The Hierarchy of Engagement on Steemit
Last night, @picokernel dropped a link into SteemSpeak called The Hierarchy of Engagement, expanded, by Sarah Tavel.
In a nutshell, the slides of the presentation are:
- How do you maximize your chances of building an enduring $1B+ company?
- It's all about engagement.
- There's a hierarchy of engagement:
- Level 1: Focus on growing users completing the core action.
- The key factor being more about the the core action and less about growth.
- The core action is foundational, most correlated with retention.
- It's not the only action users do, but it leads back to the core action.
- Growth of user base when those users don't complete the core action is pointless.
- Make sure focus is on the right core action.
- Does the core action scale?
- Level 2: Product should get better the more it's used. Users should have more to lose by leaving the product.
- Create accruing benefits and mounting losses as a user engages.
- Level 3: As users engage, they create virtuous loops in the product.
- Convert user engagement into "fuel" to power forward.
- Level 1: Focus on growing users completing the core action.
- Know what to measure.
Virtuous Loops
This is a bit of a buzz-word used in the slides. Think of it as the opposite of a vicious circle. Wait, wouldn't the opposite of a vicious circle be a virtuous square? No, it's just the opposite effect of a vicious circle, but with one similar component: it feeds itself.
A vicious circle is like feedback noise. It gets louder and worse over time because it loops back on itself.
A virtuous loop gets better over time as it loops back on itself. It's like snowballing.
In investment vernacular, it's called The Network Effect. The presentation tries to make a distinction from Virtuous Loops and The Network Effect, but at their core, they are one in the same.
They are difficult to create. Here's an example of how Dash went about it by DashDetailed:
Source: Why Aren't We Seeing Greater Adoption of Cryptocurrency? (skip to 13:20)
Amanda B. Johnson highlights the Budget System. It manifests in the investment Dash makes. Investments lead to a more robust eco-system, which in turn, Dash gets more useful, which in turn, attracts capital, which leads back to investments.
Determining The Core Action of Steemit
Let's postulate that the core action for Steemit is brand development. Let's see if this fits.
- Scale: Brands can be held by one individual or a corporation. It can grow from one to the other if need be.
- Accruing Benefits: The more I build my brand on Steemit, the better my brand gets.
- Mounting Loss: The more I build my brand on Steemit, the bigger the impact if I walk away from it.
I think this fits so far, but maybe there's a better core action to be explored. The problem with brand development is that it might not be specific enough for it to be considered as the core action.
Here's why. What thing do you measure to determine if a user took weekly actions to build their brand? There's no build your brand button. And even if there was, what percentage of users built their brand? Just because they clicked on the build your brand button, doesn't mean they completed the action.
Besides, what does a build your brand button even do?
If we decided we must have this button, it would lead to another page with suggestions on how to build your brand. It would be dashboard of sub-actions like "write about your brand" and "promote your brand."
Then we would be able to determine if the action has been completed. The button is more like a hub to focus into sub-actions.
Much to think about, here.
At this point, I remain mostly in the "observe and learn" state... I don't have a crypto/blockchain background, so I tend to take more of a 50,000-foot overview.
One thing about brand building and engagement is to be mindful of the (crucial?) value of the "human factor" in the equation. Communities of people build strong loyalty and retention and make for long term growth and stability.
Stepping WAY outside of this frame of reference, in the early days of cell service, Sprint outpaced competitors because of their "family and friends" plans... people referring people and getting benefits. eBay went from online fleamarket to industry giant as a peer-to-peer referral network. Even earlier (first days of the web), AOL outstripped competitors Compuserve and Prodigy because of their attention to community building and connection. Early hardcore nerds considered AOL "a joke," but secretly took joy in watching an $11.50/share IPO skate up to $90+.
My point being, from a long term perspective there's an inherent risk in creating systems that remove the human factor from the equation. Sure, we can create (as a metaphor) a bot that trades apple and hamburger "shares" but since that doesn't actually feed anyone, there's a risk for it to become an empty and unsustainable shell game... which may fall apart when some start saying... "Uhmm... I'm kinda hungry. Where are the actual apples and hamburgers?"
So, getting back to the "core action" and "build your brand" concept, as it might apply to Steemit... it seems there's a great opportunity here to create a social/commercial peer-to-peer network where there's an actual tangible "thing" attached to the blockchain... valuable because it uniquely offers an attractive "soft entry" into cryptocurrencies to a large market who otherwise view them as "black box stuff for extreme techies."
Very true, regarding the human element. Dash factors that directly by focusing on payment processing that (will be) easy for the average joe. As more people use it, there's more engagement and more demand for companies to accept it, and so on.
Branding can be this. But maybe it's not the most fundamental action.
most fundamental action: The holy upvote :D (bringing in value to to others because you fond their content helpful) also the resteem spirit (that brings everyone together) and of course Father Steem who has enough to go around :D of course that is the opposite to build a brand.
ad what he said :D @denmarkguy because he is right. Upvotes and follows :)
But do upvotes lead to the desire to upvote? Kinda like the Tinder example. Do successful dates lead to the desire to more successful dates? Because ultimately, a complete success on Tinder means the user exits the app and never returns.
Not that I'm suggesting we go this route, but if an upvote only took effect after you upvote someone else, in other words, it was only contingent on a network effect, I could see upvotes being the core action.
But upvotes are not contingent, and that's by design. It can be part of the network effect, but not by itself.
