RE: STEEM Marketing for 2020| It's Going to be a Collective Effort...
I'm a super strong believer in Steem, but honestly I feel like it's still too early to go all in on marketing Steem. We have to work on the user experience here on Steem first, and I'm happy to see that that work is being done.
Communities are a huge step forward in improving the experience here on Steem and I definitely wouldn't do a large marketing push until Communities were live and out of beta. As well as being Communities being live on Steempeak and ESteem.
Even then, I think we should wait until SMT's are released as well IF Steemit can manage to stay on schedule and release them in Q1 of this year.
I think it's actually pretty easy to get people to try Steem. The prospect of "Earn from Posting" is a pretty easy sell. The hard part is keeping people here, because most that come have a bad experience and leave. It's much harder to get people who have left to come back, I think.
You mentioned apps like TikTok. Marketing plays a role, but an app like that is successful not because of marketing, it's because it's fun. People try the app, they have a good experience, they tell their friends, repeat, repeat.
That's where I think our focus needs to be in 2020. Improve the user experience, make Steem a place where people can have fun, find and consume interesting content, share valuable content and be rewarded. If we can get better at those things we'll start growing without marketing, then once we do start marketing, the growth will be a lot more sustainable.