ANNOUNCEMENT: Steemit Exclusive Content (Finally an SEC you can feel good about)

It is highly doubtful that there are many Steemians that do not wish for the platform to expand and grow in popularity and use. After all, what better way is there to promote a return on investment for the time, energy and money invested by all? This may seem obvious to most readers, but realize that some people are shaking their head reading this.

Maybe they see the explosive growth of Bitcoin, and some of the side effects, and fear that mass adoption would destroy the niche they have found on Steemit. While this may be partly true, everyone including these people stand to gain a lot more from being on the ground floor of a rocket to the moon. I encourage all such thinking people not to give in to fear, and to resist the urge to try and keep Steemit where it is.

One of the beautiful qualities of the Steemit platform is that it strives to be more than just a cryptocurrency ecosystem. The heavy focus on content production and sharing provides a potential draw that other cryptocurrency platforms do not enjoy. And anyone that has worked in any content related industry can tell you that one of the biggest potential draws comes from exclusive content, or content published only to a particular platform and available nowhere else.

What I found doing a deeper dive into Steemit is that there is an abundance of exclusive content - or at least content I could not easily locate elsewhere - mixed with an abundance of shared or reused content. However, I could find virtually nothing being done to draw attention to the exclusive stuff. Searching using the “exclusive” tag returns few results with no consistent indicators that content is exclusive to Steemit.

If there are such devices in wide use by Steemians I cannot find them, and I have looked. If nothing else, this speaks to a discoverability issue that can easily be improved upon. Ultimately, I think exclusive content should be showcased with a menu entry alongside Hot, Trending and Promoted. But that is not up to me.

Focusing on what is within my control, I present the first iteration of some branding and conventions that I intend to use to indicate that particular content posted using my account is exclusive to Steemit:

• A logo to visually present the idea of Steemit Exclusive Content as “a thing”. This will be displayed in the post text, banner, or directly in graphical content where appropriate.
• Post titles will begin with “Steemit Exclusive Content:” and be followed by the creative title.
• Every SEC post will use the tags “secontent” and “exclusive” along with any other content appropriate tags. The first is not likely to be conflated with any ordinary subject, making it an easy way to search all SEC branded posts.
• Any video content shared under the SEC branding will be hosted on Youtube with an unlisted status. This prevents the video from appearing in Youtube platform searches. Only the Steemit link will be shared.

I dedicate this idea and associated designs to the public domain and encourage all Steemians to use them where appropriate. In fact, I would love to see some enterprising soul fork the idea and do better. If better branding and conventions are proposed I will be happy to make the switch, and congratulate the innovator.

The important thing, for me, is making exclusive content easier to find and identify. This will help showcase the fact that there is content on Steemit that is not available anywhere else. This increases the odds that someone will land here and, perhaps, choose to join the community. Every time this happens, everybody wins.

There are currently two content streams publishing to @loggiaonfire, both of which will have Steemit Exclusive Content set aside for special publication here.

Enjoy!