You are doing an excellent job hpenvy you definitely have the right mindset
Thanks. I know we all have different opinions on responsibility. I wish writers would do more research as Fuzzy mentioned, I just don't feel like we have the luxury right now. Bitcoin is challenging, the BitShares ecosystem from the outside tends to look like a hot mess. I encourage everyone to look for opportunities to make contact with writers. We want to build a list of people that look for excuses to cover our headlines rather than the other way around. Someone mentioned some outdated information about Litecoin, that's an opportunity. Hey xwriter, I was reading your article on the top 5 virtual currencies and noticed you posted some information that's no true about Litecoin anymore. A sentence or two and then a mention of BitShares would work wonders.
My outlook has always been that we should build our own content from the ground up. Why beg, plead, bribe and "educate" cryptocurrency news outlets when we can build our own?
Do we depend on outsiders? or do we prefer to depend on each other? To me...the choice has always been a simple one.
We have weekly hangouts and I have expressly made them available free of charge for anyone who wants to create their own content based on them. They can attend, record and report directly from our community server...
That coupled with initiatives like Null Street give us an amazing power that is largely untapped because we are too focused on reaching outside our sphere. When we reach outside our sphere, we add an extra hurdle for ourselves--converting non-believers. This is a huge barrier we don't need to concern ourselves with imho. If we build it...the non-believers will believe. Then we have killed two birds with one stone and we aren't here wasting our energy on "how we reach these people" because the answer is literally right here in front of our faces.
If people are here...they already believe. Why not utilize them? Why not lift up each other instead of reaching out to those who already have all their eggs tied up in a different basket?
To me, this OP could be much more effective for our cause if it were to ask the question "How can we build a broad-spectrum network of news agencies that out-compete the current ones in crypto?"
The infrastructure is ALREADY here...if only people would come together instead of trying to go it alone. There is a time to compete amongst ourselves--that time is not now.
I have a very different outlook which is fine. People can build internally or decide to wait for the big marketing push, I have no problem with choices. For me, I'm making the contacts as they appear. Do it alone? What do you think we've all been doing on NullStreet? Look at the weekly newsletter, there's no 'alone'. Coordinated efforts are developing because it's required. If I saw any type of formal marketing plan, I might have a different opinion. Until that project plan drops on NullStreet, I will get back to reaching out to potential contacts.
Marketing has already had a number of good conversations from companies we've contacted that might not have decided to contact us on their own. The writer wrote back, I will send follow-up information. Everyone has a different approach, this is mine. As long as there's measurable results, the path doesn't concern me as much.
I do not mean to say you are ignoring people or anything like that. I am also not saying we shouldn't reach out. I am simply saying that Null Street COULD be a place like Coindesk for bitshares. I am saying I see no posts from the community talking about the vast amounts of content we already have in place that is not being used.
I LOVE that you are making contacts and I think it is exceptionally valuable...but if we are expecting outsiders to be the ones writing these articles we are fighting an uphill battle where we do not need them! How do we educate? We educate with content. Not by asking others to produce content (especially when they are more than likely invested deeply in other projects). Of course you can't be expected to do this (write this content)...you are only one person and you are obviously very busy lately (awesome efforts, btw).
Please do not take this as a personal attack or an undermining of all the Null Street Marketer's efforts. That is not what I am saying. I am saying we have everything we need right here to educate (and as such, the OP would have been more effective if it would have focused on how we use bitshares' ability to bootstrap itself!). The people currently writing articles will see
little reason to join our cause until they have incentives to do so. Those incentives can take the form of a carrot, or a stick (or both...which is likely the best route).
Maybe a delegate could be used to help pay content contributors? People who write articles could be paid a flat fee if they are accepted? Maybe every month we have the community vote on which articles were best and they get a bonus payment? (or better yet, maybe the articles that receive the most hits/comments ON NullStreet get bonuses)
In this way we bring outsiders in and (imo more importantly) reward all the people on our forums who have read through thousands of forum posts and spent hundreds of hours learning about this ecosystem...because they are experts! Over time, they have no choice but to join us because if they do not, they will cease to be relevant. Better yet, if they DO, they will be paid by a delegate that was voted in to pay for said content.
Currently, it is people who run pump and dumps and manipulate markets who own crypto-media (and pay the current content creators). We have an ecosystem that is truly different (and amazingly capable of ethically providing incentives). LETS USE IT BABY!