#Welcome new Steemians. As promised, some tips & advice to get you started...

As promised, here is a little welcome message and a bit of advice to my friends and fam just coming to #steemit. Welcome and thanks for joining us on this wonderful platform that is transforming many lives and changing the way people interact on the world wide interwebz. I initially planned to make this a video, but I'm a bit pressed for time now and I don't want to keep you hanging. Unless it's Hangin' with WHO, LoL! I bounced a few ideas off some other #steemians, as we call ourselves, and the following is a list of what we came up with to get you started in the right direction. Keep in mind that steemit terms are quite lenient and there aren't really any official guidelines or etiquette. Proceed as you will, but consider the company you want to keep and the energy you want to put forth. That being said here is my first bit of advice, join us on PAL-MSP. #Discord is a free chat client designed for gaming that steemit integrates well with. Consider it like your old Fakebook messenger but with a real purpose.

I said there are no rules here really. A "rule of thumb" that we adhere to is to refrain from upvoting a post until it's 30 minutes old. I can't explain why this works just yet, but it is less effective before this time. Leave it open in a tab or bookmark it for later. There are also bots that will upvote anyone you want to follow regularly at the 30 minute mark; we'll go over that later as you get more comfy. And don't be discouraged that your votes aren't worth much at first. Your participation counts for a lot. It does get noticed, I assure you.

That having been said, it's best to apply a less is more/quality over quantity attitude to your activity on steemit. Get more active in the appropriate Discord servers where you will meet the humans behind the blogs and find networking opportunities unparalleled in my 20 plus years on social media and chat forums. Use sites like Zappl and Sola for short blasts and pics alone like you would on fakebook and shitter. Zappl is built on steem and Sola is also decentralized and earns you crypto.

Don't go crazy right away, watch your bandwidth and aim for networking first. Bandwidth is something that took me a bit to figure out. I thought I'd come across a glitch of some sort when I was unable to post for about half a day. I asked Hive account@johnvibes if he'd ever run into this problem. He said yeah it's some sort of glitch. After doing some reading I figured out that steemit allocate bandwidth according to your SP and reputation. The more value you accrue, the more often you can post. It's totally fine, you'll need some time figure pick up steem anyway.

Use this link to track your stats; change the user name to yours, this one is mine (yes everything here is transparent, that's how blockchain works) - steemd .

This will also give you time to really find your niche here if you're unsure or undecided now. You'll start to notice that the more successful bloggers here are generally focused and consistent, not necessarily constant. Don't overdo it. We are all following one and other and sometimes follow certain blogs for fun. It can be a lot to take in. Let's work together, piggyback and cross promote. I'm currently putting together and marketing teem of experienced and novice steemians. We'll be up and running soon and you can get in on this endeavor, we need you.

Last but not least, as the mantra we throw around here goes, "Come for the money, Stay for the community". Don't even think about the money at first. We've been wasting our lives away on social media for free for far too long now with nothing to show for it. No money, no movements, no reform. Now take a fresh stab at it and when you least expect it, you'll either have some extra scratch to help make ends meet or be on your way to being a full-time steemian. Remember, with crypto you get exponential growth even if it fluctuates up and down. And if you can afford to invest you can do so now on the internal market or a reputable exchange. SBD is only about $3.50 and goes a long way internally. I'm still learning the ropes and I'm much happier than I've been in years. Feel free to comment and ask questions here. If I can't answer it, I can point you in the right direction. You and I are considered Minnows at present (not an official Steemit term). We can work our way through the ranks of dolphin on up to whale if we want to or we can continue to enjoy a wholesome social media platform away form that dreaded F-word we've come to despise collectively. I'm still learning to swim and find the right currents. So far so good. Let's navigate this ocean together...

Oh wait! One last thing. I know some of you are already savvy with this stuff so peep this. Know what SEO is? Search Engine Optimization. Take a look at my post's URL and compare it to the title. Your can always edit the title but the first time you post it that becomes embedded as the URL forever. Make your initial title with key words that Google will find. Search engines usually ignore words like A, the, of, for, and, etc. Then go back and edit the title to read like a proper phrase. OK, done for now. Happy steeming...