I believe there is a story worth telling in all of us. Even though we can't all be full-time bloggers, journaling is a very healthy habit and sharing what we love is what makes life great imo :)
But yeah, STEEM is a place for everyone even if you're not "a blogger".
I've adopted the role of commenting. I spent an embarrassingly large percentage of my time as an adult on reddit and I commented almost exclusively, rather than posting.
Not to try to brag, but I made the Century Club pretty easily and without using any of the tricks that most people use to get there. I would just comment on what I found interesting and where I thought I had something worth saying.
I said all that to say this. In my experience, commenting adds real value to a community. Often times, good comments are what hook people into a subject. People want conversation, engagement, and relevant supplementary information to the post. It's inarguably a very large reason that reddit has done so well. And I'd argue that Steemit is woefully lacking in this area and would do well to repeat that particular success of reddit's.
In my admittedly limited experience here, there just isn't enough real conversation going on. I see many popular posts whose comment section is a barren wasteland. I see a lot of comment sections that consist of only a few, seemingly perfunctory, comments that consist of only two or three words without any real commentary.
I think that my contribution to the community here is to give people positive encouragement on their posts, to give them a feeling of accomplishment beyond just the Steem that they earn. And to make thoughtful, in depth commentary seem more normal to others who would mean to comment. To maybe help change what people around here think about commenting. That it's more than a means to scrape together a few pennies of Steem, but a rewarding part of the community in and of itself.
I couldn't agree with you more. It is not as much about content as it is about engagement in my view. People who create fruitful and productive conversations are the real value drivers to any website that relies on high time-on-site to be a success. Not to mention the community value when people come back to read comments and engage with users.
Right on. Steem is a great way to get people here but to get them to stay is going to take engagement.
They're going to have to want to come here to have something with more value than the little bit of Steem they can get. It certainly adds an extra element of fun, but not enough by itself.
People will figure out pretty quickly that the Steem isn't worth it if it just feels like you're at a sales convention where the conversations are all just a one way pitch with the occasional empty platitude.
Definitely +1 that, Everyone has something to learn/show/tell to someone else. Even the simplest things :)