Steemit's marketing opportunity as a gateway to cryptocurrency

I recently wrote about what #SteemitIsToMe. There are a lot of things this platform means to me, but one of its biggest impacts on my life has been the platform's ability to introduce me to the bigger world of cryptocurrency.

And I don't think I'm the only one who has had this experience.

Image Source: Pixabay

I'd be interested to see solid stats behind this, but my prediction is that newer users (2017) are more likely to have no previous cryptocurrency background than many of the long-time Steemians (who have been with the platform since, or prior to, July 2016). And, if my prediction is true, I believe this trend will continue to increase. In other words, more and more people will lose their cryptocurrency virginity to Steemit.

Which brings me to the proposed marketing message:
"Pop your crypto cherry with Steemit!"
(Just kidding)

Steemit has used taglines in the past such as "money talks" or "your voice is worth something," which is accurate... but I'm curious if there's another opportunity here.
The timing

Funny enough, the original Steemit homepage message sort of captured what I'll be suggesting, but I think there's a better way to do it (and I think Steemit used the term "blockchain" before the masses knew what blockchain meant).

When I joined Steemit, the image above is what the home page looked like. At this point, I had no idea what "the blockchain" was (feel free to laugh at me). I signed up because a friend of mine insisted that I check this platform out. "You can blog and make money," he said. But I was incredibly skeptical. The message "Welcome to the Blockchain" did nothing to entice me to join; rather, it almost scared me away. But I gave Steemit a chance. And I'm glad I did.

People have shared different opinions of what Steemit's homepage should be, and it has changed a few times over the past year-and-a-half for a handful of reasons. To be clear, this blog post isn't my opinion about what the homepage should be. It is merely a suggestion of one way the platform can be marketed elsewhere (to drive traffic to Steemit and grow the user base).

In the early Steemit days, the challenge was to teach the average person who had no knowledge of crypto that this thing you received on Steemit called "Steem" or "SBD" had real value, just like USD. The ideas essentially were:

You can make money by blogging on Steemit
What other social media network pays you to post your thoughts?

These are good messages, but by focusing solely on the fact you can be financially compensated, I believe we're missing out on the way that you are financially compensated. Being paid in Steem instead of USD is a good thing.

(And that is based on timing, because I don't think this blog post would've been as relevant a year-and-a-half ago as it is today.)

What perhaps was once a pain in some people's minds: "Oh man, I've got to take this weird "Steem" and trade it for Bitcoin then trade it for USD to use it!? What a pain!" ... is now shifting to: "I want to invest in cryptocurrency, but how do I trade USD for Bitcoin? And they're going to charge how much in fees to do that!?"

I base this on anecdotal evidence from the conversations I had with friends in July 2016 vs. the conversations I'm having with friends today. "I've been hearing more and more about cryptocurrencies, but I'm not sure how to invest," I've heard several friends say over the past couple of months. Or, "I want to invest in cryptocurrencies, but I don't have any money saved up right now." In both scenarios, I've responded with, "You should check out Steemit."

If my anecdotal experiences and predictions have any truth to them at all (I'll let you debate that in the comments section), then we may have an opportunity to harness the fact that Steemit is a place where content creators become cryptocurrency investors. And they can do so in a simple and (fairly) user-friendly environment.

I'm not suggesting we drop everything and make this Steemit's only marketing message. But in my opinion, it should be part of the value proposition. Especially when we target people who have more time than money. Because there are many examples Steemians who utilized their time, worked hard, and have had success on Steemit.

Now, those people are not just successful bloggers, they're also cryptocurrency investors.