Like they always say, sometimes life throw to us what we expect least and we just need to accept it as it comes. Today I will be participating in the Steem4Nigeria Community contest and be sharing my view how far this year have gone.
Looking back over the years, there are a whole lot of challenges I faced in my early days on Steemit which if I have the opportunity to go back, I can transform those challenges to make it quite much more better. I personally, there are some challenges I faced which I believe I should have make it much more better.
Definitely, this will be my first challenge. The fact that I was creating content back to back and it is looking like nobody is actually noticing, it was actually so frustrating for me massively that I was even thinking of giving up at one point of the journey. It was really overwhelming for me.
And of course there are a lot of reasons for that. The first reason I made it challenging is the fact that people who have the large voting power most times overlook the quality contents I created and most of the reasons I find it hard at first is because I also did not have enough followers that makes it difficult for me to gain attention.
The second reason is the consistency. At first I was getting so frustrated because after spending lot and lots of time and energy, I discovered that my content is not even upvotes and that really discourage me to even be consistent at the long run that I was thinking of giving up at one point.
Then lastly is the aspect of the understanding about the platform ecosystem. The first time I joined actually. I was finding it hard to understand how the platform works and that is because I was still new to it. I was understanding the concept of Steem power, curation rewards and also many more about how the platform works.
Talking about how Steemit actually improve for its users? Well I will say there are several means which I will just like to talk about. The first is that we should work on onboarding new users. Steemit should actually create a system whereby we can onboard more users to the platform. We can do that by either organising simplified tutorials and also we can even create mentorship programs much more whereby every question people need to ask and answer is been attended to.
The second one is that we should work on actually improving the content discovery. What do I really mean by that? There are a lot of users that are suffering and getting discouraged day by day because it is looking like their content are not been discovered. If there can be something's like the better search, the trending algorithm reforms and many more, it can help to enhance the discovery of content.
The last one I will like to talk about which I will say have noticed have started improving is the aspect of Community engagement. We can start creating some systems that can enhance community engagement like reward engagement in form of quality comments and even the community features also. All these three suggestions or recommendations can help to improve the platform.
Looking back, I will say there are several reasons that actually encourage me to keep going on Steemit even with the challenges. The first is I see Steemit more than just a platform but a place whereby I can get knowledge. Even if I was facing all these challenges I make mention of then, it was still motivating me to keep going because what I was getting from the platform is much more than even the challenges I was facing.
The second reason that keeps me going which I must be honest with you also is the aspect of the opportunity to earn rewards. The fact that I can be able to earn cryptocurrency just by creating contents and not just creating anyhow contents but contents related to my passion, this actually motivated me to keep going and keep pushing. Even though then it was a small payout but trust me it was enough to motivate me to keep going and keep going on the platform.
Now how I believe the community can help tackle those challenges is not really a big deal. They can first do it by actually welcoming and supporting newcomer's. We can create something called the onboarding assistance, we can create stuff like the supportive comments and even just create a system that will encourage the newcomers.
Another structure I believe the community can put in place to tackle the challenges is that we should create curation communities that will help.to actually discover content and not only discover them but also create massive engagement. We can also create more systems that will encourage sharing and reblog. By doing so, it will go a long way to also encourage a lot of community members to be able to notice the contents other users are creating. All these can help to tackle the challenges.
Like they always say, there is so much power in us coming together as one. Collaboration is actually very important if we want to tackle all these challenges I have listed above. I believe of users, the developers and even the stakeholders can come out together to work as one, it will help changes a lot of things actually. The first is that we should foster open communication. There should be a system whereby people can communicate their matters and issues most especially the users to the stakeholders probably if the user demands that there should be a new developments for the platforms.
The second way I believe collaboration can be fostered together is the fact that we should also try to make sure there is a system that will encourage collaboration between the different communities that exist on the platform. We can do something like the cross community projects, we can even do something like shared resources and even inter community challenges. All of these can go a long way to encourage working as a team on the platform.
I invite @damithudaya , @alexanderpeace and @mikitaly @edgargonzalez and @radjasalman and @goodybest to drop a very constructive comments on this post and also to participate in this contest.