Hi Everyone,
In this 2 part series, I want to discuss promotion of content. It is important to have a good quality product, service or in the case of Steem, content. Good quality content does not count for much if very few people see it. That is why promoting your content is essential.
In this first post, I will discuss promotion options relating to the Steem platform. In the second post, I will discuss promotion options off the platform, i.e. other social media websites.
Steem has several methods and tools to promote your content. Some of such methods and tools are as follows.
- Steemit paid promotion tab
- Steem.chat rooms where people can drop links and or engage with other users
- Steem DiscordApp channels, which offers similar services to Steem.chat
- Resteem services that have a large following
- Vote selling services (bid-bots and other types of bots)
Steemit paid promotion tab
To get content on the Steemit promotion tab, a user just needs to click the promotion button at the bottom of the post they desire to promote. The promoted post is placed on the promotion list based on the amount paid for promotion. From observation, to make it into the top 5 posts on the promoted tag, it will cost a user about 20 SBD. This is quite expensive, for the extent of exposure received from being on this tag. It is quite typical for posts to receive a payout under 1 SBD from being on the promoted tag. I would strongly recommend not using this service for promotion. Considering the lack of success of this tag, I hope that Steemit will soon remove and offer an alternative option to promote content.
Steem.chat and DiscordApp
Steem.chat and DiscordApp are not on the Steem blockchain but have channels that are closely associated with Steem. These channels allow Steem users to share content as well as engage in conversations. It is very difficult to determine the extent of the attention your content can obtain from sharing on Steem.chat or DiscordApp but sharing is free. Therefore, even if you do not draw a crowd, at least you will not be financially worse off. I would therefore recommend at least attempting to engage with the community using these chat channels.
Resteem Services
Resteems normally cost between 1 SBD to 2 SBD. Resteem services provide a good opportunity to reach a much larger audience. This is particularly true for resteem services that have a very large following. As evident from the screenshot above, resteemed posts receive a higher number of upvotes. Also evident from the screenshot as well as from scrolling further down the page, resteemed posts do not receive particularly high value upvotes or many comments.
To the best of my knowledge, view counters are currently not available on any of the frontends of Steem. This makes it very difficult to determine the number of views a post obtains from either Steem users or external viewers. I checked the resteemed posts upvote data on steemd.com. It appears almost all the upvotes come in around the same time. This indicates either the use of a curation trail or bots. Unfortunately, it means there is very little real exposure from resteeming through these services.
Vote selling services (bid-bots and other types of bots)
The mostly commonly talked about promotion service on Steem are the bid-bots. I have authored several posts relating to the use of bid-bots. My post 'Bid bots and the possible economic implications’ contains a quick an analysis of the promotion effect of appearing on the tags trending pages. The promotional claim for bid-bots is the added exposure content gained from moving higher up on the hot and trending pages. My previous analysis strongly indicated that there was minimal gains from exposure on the tag trending pages. I have repeated this analysis 3 months later to observe if a greater presence on these tags reaps results in terms of post pending payout, number of upvotes and number of comments.
I have used more and different tags than the previous analysis. These tags include:
- Art
- Bitcoin
- Blog
- Busy
- DTube
- Food
- Funny
- Life
- Spanish
- Sports
- Steemhunt
- Technology
I have screenshot the top trending posts from these tags while they were trending and then screenshot those posts again four days later. The screenshots reveal the changes in pending payout, number of upvotes and number of comments. See the screenshots below.
Art
Bitcoin
Blog
Busy
DTube
Food
Funny
Life
Spanish
Sports
Steemhunt
Technology
The number of posts using bots appear to have increased since my previous analysis. Success from using bots in regards to increasing payout is very limited. The increase in upvotes is mostly limited as well. Some posts have gained many more comments. This is a positive sign of increased engagement. What has been captured in the screenshots most likely overstates the effectiveness of the tags as a method of increasing visibility. It is possible that posts have been accessed from feeds or resteems rather than from the tags. This information cannot be obtained from the screenshots.
Overall, there appears very little benefit of placing high on the tag trending lists. Hence, there is very little benefit in terms of increased exposure from using bid-bots. The biggest draw to the bots is most likely the returns from the upvote. An upvote received from a bid-bot is expected to be worth more than the bid at the time it is made. Late upvotes sometimes result in a negative return. The return can also change before the payout of the post depending on the value of SBD (Steem Blockchain Dollars). If the price of SBD falls, the return from bidding could become negative. Currently, SBD is stable at US$1 but that does not necessarily mean it is pegged to the US dollar.
Considering the number of late votes and the unpegged SBD, there is a risk that the payout from the post may not cover the cost of buying votes. Upvotes obtained from exposure on the tags needs to cover the cost of the negative return. Evidence collected in the above screenshots suggests that is often not the case.
I did not extend my analysis to those posts on the all tags trending page (front page of Steemit). This is because very few posts can get to this trending page. To attempt to get on this trending page would require very high bids on multiple bid-bots. The cost to the community of excessive vote buying is also very high as the rewards pool is drained; this equates to less rewards to everyone else.
Combining strategies
I generally believe combining strategies is often the best approach. I strongly believe nobody should use the Steemit promotion tag even in combination with other strategies. The remaining strategies can be used to together but it is very difficult to come up with a combination that consistently works. The safest scenario is promote content using Steem.chat and the DiscordApp.
Another combination that could provide a positive return involves using resteem services and buying upvotes from vote selling services (i.e. smartmarket or minnowbooster) using an alternative account. The resteems inflate the number of upvotes. Smartmarket and minnowbooster upvote using the vote sellers accounts rather than a clearly identifiable bot. This gives the appearance the post has received votes organically. Using a different account makes the vote buying transactions more tedious to trace. A post with several, apparently high organic upvotes, creates the appearance that the post may contain higher quality content or at least content favoured by the community.
I do not consider this approach ethical because of the element of deception regarding the origin of the votes. However, a good content curator should focus on the merits of a post as well as the current payout before committing to upvoting or even downvoting. The reasons a post has a high pending payout should be of less concern. For example, if a low quality post has a pending payout of $500, the curator should downvote the post regardless of how that $500 was obtained. Payouts should align to the value a post brings to the community. If the community has this mindset, moderate ‘promotion’ using bots would be more effective than excessive ‘promotion’.
A better way forward
The options for promoting content on Steem are currently not particularly good. This is not necessarily a fault with Steem but a problem with the currently available interfaces and frontends for Steem. Effective promotion depends on how content is presented to its audience. An operator of an interface (i.e. Steemit) can charge users for better placement of their content. Many social media websites charge promotion based on the number of views or people reached on the platform. This is often done be inserting content with paid promotion into user feeds. This is typically done on websites such as Instagram and Facebook.
The removal of a general or all tags trending page would also help users reach their desired content faster and would enhance visibility of content. The image above provides a rough example of a front page that a Steem interface that could use to enable users to reach their desired content faster.
Conclusion
This brings me to the end of my post discussing promotion on Steem. This post is only the first part of this promotion series. In my next post, I will be discussing promotion off the platform and on other social media websites. Thank you for taking the time to read my post.
