The main reason investors steer clear is Steem's inflation. They assume their money will dwindle to nothing. That's even the ones who know it's approximately 9 percent per annum.
"five things that they may not know about STEEM, what would you say?"
The 5 things I would tell them:-
(1) Social media is evergreen, as human beings will always need human contact, even in the impending age of automation. This is not something you can say about almost every other field;
(2) Decentralized social media bypasses the fickle and random censorship controls of the corporations, a censorship the public is becoming increasingly aware of;
(3) Tokenization of social media is the most efficient way for brands to directly interact and engage with the public, bypassing middlemen;
(4) Tokenization of social media solves the problem of adblockers, which are increasingly making it impossible for brands to reach potential customers. Under a system of tokenization, potential customers willingly seek out brands to earn tokens, neutralizing adblocking;
(5) Tokenization of social media incentivizes content creators to directly interact with their fans;
Conclusion: Decentralized tokenized social media is going to be a fixture of the future, and Steem is the market leader, having engaged a community of 65,000 active users even in it's beta phase. With the coming of new dapps and SMTs and more honed growth incentives, the potential to moon dwarfs the piddling 9 percent inflation (which is the cost of onboarding users for free and running and incentivizing the blockchain), but has the promise of 100x to 1000x returns once incentives are properly alligned. :)