Changing things around

I've been thinking about different kinds of concepts and how I want to brand myself here on Steemit for a while now. So once again, I'm changing things around. This time I've decided to change things quite significantly. You could say I'm making an almost complete 180-degree turn.

My previous idea was that I'd have many different categories for different kind of topics so that people would instantly know what to expect only by looking at the thumbnail. As long as they'd be aware of the categories of course.

"Real talk" for more serious discussions.

"Daily" for more casual topics and personal thoughts.

"News" for talking about recent, well, news.

You get the idea.

Problem #1

What I found out was that it was getting more and more obnoxious categorizing topics. It's not that it was getting that hard to categorize posts per se, but the problem was implementing the correct tone into the posts.

"Real talk" was supposed to be more of a serious and honest concept, concentrating on factual discussions about even the most controversial topics. Time-consuming category because of the fact-checking, research etc.

"Daily" was supposed to be the lighthearted "diary"-type section. Low chance of triggering people here.

The problem was that I found it difficult to properly separate the two concepts. I was constantly finding myself slipping into the semi-serious mode when writing "Daily" posts. You could maybe say that it was just not my thing what I was trying to do with the "Daily"-category.

Problem #2

This is not as concrete as the first one, but more of a speculation. I believe that by having the "Daily"-section as the known "whatever-category", it would give people less incentive to actually read them because they would know it's most likely not as interesting as the other posts. I don't want people to get into that mindset since I want them to read everything that I write.

The new approach and changes

First of all, there will be no more "hard"-categories. There will be different concepts along the way, but those will not be presented the same way that they used to.

New, improved thumbnails. As you've most likely noticed already, there was a new look on the thumbnail of this post. This is what it's going to look like from now on, at least until announced otherwise.

I still wanted to include my alias so that it would still be fast and easy to recognize my posts when scrolling through other Steemit posts. I also decided to always include a fresh picture of myself.

The reason for this is that I want my posts to feel unique and personalized. I believe this to be an effective strategy to use. This way I can also improve my image editing skills and include that to be a part of my routine, which I believe to be beneficial in the long run.

Now that I think about it, it's totally possible that the biggest reason for this might be that this will also give me a "good" reason (read: excuse) to take selfies without feeling deep regret and disappointment in myself =D.

That's pretty much it for now.