Follows might be a better fit because follow-backs make sense. You can depict follows graphically, showing it as half-way complete, leading people to want to make them complete by follow-back. But is that truely a core action? Is that marketable? "Come to Steemit and click the follow button a whole bunch!"
Currently votes lead t annoyance :D it's not fun to upvote if you are looking for that either you need to have 100.000$ to upvote by which point it's either not fun(if you invested) or you've already done it 1mil times to earn the steem :D
Tinders approach should be ok, yes not centered around growth and retention but still a good idea to get a date and move on maybe suggest to someone else. Anyways you would get tired after the 10th fail or if you are into the one night stands you wouldn't care for tinder for any other reason than "genitalis" gene-tails lol either way that is the main crowd for the tinder i guess.
Back to the topic. Much like dash we need to have a few things going, what you said is cool
after that lOOOLLLOLOLOOL follow low :D that's the worst follows are mostly pointless for me at least. I vote for people an rarely do i go over my feed, I just can't. I follow the top creators I've found good people that interest me and the lowest "fish" for support. If you don't use mechanical addons it's impossible and its not made to make sense why follow 1000 people and upvote 40 :D or all of them for 1% it should be CREATE AND CURATE simple as that or go the trinity route of steem to support easy transactions, business and such, upvote for the creators/curators and the resteem for the social 2000 followers accounts :D I think we need to reallly step up the game.
The platform is leaking and people are thinking of ways to increase the price.
Unless we start bringing in value like the start was, there were many awesome people sharing priceless stories and everything making thousands. that sells then the upvote matters, unless we get back there it's a bunch of BS , value comes from the people. use that Come to Steemit to bring value to yourself and others. :D benefit by making the world great
The problem is as I've said steemit isn't twitter to post 1000 times a day and have 5k followers (if we take the current ratio of 5:1 active users to authors)
neither is it facebook where you like away and have your entire town in there.
It's mostly reddit with crypto. But it lacks the communication because the incentives are driving the price down. Everyone is running around rushing for returns while not really doing anything :D
The sad part is Steemit can rule all markets if it's formed correctly, we can have our YT our soundcloud our data centers for medical research or whatnot, businesses and whatever else, but it's like a world within itself and the economy needs to be fixed for that the platform needs to have a direction and that is so smokey right now. Used to be can't be censured now it's silence there use to be people that believe now it's waaay below par everybody wants gains but just rotates value and the currency gets inflated to devaluation. a 1.5usd to .11 is like a 1300% drop in just 4 months :D it's wonderful we are all here still, most companies are already dead by this time :D
This is interesting 😋 Thanks for sharing it.
A way to measure build their brand could be Steem Power. You could include any non-vested assets in the Steem wallet also, as they are part of author rewards. Increase might matter too, though I can imagine this being debated against.
However maybe that just shows that increasing Steem Power, and thus influence, is the core action of Steemit.
This might be problematic because of course it doesn't apply outside of Steemit, which building your brand does, so there's pros and cons.
Side note, I don't think a core action needs to be reduced to something a button could do right? Every post could be seen as directly or indirectly writing about your brand or promoting your brand if it comes from your brand, i.e. your account, and thus any positive reflection on that builds your brand.
True. But all of the best sites have figured out how to get the user to think to themselves, "Why am I here? Oh yeah, this thing right here!" And that thing is usually a simple UI component that leads to the core action. So, while I'm simplifying to a button, it'll probably still have to be a simple UI component of some kind.
Well what are the core actions on the other social networks, that might be a good place to start 🙂
likes = votes = payout, the problem is this isn't twitter facebook or reddit and has a backend that everyone should know. Newbies get on board vote 300 times and wonder where is their payout. Post once see 5 votes see they have to read 100 posts before they are a blogger and they can start building a following so after 5 years they can make a bang ? wellllll there is facebook like ,swipe people are there, youtube never lets you go facebook doesn't either :D
If I wasn't a fringe thinker I wouldn't be here. I like the content in youtube and I visit facebook once in a while, I'm just not a fan of endless scrolls and the bullshit they spill out, they keep their fanbase docile and make millions off their backs. So they promote the like and connection, but they sell you and sell to marketers nothing to like there. There is a chance here, but It has to be simpler either bring in the community together to house everybody, or yeah we can watch the voting ghost armies forever trails for life mining content rewards :D
Yeah, I looked into this briefly by looking at the about pages for various sites.
For LiveJournal, they want "self-expression" via publishing to be fundamental.
For reddit, I interpret it to be "conversation" via sharing, voting, and discussion.
For github (they often portray as a social network), commits and pull requests.
again we should be here to curate and create. Simple as that. I'm thinking along the same lines and will make a post with my ideas soon enough :) a UI uplift is around the corner maybe :)
Ohh, I like that. Curate and Create. There's gotta be a way to make it into a three-C-alliteration ... like:
first rules. the latter I wouldn't say so the first is a used word and it fits
create change and curate
check curate and create
both are terrible in my mind they sound great and all :D
but I got two most used words from a list :D
so it's not natural.
my personal experience was Join for the payout Stay for the people
Start with 10$ worth of Steem and Support what you love by curating creating and cultivating , maybe (what gives you value)
Actually sounds like a nice pitch :D
well we haven't got the third one yet, it is supposed to be coming so .. curate, create, community
I'm not sure if @krnel is intending to post here, but I just saw this from their recent post right at the end in the conclusion, in direct response to your post. I'll post a shortened version so as not to reproduce their conclusion in full, which is worth a read in it's entirety: