Community Building and the Importance of Engagement!

As I finished up "capturing" a bunch of numbers and information from 2023, I found myself pondering the inevitable question of "what could be done BETTER?"

It Looks Like It's THRIVING!

In less than 30 days, I will have been part of the Steemit community for seven years! In the course of those years, we have definitely seen our share of ups and downs.

When I think back to the best of times we experienced, the thing that has always stood out for me is that the level of engagement on quality posts was very very high. Much higher than it is today.

We are making a bit of a comeback, to be sure... but we were still far from the days where it was not unusual for someone to get 15-20 comments on their post. I even remember posts where I'd get as many as 40-50 comments!

Of course, it's easy to look at that and just declare "Yeah, but that was during a time when Steem was $1.00+!"

The part of such an assertion that is true would be that higher priced Steem meant more content creators were able to reward good comments with upvotes without running out of voting power. Whereas it might sound like a cop-out to point at rewards... that is ultimately what draws people to Steemit and encourages them to participate.

In remember in my earliest days, I was far more successful as a commenter than as a poster of content. I could spend an hour of more building a pretty post and be rewarded with a total of 0.05... and get the same from creating a good reply, on the fly, in a few minutes.

Of course, it was also helpful that there were a number of engagement contests, not just contests of creating top level posts.

Another feature we had was the "Curation and Engagement Leagues" — run by a community member/witness — which took the "gamification" of engagement to a whole new level! And that's an important aspect of community building... it may sound lame, but people (most people, anyway!) love seeing their name on a leaderboard.

Turning the whole social posting experience into more of a game certainly did a lot to make things around here seem like they were thriving.

Of course, I can't say that there weren't also a fair number of "system abusers" as well... but I think that's almost inevitable.

The important part of the picture is the fact that lots of activity on posts tends to serve as encouragement for those who might be "sitting on the sidelines" to get going on their own blogging journey.

Moreover, if you are someone on the outside, looking in and you encounter what seems like an active and vibrant community, you're a little more likely to look at it and think "You know, I want to be part of that!"

That is — in a manner of speaking — how I ended up joining!

I don't know what kind of year 2024 will become, but I am looking forward to it! And I'd like to think Steemit could become a more actively engaged community, again!

Thanks for stopping by, and have a great remainder of the first week of 2024!

How about you? Do you think engagement matters? Do you often leave comments on people's posts? Do you think rewards are important in encouraging people to comment more? Leave a comment if you feel so inclined — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!

(All text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is ORIGINAL CONTENT, created expressly for this platform — Not posted elsewhere!)

Created at 2024.01.03 00:12 PST
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