Crypto Coffee Chat Episode 9: Talking Delegation, Steempress & Promoting Steemit with @Fredrikaa

in #steempress6 years ago

Chat with Fredrikaa Steempress Founder.jpg

This is Number 9 in a series of blogs where I talk to a Crypto / Blockchain enthusiast over the internet, over a coffee, and this time it was an honour to have an evening chat with @fredrikaa who was calling me from Paris, France.

Introduction to @Fredrikaa

Fredrik (@fredrikaa) holds a masters degree in business and administration specialising in economic analysis from the University of Stavanger, his home town on Norway’s south coast. At the moment, he is fulfilling a lifelong ambition of working at the European Space Agency where he is currently based at the headquarters in Paris. His current duties are to help foster innovation and knowledge transfer about space technologies in Europe.

@Fredrikaa has been on the platform for 13 months where he initially planned to write about his passion, ideas and insights related to space, technology and economics and has been an active member of the #Steemstem community. During the last seven months, however, his focus has primarily been on building and operating @steempress-io, a WordPress plugin he created together with fellow steemian Martin (@howo).

I met Fredrik at the London Crypto Currency Show back in April where he capitalised on the opportunity to present his Steempress Project with co-founder @howo to an audience which included cryptocurrency experts and over 50 Steemians.
One of the things I distinctly remember is a vlog post from @exyle on the day where he was buzzing from being at the event and how he was excited to come across, for the first time, the new project “Steempress”. I guess this demonstrates that this was really the early launch and early adoption stage and that since April it has been really interesting to see the interest gather pace and culminate in a 1 million SP delegation to @steempress-io from @misterdelegation. There are now 2,000 posts per day and in excess of 1,415 users.

The Lightbulb Moment

Speaking with Fredrik it came apparent to me that he had a real passion from growing the value in the Steem Blockchain. It seems that the light bulb moment as to when he knew he would be involved in building a new decentralised application was around the time of seeing the successful launch of @utopian-io (by @elear) and the announcement from @ned around SMTs. It was these moments that gave him the knowledge that community orientated software contributions can be built, stored and rewarded on the Steem Blockchain. And so this led to Steempress…..

A Basic Intro: Steempress

Steempress is a plug-in that can be applied to any WordPress website to allow the authors to leverage the Steem Blockchain to gain access to new communities on Steemit and be rewarded, by the readers, for sharing their valuable content. Blogs can either be cross-posted instantly to the Steem blockchain, or the user can schedule their own delay for when the posts are also shared to Steem either for the sake of convenience or to help circumvent any issues with SEO for the website owner.

Please see the official blog post from Steempress which is here especially if you want to learn how you could be rewarded by Steempress as a quality user of the tool. And HERE is where you can find the WordPress plug in on the WordPress Website.

The promo-mentors team conducted an interview with @fredrikaa a few weeks ago (expertly interviewed by @evecab) which is captured here and this is a great source to acquire information first hand from one of the founders.

I don’t want to cover all the same ground which has already been covered very well by @promo-mentors and by the Founders of Steempress themselves. So here is what I’d like to talk to about following my evening conversation with @Fredrikaa:

  1. How did the Delegation come about?
  2. Steempress Rewards
  3. Promoting Steem & Bringing New Businesses & Entrepreneurs onto the platform
  4. Steempress Roadmap

How did the Delegation come about?

Recently I have seen some very desperate and clueless begging style delegation requests, and you just think, “are you for real”, why do people think that “anybody”, let alone an investor, will whimsically delegate Steem Power.

The delegation from @misterdelegation was not whimsical and was borne out of deep knowledge of the credible investees @fredrikaa @howo and their project @steempress-io.
@fredrikaa, who was an attendee at Steemfest 2, had already become acquainted with some of the Steem Inc team and it was many months before the delegation that Steempress started to gain attention through Trending and highly rewarded launch blog posts. So as matter of public record, over several months, there is evidence of the success of Steempress and its potential was becoming increasingly apparent.

Here are just a couple of top tips from @fredrikaa on seeking investment for a DAPP or a Business on Steem:

  • Build something tangible and demonstrate its application
  • Demonstrate how you are bringing new people or investment into the blockchain
  • Demonstrate how you can improve the Steemit engagement or user retention
  • Prepare a professional pitch deck

Steempress Rewards

I thought it was worth a mention that, bloggers using the Steempress plug could earn a reward for their high-quality post through a neat system of upvoting designed by the founders. There are a number of possible methods of receiving a @steempress-io upvote, these are still being perfected, but here is an indication of the methods Fredrik and Martin have designed:

Curation Trail Method: this is where they upvote steempress blogs which have been upvoted already by high quality curation groups such as @Curie, @SteemSTEM, @OCD, @travelfeed, @up-quark, @bebeth, @TheWritersBlock, @steemitworldmap and @sndbox – all of which have a clean transparent record and that blacklist plagiarisers.

