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Hi Steemit!
My name is Alain. I am a marketer and musician living in Cape Town, South Africa. I recently joined Steemit and have had about a week or two to learn about the platform, big thanks to 
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1) Buy/Invest in STEEM coins.
Disclaimer: Your financial decisions are your own. This is only my opinion. I am not a financial advisor or professional trader.
STEEM is the coin that powers Steemit. With little to no STEEM Power in your account, your posts will not reach many people. You can purchase STEEM from Poloniex.com Bittrex.com or even within the Steemit platform itself. Once you have powered up your account with your STEEM coin your posts will get far larger rewards and your influence on the platform will increase. So please take some time to look over the points below to help you improve your Steemit experience and returns.
2) Comment on users' posts.
This is one of the MOST undervalued actions on Steemit. If you comment on other users posts they might upvote your comment which will reward you with more STEEM and SBD to power up your account. Not only do you get upvotes on your comment but your account will also be viewed by more Steemit users. The more people who see your comments the more chance they have of following and upvoting your account.
Make sure your comments are valuable/witty/funny/smart. No one cares for a comment like: "Hey please follow for follow thanks". That example is low effort. Provide insight into the piece, empathize with the user on a personal level. It might be obvious, but actually BEING GENUINE goes a long way. So read their posts, digest the content, and provide some feedback. Other users will also be more inclined to upvote your comment if they were thinking the same thing.
3) Follow the Active Whales.
See the biggest and most active Steemit accounts here: https://steemwhales.com/?p=1&s=power
Take a look at the above link. Look at who the biggest whales are on Steemit. Not just by the amount of STEEM they have, but also with how active they are. The more active the user is, the more change they have of following you back, responding to you or outvoting your post/comment. You can also earn curation rewards by upvote "Whale" posts before they get popular! So keep an eye on your feed and make that curation coin.
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4) Post Valuable Content. (No more than 3-4 posts a day)
CONTENT IS KING
Top Steemit Posters in the last 30 days: https://steemwhales.com/trending/?d=30
Take a few minutes to look over the posts of the top 50 trending articles in the last 30 days. Look at what those users are posting, look at how they are structuring their posts. The more information and value you can add to your post, the more the community will appreciate and reward you for it. Do not copy paste from other sites, this is not appreciated by the community.
Note: If you post more that 3-4 times a day your rewards will get smaller and smaller.
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5) Tell your Friends.
TELL YOUR FRIENDS ABOUT STEEMIT.
This isn't a competition, we must work together to make Steemit the number 1 platform for future social networking. This will benefit everyone.
So that is it guys. Those are my 5 tips for now. I'll definitely be looking at posting A LOT more now that I have gotten my head around the platform. It truly is an amazing way to reward content creators.
Thank you for your time <3
Till next time!
Alain