Let's Talk—How To Deal Effectively with Steemit Skeptics on Facebook and Reddit!
You'd think that a social media platform that rewards it's users in internet tokens of some monetary value is an easy sell. Ideally that should be enough to get anyone who wants to earn money online to use such a platform and participate. But, truth be told, it's not!
Every time you tell your friends about Steemit I'm sure you have had to face a ton of questions. But, it doesn't end there! Most responses will include atleast one of the following:
- It's a scam.
- It is a Ponzi scheme.
- It can't be true! Those are just fake figures on the posts!
- Steem cryptocurrency isn't real and you will get scammed!
- The followers are false and it's garbage overall.
- The founders will run with your money.
- It's a disaster waiting to happen.
Most of these stem from sheer ignorance, misconceptions, not enough understanding on the workings of the site and even jealousy sometimes. This is just scratching the surface but I'm sure you see my point.
First they ignore you, then they laugh at you, then they fight you, then you win—Mahatma Gandhi
So, Let's Talk!
Anyone Can Do It!
Recently, I wrote about my earnings through Steemit over the past year starting with a used laptop, 10 Steem Power and working my way upto $70K in 11 months. For a change I felt like posting about my success as the last couple of weeks have been great after 4 difficult months and then an acquaintance writes this:
I found it funny and responded accordingly. I told him the truth, that my post was indeed paid for by the upvotes received on it from all of you here on Steemit. This earned me some Steem crypto which is worth a fair amount of money and if he's so concerned about my promotional activities surrounding Steemit to help grow it's user-base then he should do some due diligence before further scepticism, and that was the end to that conversation as he didn't have much to say anymore.
I mean it's not really that hard to find information online. Better yet, why not join Steemit and test things out for yourself? Steemit provides everyone with equal opportunity and makes no guarantees for success.
But, isn't that the same anywhere else? Before you complain, allow me to reiterate that I started here as a nobody, maybe one of the 5 first Indian sign-ups, living in a so called 'third world country' and today I'm one amongst the established authors with a fairly large following on this platform.
I don't give much thought to anyone's perception of Steemit because I've been around long enough to learn and experience this platform for myself. I've tested every aspect of it and know that it works as intended. I am in a position to rely on my own better judgement and so should you! Steemit isn't perfect but it's good enough for me.
I'll Admit I'm Not a Fan of Reddit and I don't Need To Be One!
My Steemit friend @acidyo asked me if he could share my article in a top Indian news publication on Reddit. He said that he wouldn't share the Steemit link but instead share the link from the news publication itself because Redditors don't like Steemit URLs. Guess what happened?
Recently, @jesta had to face this BS on Reddit.
Reddit feels outdated, centralised and the censorship towards an article like the one I was featured in feels wrong. As a social media influencer I find Reddit to add no value to my life and my target audience whatsoever! 99% of the time I never even come across any Reddit links when searching for info on Google.
But feel free to read some Reddit BS on Steemit or do your own due diligence.
How I Deal With Steemit Skeptics
We were all skeptics of this platform at one point in time or the other. We've all converted along the way. Maybe this will help you bring some excellent people on board who might not understand or believe in this platform today.
1. Understanding of Steemit as a Product/Service
As a non-programmer and a regular user I have a fairly good understanding of Steemit and how things work. My understand of Steemit as a product makes it easier to make a good presentation to help the skeptic make an informed decision of participating on this platform. It's true that I don't get the math behind many of the algorithmic changes that place but that's not always necessary! You need to be able to talk to people in a way they can understand your thoughts. I've managed quite well here!
2. Being Transparent Is Helpful
When I'm talking to my friends I am transparent about my earnings. Frankly, it does worry me sometimes as I might set a greater than realistic expectation amongst new users because frankly I've done quite well over the past year. But, hiding it would be worse because my story is motivational and has inspired excellent new users to join and use the platform. Many have found it to be very successful. Being honest and transparent helps. I try to answer as much as I can while offering no guarantees that I can answer it all.
3. I Believe in Steemit
I truly believe that Steemit is a game changer and anyone who's been around has noticed my passion and confidence in the platform. It's always a great idea to try something out for yourselves before recommending it to others. Good or bad, you must always experience it first yourselves. Even a $1 earned here doing anything is more than I've made on my personal FB account over 8-9 years of using Facebook! To me that's worth it's weight in Gold!
4. Know The User/Friend/Family Member/Influencer
It's important to understand the needs of whoever you are trying to get on the platform. Some of my friends who are rich, simply don't care about the monetary aspect of using Steemit. They are happy with Facebook and Instagram showing off their lifestyle and anything materialistic which translates to hundreds of likes resulting in great emotional satisfaction.
It''s unlikely they will switch over instantly and that's okay. Knowing your target audience is important. For me this is anyone who could greatly add value to their own lives by adding value to Steemit and I usually know instantly if they will sign up or not.