The beauty of using community-based curators is that we are drawing on the wisdom of the crowd to delegate rewards and not doing it purely based upon Steempress taste and preferences.

Welcome Upvotes: these are for new users to incentivise and encourage them to continue in using Steempress

Randomised Upvotes: these are for authors which have been white listed, based upon, Steempress criteria of quality, originality, purposefulness, and engagement with the audience.

I should also mention that Martin and Fredrik are keen to know of other great community projects and curation initiatives that aim to reward good content and incentivise positive engagement to add to their already high-quality trail. So, if you think you can add to their list of high quality curators please contact them perhaps through their vibrant discord community: here.

Promoting Steem & Bringing New Businesses onto the platform

We talked about promo-steem and the @Steem-Ambassador model and Fredrik was very complimentary of the approach deployed by @starkerz and @anarcotech to have community approved Ambassadors. The @Steem-Ambassador project rewards high quality posts about promoting the Steem Blockchain and bringing new people and investment into Steemit. Again, the method of rewarding content is decided in a decentralised fashion by over 55 curators and so the winner and losers are not decided by a small number of individuals or bots.

Just a little pointer from me @cryptocurator (as a community approved Steem Ambassador) and @Fredrikaa:

If you have a WordPress website and are using the steempress plug in, and if you use your website to promote Steemit or the Steem Blockchain to the external world; why not do a high-quality blog post about it. If you use the #promo- steem tag and the steempress plug in and you have a high-quality post you could likely earn rewards from both @Steempress-io and @Steem-Ambassador at the same time!

Both projects need to be thankful there are people out there with SteemPower that have the foresight to invest in projects that will add value to the blockchain. So we have to be thankful in the case of these two projects to @misterdelegation (delegation to Steempress) and to @starkerz, @roelandp and @lukestokes.mhth (delegation to Steem-Ambassador).

I talked to Fredrik about promoting Steem and the best quote I have is:

There are hundreds of thousands of applications that could be run on the Steem Blockchain because anywhere where engagement and contributions can be financially rewarded by Steem Power has potential to work. You can imagine a front end where people engage and contribute and as result of their quality interaction they get a reward from either the App or even better from the community. New investors or businesses have to be able to buy into the idea that they can invest Steem Power as a fuel to drive behaviour which then they as an investor can profit from. We have to be able to prove and demonstrate how we can make profitable businesses run on SteemPower.

And another angle we talked about was that just gaining new audiences has a value proposition in itself:

We can talk to businesses about how we can use blockchain technology to take your existing content to new audiences and we have a clever way of finding out what type of communities like to read/view your content; oh and by the way, at the same time you can earn a bit of cryptocurrency.

I suppose we have to recognise that despite good evidence for “interest” and “curation rewards” the volatility in the crypto- currency market will be a turn off for some investors.

Steempress Roadmap

I was very interested to hear about the tech roadmap. Fredrik did talk about the three stages of the roadmap, with the first stage now 100% complete with the fully functioning cross posting service from WordPress to Steemit.

Second stage is going well, perhaps 75% done; this stage being about the infrastructure to allow community connection to create more engagement via a new search page. The stage includes improved content discovery and setting all the right parameters to their vote distribution.

The third stage is very exciting and will be partly dependant upon HF 20; this stage allows more integration back and forth between Steemit and the WordPress website and the fact that the founders would like to have Steemit sign up as an option for all Steempress plug in websites and I can see that this is a very exciting possibility to open up many new doors to bringing in new users.

I am hugely grateful to Fredrik for sparing his time, during a busy schedule of a newly launched business, and my final thoughts are a thank you to both founders for bringing something entirely exciting to the blockchain, everyone could benefit from their success as we all want to bring more people and investors into the blockchain.

You might like to join the steempress discord community: here.

SteempressOn!
@Cryptocurator

Here is the back catalogue of CryptoCoffeeChats:

Episode 8b | @FutureThinker | here | Promo-mentor & Steem Ambassador
Episode 8a | @FutureThinker | here | Discord Champion & Steem Ambassador
Episode 7 | @mcfarhat | here | Steem-Ambassador & Utopian Contributor
Episode 6 | @bitrocker2020 | here | The King of #TeamMalaysia
Episode 5 | @Danieldoughty | here | The Prince of Borneo
Episode 4 | @Pennsif | here | The only Dolphin in Wales
Episode 3 | @Steemitph | here | Philippines based Red Dayou
Episode 2 | @samstickkz | here | Stach hero
Episode 1 | @anarcotech | here | Yorkshireman & Blockchain Philosopher
The archive collection covers #Promo-steem work in the Ether, Malaysia, Borneo, Wales, Philippines, Nigeria, France and the UK.

