Your personal brand.

It's my day off from work and I wanted to do up a post. Normally there is something on my mind or something that I want to bring to the surface and writing is a great way to go about that. If you just start writing and see where your mind brings you. Throw it all onto the page and see what you are left with.

I have a great capacity for switching off and getting work done. It's pretty much a subconscious thing as my subconscious brain is a lot smarter than my conscious one. My writing tends to be a reflection of what is going on around me at any given time. I was thinking about my start on STEEM from a post by @acidyo that was asking about our earliest steemit memories. When I joined here first I knew nothing about crypto and had just been looking for a way to monetize my time online and my writing which had always been a hobby of mine.

I started off by sharing my writing and by joining lots of writing contests on the site. It's all I knew two years ago. It's also something that I don't do any more. My habits have totally changed from the time I started posting on steemit where it was entirely impersonal and anonymous writing.

With hardfork 21 approaching, there has been a lot of talk about where we will be left and the changes that will happen to the chain over the next few months.

For me onboarding and user experience are the first major stepping stones that we need to overcome. After that is a proper search function and then stats would be a huge addition. As soon as this hardfork is over it's time to use the development fund to start getting these basics done.

The majority of people coming in won't care about rewards splits or node costs. They will just want to log in and use the apps in a quick and easy way. If the apps are good then any rewards are a huge bonus. People will write blogs and play games all day for no rewards so it's going to be the user experience that we need to get right on the different sites. If we have that right then the backing technology can really be used to it's full advantage.

I don't care about the price right now other than to pick up a bit more STEEM and some @splinterlands cards to add to my collection.

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It also has me thinking about the changes to my behavior on STEEM over the past two years. While I am still no expert, after two years here I can say that I am an active part of the community with a fairly extensive knowledge of what is happening across the eco-system. The different people, apps, projects and news with regards to STEEM.

I have made plenty of informative posts over that time and now with the tribes can post a few sports related ones every week also. I have gone from writing fiction to sharing my opinions and knowledge on the chain. I will try and get back to writing for myself at some stage as it is the reason that I joined but there is so much happening that it's hard to do it all.

From changing my habits i fell into a few different communities as my knowledge of the chain grew. I joined @actifit and @steemmonsters. I'm part of a guild and a clan for some gaming and treasure hunting. I curate for @helpie and myself. I am part of the discussions in @steemterminal, #imagenius @innerblocks and @theramble. I'm no longer on the outside looking in but on the inside looking out. So,

• How can we grow the eco-system?

• How can we create a better experience?

• How can we help new users?

• How can we retain the old ones?

• How can we promote the STEEM brand?

This is what I will be focusing on. Proposals for the new development fund and pushing marketing for all the great apps that we have as part of STEEM. Others worry about rewards and bring negativity to the place but they are only hurting themselves. If we focused instead on what we can do to improve things it would show STEEM in a much better light than all the posts and comments fighting and hurting the brand even more. But that's just my opinion. We will soon have a new development fund and proposal system that I hope we can use to it's full potential and fix the issues that we have been bitching about for the past few years. If we get the system right then even those smaller votes will be worth a lot more than they are now and we all win.

The other change in habit is a small one but a massive one at the same time. Everything that we post onto STEEM is permanent and therefore part of our personal brand. Our brand is hugely important as it defines our activity and how we are viewed by others. It might not mean much now but if we end up with 50m users at some stage down the line it's the people here now that they will be looking at and basing their behaviors on.

Look how much damage has been caused to the STEEM reputation by just a few large stake holders with a terrible attitude that have driven away thousands of users between them with their fighting and their abuse. I would hope that the next generation could learn from those issues and do better next time around. We have the chance right now to buy more STEEM and more influence so that when the next wave of people land we will be leading the way. should we repeat the mistakes of the past or do it better this time???

The last thing that has changed and it's part of changing what I share is that I will now give a bit of myself personally. At the start I wouldn't even consider putting any personal details or photos on STEEM as it didn't feel like a safe space with all of the abusive behavior that was going on but even that mentality has changed.

I'm here for the long haul and don't mind having my face attached to what I am doing here. I restarted my twitter account to start sharing my posts there and have even gone back to facebook and started sharing some on it too. These are the sites where my friends, family and work colleagues follow me so doing this was no small step. I do it though because STEEM is where I expect to be for the next 10 years at least. This is where I will be posting my photos, my writing and my interests and where I would hope to see some of these people join in time.

Not quite yet as we still need to get the basics right, but in the next couple of years.

It's no harm however to set the stage and showcase some of what we are doing here before making the pitch to bring them in. So much has changed in the past 2 years that I can't even guess at what will be developed over the next few.

Don't give up, don't worry about the price and don't listen to the hate. There are enough great people on STEEM that we will emerge better and stronger than before the hardfork. We are still in the building stages and there will be plenty ups and downs to come but I am confident we will get there.