5. Steemit Is Free To Use
Informing the skeptic that they can use it freely and leave at their will makes a good case. Most of the time people are worried about having to put some time, effort or money into any activity and get nothing out of it and yet we do it with FB/Insta/Snapchat etc and give 1000 excuses for it.
You can start earning on Steemit by being active a few minutes in the day. In a country like India, earning even $5-$10/day can effectively improve somebody's life for the better! This has allowed me to bring over a 100 users onboard who are currently adding good value to the network. Just, use Steemit for free and let the network work for you as you grow with it!
6. Sell The Networking Potential
I've made some excellent real life friends by using Steemit and Steemit.Chat over the past year. The potential to interact with anyone, anywhere in the world today on Steemit is immense. The incentive to earn from comments ensures that mostly people actually leave some good feedback. Some take care to get into the details which makes for great engagement.
You can organize meetups and get to know each other better as you go. I've been on all old social media and never seen anything as powerful as Steemit before. Even as I have a real life outside of computers and internet, I talk to many of the friends I've made here using various channels (Steemit.Chat/FB/Signal/Whatsapp/Slack etc) of communication every day!
7. Compare Platforms To Differentiate Use and End Results
Money is a evil necessity required to survive in this world for %99.99 of the people on this planet. Then, why should we waste our time (the single most value thing in our lives which even money cannot buy) using platforms and technologies that add no real, tangible value to our lives. Where we get consumed by negativity every day. My decision to step back from participating on old social media and use the time to focus on Steemit has been one the best decisions of my life.
Last night as I dined with an old friend and new Steemit joinee @madnomad, I blew his mind as I demonstrated how this platform works by giving his first comment on Steemit a slight upvote, translating to some real world value of around $3 that was created on the internet but can be fully extracted into a tangible FIAT currency in a few days after payout.
He's runs a top micro-brewery and restaurant in my city and is well known in the under 30 social circle. The fantastic part was that we were sitting at our table and using Steemit on @good-karma's Esteem app, discussing and debating content on Steemit, similar to how we used Facebook years ago to see what our friends were doing. This was such a powerful feeling. You could tell, times are changing!
The new UIs that are being built on the Steem blockchain will take this experience to the next level in the months to come!
Steemit is a powerful new opportunity and only a fool would ignore it!
Dear Skeptics and Trolls
You've wasted years of your life getting your worthless Facebook likes and Reddit karma points which have zero value anywhere else on the internet and mean absolutely nothing in the real world. That's the harsh truth!
Ask yourselves, have you been able to positively grow your life because of your participation on your personal account on Facebook/Reddit? Or help a talented friend or family member earn a living or improve their lives by earning from participating anywhere else online? You've spent hours of your lives trying to get your loved ones onto Facebook and waste their time. Then what right do you have to stop someone else from benefiting from merely using Steemit and take their lives to the next level?
Be honest to yourself and remember my words as you introspect. Ultimately, all that FB instant gratification you strive for and false sense of pride of having a few thousand fake followers on Insta or a bunch of worthless karma points aside, the truth is that in the real world 'Money talks, and bullshit walks!'
Thank you for your attention and support towards my work!
If you like my work, please share my posts and follow my blog to support me. You may also continue reading my recent posts which might interest you:
- TheQuint Features My Story as an Early Adopter to Bitcoin, Steemit & More!
- Press Coverage of #1 India Steemit Accelerator in Top Indian News Publications!
- How I made $70000 in 11 Months Using a $300 Pre-Owned Laptop, Steemit and 10SP!
- My Most Incredible Steemit Milestone Moment and Why It Means the World to Me!
I do note your example of India, where $5-$10/day can mean a lot to someone. I've taken a different approach in that I've been explaining the platform to a few people, but have minizmied the money aspect at first because I think if you come in with a 'hard sell' with that feature, it can turn people off, thinking it's a scam.
Also as a female, it's tricky because once I start talking about cryptocurrency, I begin to see blank stares. My softer sell approach has been to mention Steemit those that write blogs or are creative in other ways that are trying to get noticed (but aren't right now) and presenting Steemit as a easier way to get noticed as the community is much more engaged here. Then I mention the monetary aspect. So far I've been liking this approach, particularly with females.
That's a great way to go about it. It gives me more ideas to go forward with a softer approach! Excellent comment!
Thanks. I see it as an exentsion of what new users are recommended to do here when they get started. That is, post quality content, interact with others and up vote/resteem, and then the money will come (maybe). Even the most money minded people can appreciate that, because liking a bunch of posts on FB or IG gets zero dollars. Here you at least have chance, in due time.
True that! :)
you are right
It really is sometimes more about how you say it than what you say. Where a rational argument can sound like you are selling a multi-level-marketing scheme, sometimes the softer approach is better.
can confirm. much less likely to get the obligatory "ponzi" response when I dont mention the money aspect until after they understand the censorship resistance and open source platform.
I like your gentle approach
Great read!! Can relate, has happened to me.
Luckily my closest friends listened and are here with us now :D
But yeah... people are usually so untrustful they are a little too cautious sometimes. Disbelief is common nowadays, the system shapes us this way.
