First of all I have to say that while I'm being very critical of the way how marketing of Steemit is done, I'm also thankful that at least something has been done: Steem Park. Congratulations and good luck for @hitheryon!
The crowdsourcing protocol doesn't work
A couple of months ago @steemitblog introduced a protocol for crowdsourced marketing. But I think we should admit that it was a mistake. With it's current UI, Steemit.com isn't suitable for this.
- Steemit posts are seen for a few hours and after that they are forgotten.
- Steemit doesn't show old posts so users can't go and look what others have proposed. Oldest posts for #growth-ideas have been published six days ago. #growth-proposals shows only three posts. #growth-projects shows zero posts.
- New users will be unaware of the protocol. It will be very hard for them to find it.
- Tags can't be followed. When somebody posts under growth-tags, nobody gets a notification. For most users this means that it's practically impossible to keep track what's happening with the growth protocol.
The result: protocol is unusable for marketing efforts of Steem/Steemit.
We need a real collaboration tool
Because Steemit can't be effectively used for crowdsourced marketing, we need a better tool. Something that is designed for collaboration. My suggestion is Basecamp.
The easier collaboration is, the more we will get results. If the barrier to get shit done is too big, nothing happens. I'm in favor of removing barriers to let ideas flow and to allow frictionless cooperation with different people.
Focus should be online
To be honest, I'm not sure how effective local marketing projects can be. I understand that parks and other real world projects are nice and fun, but they reach only a handful of people compared to successful online campaigns. It's just so much easier to get viral and reach a big audience online.
Soon the Steem blockchain will reach million transactions in a day!
My current Steem marketing project is #tothemillion. We are getting very close to Steem processing million transactions in a day. Steem is already world's most used blockchain when measured in processed transactions and hitting the million will be a huge milestone. That's something we should make use of in marketing – this is a chance we get only once!
I've been wondering how to get Steemit.com involved in this. I've messaged @andrarchy in Rocket.chat, no answer so far. @zurvanic doesn't even seem to be there and I have no idea how to contact him. We need Steemit's help with this, at least a press release is required. Also a post from @steemitblog would help quite a lot to make everybody aware of this achievement when it happens.
How to reach millions of new users?
Steemit has indicated it wants to bring in millions of new users. But I'm really skeptical how fast it will happen with the way of how marketing is done today. If you guys really want to achieve that, I suggest you rethink completely the marketing strategy.