including delegations, upvotes and Steem Power from @xpilar, @reflektor, @hingsten, @bippe, @kiwi-crypto, @kiwiscanfly and @steemcurator01... * [**5 days till #spud4steem**](https://steemit.com/spud4steem/@kiwiscanfly/5-days-till-spud4steem) --- #### New Game Development Community

Developer of the RadaQuest game, @marcosdk, has set up a new Spanish language community for game developers... * [**Comunidad para el Desarrollo de Videojuegos (en Español)**](https://steemit.com/hive-100517/@marcosdk/comunidad-para-el-desarrollo-de-videojuegos-en-espanol) --- #### Steem Witness Forum

@greenhouseradio are broadening out their weekly forums. They are now running two - one on Sundays at 11am PST / 6pm UTC, and one on Mondays at 7pm PST / 2am UTC (Tuesday). They are inviting all witnesses, community leaders and users to join in... * [**Green House Radio Online Steem Forum *UPDATE***](https://steemit.com/steemwitnessforum/@greenhouseradio/green-house-radio-online-steem-forum-update) --- --- And as it’s Sunday here’s a song… https://youtu.be/LTrk4X9ACtw