Thanks for the great read!
Thank you. Glad your friends are on board with you here.
I'm happy to help. Cheers!
This post received a 4.8% upvote from @randowhale thanks to @dontstopmenow! For more information, click here!
Hello @firepower, and what an excellent set of points you make here! Thank you-- bookmarking this!
I have run into pretty much the same set of "rebuttals" when mentioning Steemit on our gallery page on Facebook, as well as on my wife's and my own personal Facebook pages.
What's interesting (aka "sad") is that even though we're also taking the "doing good" angle in our appeals (this Steemit account was mostly created as a way to give additional exposure to art AND to help raise a few $$$-- withOUT people actually having to GIVE money!-- to fund giving new aspiring artists exposure in our store) it has fallen on dead ears.
What DID seem to help a little was focusing purely on the "Stake Holder" aspect and not mentioning money at all: instead just saying that Steemit is an exciting new social content venue where people can become stakeholders in the platform by building the equivalent of "shareholder influence" (Steem Power) over time.
What makes me really sad about the whole thing is that almost automatic assumption that if someone gets rewarded for something "it must be a scam?"
Thanks again, for a great article!
You said it! Perfectly laid out! It's sad that people think so negatively about this when they could simply join and do a lot better!
I guess people with this mentality can simply stick to their facebook likes to do things for them in the real world :P
Facebook is fair but Reddit is even worst when it comes to censoring post. I got frustrated after my first two posts on Reddit because I didn't know what content was appropriate, how, or where to post it. The openness and freedom we enjoy on Steemit surpasses that of any other social networking platform. In my opinion, I think skeptics can join the winning team or remain losers under the centralized control of Reddit and others. @firepower great content and thanks for sharing.
Facebonk shadowbans steemit links.
For sure, I believe they are all intimidated by what Steemit has become. However, that is so low..))
The increasing trend on Reddit of open censorship, editing of comments, literally changing users posts to say things they didn't say has gotten totally out of hand. What started as a somewhat underground location is now almost as bad as Facebook.
Reddit and its operators complete and utter failure to do anything but continuously make their platform shittier in every way, leading to things like UpVoat starting specifically to avoid censorship, is why I invested all my crypto portfolio right here on Steem.
Also, fuck luke-jr. Obvious shill is obvious.
Yeah, it's not cool that they do that. Hopefully things will change with people coming here. Thanks for reading and stopping by :)
@firepower.When you informed me about steemit a month ago, I was not a skeptic, but concerned as I had no idea of blogging. Though it appears simple, it is not. It requires the same time and effort of doing any regular job.
Right from ideating, to the story, to the presentation requires careful thought and planning. Funny thing is I was too much on FB earlier. Now a days, I rarely open FB. Steemit has replaced FB for me. Money is one of the reason, but more than that I get to read seriously high quality content. Everyday I am learning new things, everyone is eager to help, It really feels like a community here.
Establishing here as a good author will not only take time but is also very challenging. There are many excellent bloggers all vying for a piece of same pie and that makes you to put your head down and work harder.
Steemit is changing me gradually. I have started to drift from mediocrity to excellence. The difference between FB &steemit is very contrasting and I don't think I will any longer be an active member at FB hereon.
Anyway it feels great to be here. It's lot of fun and some dhan (money) too 😊
Well said! :)
My convince-friends-arsenal just got upgraded! Thank you!
Good article. But I didn't like the quote "Money talks, and bullshit walks!". Therefore, I'm more in agreement with @parveen's approach.
Money is not always the motivation for everyone. And very few people join facebook or youtube for monetary gains. Money should never be a concern in a person's social relationships. When its all about money, then it's just another business model and not just a social circle. Steemit is not a substitute or an alternative for Facebook. But yes, serious bloggers may consider joining it. Here, you don't need to take care of SEO to get more visitors for your blog.
And by the way, the quote you mentioned is mis-attributed to Mahatma Gandhi. He never said those words. At best, you can credit Nicholas Klein for it. 😊
Thank you! I stand corrected on the quote but unfortunately missed editing the post before payout time.
Hello @firepower
great post ! We read your article with lots of enjoyment and are happy to see your great reward for it !
You are already at earnings of $ 133 wthin 32 minutes online time of your post ! Thats fantastic !!
We @fairvote are looking manually for good content like yours with the focus of users, which contributing that kind of content,
but dont have the network or reputation like yours yet.
We think it is an good idea to reward these users at least with a minimum for their efforts, to keep them in our community. Thats our mission !
We would be happy, if you will have a look at the contribution of @adil,
who posted an huge article about
how to use steemit - steemit guide 6.0
We upvoted the post of @adil and hope many upvotes will follow !
All the best @firepower !
Thank you very much.
ESteemIt is the best community around the globe so far. As of now the youth of today has been too busy wasting their time onto social networks that add to nothing except wasting precious hours of the day.
Whereas SteemIt is a total different story. You do what you like best BLOGGING and still get paid sitting at your homes.
I agree with your points. Thank you :)