The RISE of STEEMIT - part 1
Is Steemit the trending topic for content marketers?
Steemit is a brand new platform on the web. Although new, Steemit is experiencing a huge growth and is growing impressively. Although the site was launched early this year in May, it was however not too long that fund for its support was released. An equivalent of 1.3 billion of “Steems”, also called Steemit’s crypto-currency was released.
Hoes does Steemit work?
Is steemit free or paid?
At the moment, Steemit is a free platform to join, as it is in its BETA stage, just 3 months old.
What’s the idea behind Steemit?
Simply put, Steemit makes it possible for users to create and curate content on the website, and as they do so, they get as a reward a relative share of the digital currency. This is different from the cooperate stakeholders as operated by other social sites.
Steemit shares a similarity with Bitcoin since it operates fully online and also offers an exchange rate against the USD.
Currently, Coinmarket, the price index site, has tracked 657 digital currencies. The amazing thing is that Steemit has managed to reach the third largest as per market cap in three months, close to the top of the list! However, content marketersshouldn’t be attracted to the crypto-currency incentive of this platform, rather, they should use this platform and stick to it because of the potetial audience it may present.
How is it different to other social media platforms?
Steemit shares a similarity with Reddit and Facebook, being an all popularity contest platform. You are more likely to show up in tending feeds if you have more engagement on a post. However, one outstanding feature of Steemit is that by interacting through votes and comments, the audience gets a share of the cash prizes. Writers and those who interact actively gets cash benefits, and this is a decent share of incentive for audience, as it will make them engage in contents more than ever before.
Who contributes content to Steemit currently?
Steemit is a diverse platform and isn’t only limited to computer and online currency talks. Users are allowed to post any type of content they have in mind, and they can label their contents with appropriate tags. The topics are varied, ranging from travel tips, gardening, and lots more. In might interest you to know that every minute, these post are gaining hundreds of votes, even thousands.
Commenting on the recent growth of Steemit, Ned Scot, the CEO said:
“People are recognizing the vast potential of a community-operated social networking platform. The Steemit team has created an online hub where users can monetize their time and their energies and share in the profits like never before… With Steemit, the market forms around you.”
This is indeed a blessing and a great opportunity for online content marketers.
What makes the system tick?
Steemit has come up with an interaction system which means it isn’t just those that has the most comments or votes on posts that earn currency the most;posts that goes viral and the users that gives an article a tick of approval are the basis for calculating payments through interaction. What this means is that the more popular a post is, the more voters of the post gets rewarded. This has giving rise to Steemit posts giving clues and cheat sheets for finding which content to vote for as the best. This simply implies that users of Steemitaren’t just voting mindlessly, but they are carefully selecting their votes by searching for topics they feel adds more value and also interests them.
One of the demerits of deregulated and user-generated content is that a large amount of contents poor in quality is uploaded dailyon the site.With the platform growing more popular and with users trying to produce more contents rather than contents with quality just to gain more currency rewards, this will become more obvious.
This is where as a content marketer and an expert in your field, you will become of value as you will contribute more meaningful posts in your field of expertise.It is only quality posts that will gain more votes on this platform.
Where does the Steem money come from to give away to the users?
The idea is somewhat complicated and is sustained by the blockchain based technology. You need to be familiar with the blockchain and pinup currency in order to get more idea on how this works.
In essence though:
Steem dollars, a virtual currency, is created by the blockchain based tech behind Steem.
The popularity of the Steem network determines the value of the currency, with all digital assets having its own.
With this, Steem can distribute Steem dollars to platform members that are qualified for it, and they can swap it for bitcoin, and also exchange it for any popular non-virtual currency.
Steem dollar are generated from great contents and the large number of readers around it, and it doesn’t grow on virtual trees.
Steem dollars will continue gaining value, since it will keep on being scarce and useful.
The opportunity to you as a marketer
It isn’t a bad idea if you don’t understand all the terminologies associated with Steemit; what you should have in mind is that it is a rare opportunity you have as a marketer to be the first users of this new platform.
Those that join later will actually catch up as time goes on. Although mainstream media outlets haven’t yet caught unto this trend, there is high hopes that in the coming weeks, they will start adapting.Steemit is a new platform that is fast growing and has potential. It has a market cap of $260 million, with just three months of existence. If you compare it to Facebook, you will see that Facebook for over a year didn’t even have a feed, and at the moment sits at a market cap of $332 billion. With such growth, Steemitis believed to perform well in its first year.
As it stands, content creators are flocking to Steemit, and there are predictions that it will take over the traffic of most of the traditional platforms such as Reddit.
We highly recommend that you should get onto Steemit now, share contents of value, grow your audience and be a leeding member.