The Disruptive Nature of Steem- How to Refer People from Established Communities - A Practical Experiment

Sharing our passion about Steemit is not always easy. It gets harder when acting in a community (such as a forum) that is already established, because new ideas will have a very hard time on here. However, I still decided to give it a try, to show my fellow forum members the beatiful world of steemit. I'm sharing my experiences and especially my "instructions" on how to refer as many valuable people as possible to steemit, and I hope I can get some more likeminded people to do the same within their communities. It should be said that I am not any sort of staff on the forum I tried this with, instead I'm just a rather reputable "Senior" user. All clear? Let's get started.

Picture taken from unsplash.com, check them out!

Getting the "Elite" on your side

My first step was to approach the old, reputable members, especially those who I was in contact with already. That's actually a rather easy step because most of them are pretty smart and see the huge potential of steemit, and are willing to give it a try. These members are the backbones of the community, therefore i made sure to convince them first. You don't want to be backstabbed while promoting the cause.

In my case, there is a shoutbox for all people who bought the monthly subscription. Most old members are in there every now and then, talking about all kind of stuff, the perfect place to hook some people up.

This starts a process of worth-of-mouth recommendations, and the information will spread rather quickly.

Writing a thread for the masses

I already dragged some people over here, but I wanted more. Therefore, the next step targets the smaller users, because I'm sure there are very good writers and crypto lovers that would turn out as great steemit authors.
To get the attention of these people (and also of those unregistered guests who just stop by from time to time), I made a thread in a publicly viewable section of the forum. This is what I believe should be in the thread:

One or two phrases about STEEM
Explicitly explaining how contributing gets rewarded (as author, stakeholder in steem power and as curator)
Links to some currently trending posts as examples
A phrase about where the money actually comes from. I wouldn't explain this in detail, but rather link to an article like this one.
A short "getting started" guide, by linking the steemit signup page. Also, I gave my readers a small headstart by linking these articles which are a good starting point:
Securing your Account
Verifying your account and building your reputation
Contribute with your own content
I also gave them a hint on what to write first, a post in "introduceyourself", as I believe that's a good point for your first post as you'll receive some honest feedback.
Here is my thread as an example.

Be supportive as hell!

And now the fun part begins. Your main goal should be to keep the thread trendy for as long as possible. To do that, I regularly posted it as a status update and made sure to bump it up whenever I could. As long as the thread is still interesting for some people, there will always be questions, and there will be a lot of them, no matter how well written the post is. I received countless PMs, Skype messages and replies to the thread. I am convinced I explained the difference between STEEM, STEEM POWER and STEEM DOLLAR at least a hundred times. Still, it's the #1 priority to be friendly and to help people out. Not everyone understands concept of steemit, and a few people will also say this is a scam site.
However, stay nice. Nobody will join if you're being a jerk. Kill 'em with kindness.

You are not alone.

Now the initial step will pay back. You can't monitor your thread 24/7, but there will always be someone who can. If everything went good, there are already quite a few people who are convinced that steemit is the new big thing, and they will help you out. Not only in the thread, but also by discussing the topic in the shoutbox (in my case) and further spreading the word to reach people outside the community. And at the end of the day (or the week, actually), you will be left with a warm feeling of having achieved something good.

Let's talk numbers

As there is no referral system and therefore no way to track how many people I actually brought here, I can only assume that by looking at the posts statistics. As of now, three days after the release, these are as follows:

The thread has been viewed almost 2000 times, and the count is going up rapidly
I received about 30 PMs regarding this topic, and countless skype messages
I also spent a good 10 hours in total chatting about steemit with interested people
People are bragging about the money they earned, resulting in even further reach
From what I'm guessing, at least 100 people have given steemit a try so far, but as already mentioned, noone knows.

Greetings to all TBN members that just got here, leave me a comment ;)
#steemit #bitcoin #value #circlejerk #steem #steemhelp