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The pleasure was all mine to do this interview and I am happy to see the work that you are doing to let steemians have a platform to share their work and their opinions about everything Steem.

So much development is being done in different corners of this blockchain and it is important that more people are made aware of it as it reflects the true value and potential of Steem :)

Well said - I think there is plethora of great development projects - if I can help in anyway to "shine a light" on them (even if it a small torch)….. I will!!

Thanks for your support and all the best to you and Martin at this busy time :)

Nice piece of content which I had to resteem right away :-)
I love the format of your series, @cryptocurator! It's a great alternative to classic Q&As and really fun to read.

I've come to know @fredrikaa at Steemfest² and he's definitely one of the smartest people we have in the community. He's got a great instinct to discover business opportunities and provides the needed skills to implement them then.

To me the delegation to @steempress-io was a logical consequence of their hard work and commitment to Steem. Steempress is a great gateway for the whole writers and bloggers scene to enter the crypto space, so definitely of high value to Steem's future success and mainstream adoption.

Steem on!

Thanks for your support and thoughtful comment Marly - you are right what a fantastic easy access gateway into the crypto space. It's going to be a fascinating year for their project!

Another great interview @cryptocurator. I really like this "CryptoCoffeeChats" series that I am going to checkout the previous ones as well now. :-) @steempress-io is a powerful that can help us in Promoting Steem to the several talented wordpress bloggers very easily!

You are absolutely right- the founders are really talented and with an army of passionate ambassadors for steempress supporting them it will create a great combination to increase take-up from wordpress users.

Yes! I even revived my old wordpress blog and started posting through @steempress-io. It's amazing to get an extra boost on my posts through this and my blog is also updated. ;)

Wow! What a great interview and superb info!
I am one of the bloggers which my WordPress blog has been survived by the steempress plugin. Many many thanks for this great plugin, @fredrikaa and @howo!

I was about to let my wordpress blog left in loneliness and being expired since I am in love and busy maintaining my steemit and other blogspot blog.

Steempress is awesome! Thanks @cryptocurator for this superb interview. Thanks, Fred and Martin for the plugin!

Thanks for the kind comments Al. I'm really pleased that the Steempress plug in has give your wordpress website a "new lease of life" and look forward to seeing more of your posts on #promo-steem in due course...

This is good. WOW so much info and much to learn and put together a good plan to promo this platform well. thx for all your hard work.

I Have been using plugin Steemmpress for a few day @cryptocurator, and it's really help me who love in writing。Because I did 2 in 1 in my posted where publish on my Wordpress and Steemit so.

It's awesome of developer!
Keep steem on!

That's great to here positive feedback and we look forward to seeing you in #promo-steem!

Sure! I'll using my Wordpress Blog and Plugin Steempress to #promo-steem, soon.

Awesome interview! As someone who is in promo-steem, I am very excited about the possibilities of reaching new people with Steempress!

100% agreed and I will capture this precise topic in a supplementary blog this week as well. Thanks for looking this up - I know how busy you must be now you are also a moderator on the steempress discord channel.

A great Wordpress plugin would be a game changer and certainly do a lot for mainstream adoption!! This sounds fantastic!

Thanks for your comment - @connecteconomy hopefully it is increasing awareness of Steemit in all corners of the internet...

Congratulations! This post has been upvoted from the communal account, @minnowsupport, by cryptocurator from the Minnow Support Project. It's a witness project run by aggroed, ausbitbank, teamsteem, theprophet0, someguy123, neoxian, followbtcnews, and netuoso. The goal is to help Steemit grow by supporting Minnows. Please find us at the Peace, Abundance, and Liberty Network (PALnet) Discord Channel. It's a completely public and open space to all members of the Steemit community who voluntarily choose to be there.

If you would like to delegate to the Minnow Support Project you can do so by clicking on the following links: 50SP, 100SP, 250SP, 500SP, 1000SP, 5000SP.
Be sure to leave at least 50SP undelegated on your account.

Out of all the recent big delegations that I'm aware of, I think this is the only project that can genuinely help promote Steemit to bring new users in board and provide continous support to newbies

Thank you for your comment - it is good to see the positivity surrounding steempress...