![playbook.png](https://steemitimages.com/DQmX6NrYDsLHm7oJTrUXUKBDR6EkDBi6hbs21iBR8rDsF2Z/playbook.png)
[Source](https://www.salesforce.com/blog/2017/10/10-day-prospecting-playbook.html)

**What is your playbook for introducing Steemit?**

Feel free to respond as your own post and link in reply.

Here is mine:

I casually bring up blogging as a topic, and that natural leads me to share my blog with others. I don't say anything else.

Naturally, they see a dollar sign and get curious.

*You get paid for these posts?*

Yes, paid in terms of digital tokens, which can be sold on an exchange.

Common questions leading out from here.

*Where does the money come from?*

Stage 1 explanation: It's essentially funded by the cryptocurrency. 

Stage 2 explanation: Digital tokens are minted into existence, and then paid out to the witnesses (miners) and to the participants based on community votes. You can get paid for writing blog posts, commenting on other posts, and even a little from upvoting content.


*Why does it have value?*

Consider [this post]() about drivers of demand. Essentially it boils down to social media advertising and hinges on adoption.

*Does it cost money?*

No, it is free to sign up and free to use.

*Ponzi?*

See above about it being free.

*Do you actually get money, or is it this play money?*

Cashing out involves sending your earned tokens to an exchange and selling for your local currency. In the US, one can directly go to Bittrex. I use Bittrex to convert Steem to either BTC/ETH, send to coinbase and use GDAX to sell for USD. Many variations of this. But remember the point about future growth.

## Motivating Participation

The next set of questions concern a more troublesome topic, which is how to motivate participation. I don't really have a good answer to this.

### For bloggers or content creators

If they already like to blog, then this should be a no brainer: Wouldn't you like to be rewarded for your work? As it’s early, it's not difficult to get exposure. And on top of that, in the event that we reach critical mass, the token value will explode.

*Can I post content I own that have been published to other sites before?*

Yes, in fact as long as you aren't plagiarizing this is accepted practice. There's a plagiarism bot that comments on suspected plagiarists, but you can take steps to prove you own the content.

**What are the common barriers you see when trying to convince a blogger to try Steemit out?**

### For social media participants

What about for general social media participants? 

The platform has value even for those that are not bloggers. Comments are also rewarded, and upvoting is as well. And simple short microblogged posts can have their place too, though don't expect those to get as much attention / rewards. The community rewards effort for the most part (breaks down in the whale regime).

Spend a little time discovering more about the platform and the community, and you can be rewarded also, and maybe even join!

This doesn't seem so effective. Possibly it's just the network effect missing. 

*Why should I bother? Nobody is there!*

Just be patient. Now that Bitcoin is in the mainstream eye, it will start to turn to others. Steemit is a first mover in the social media space, and that will naturally be getting attention.

### For cryptocurrency enthusiasts

For people like me that are just cryptocurrency enthusiasts?

Go the route of “come for the money, stay for the community”. Or "just throw money at it" (less desirable for adoption).

*What are the properties of the cryptocurrency?*

Distributed proof of stake. Users vote on witnesses to mine blocks, and they are rewarded for securing the network. You'll hear the words *proof of brain* bring thrown around but that has less to do with the mechanism of achieving consensus for the blockchain, and more to do about influencing how the rewards are distributed.

Also user issued Smart Media Tokens are coming, allowing others to issue tokens behaving in a similar way (community upvote driven) and bootstrapped with Steem, similar to ERC20 tokens of ethereum. This will be a big deal, many applications are already planning to make use of these when launched (think variants of YouTube, Twitter, Instagram, etc).

Not really sure what other questions people ask here.

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Anyway, what barriers do you all see when convincing someone to join?