Confessions of a Steemit AddictIt's been quite an adventure this past two months: a combination of lack of sleep, thinking outside of the box regularly and figuring out different ways to make this platform work for me and the community. 893 posts and 179 followers later, I have more of a clue than I did when I first hopped on and thought I'd be a curation god. There have been plenty of hard lessons learned, and plenty of friends made. This article, I will break down for you a bullet point of things I have done, things I have learned and my optimism and pessimism behind the platform as a reflection of the past two months.
- BE GENUINE AND WRITE ABOUT WHAT YOU KNOW AND MAKE IT ORIGINAL
This was one of my original lessons on Steemit that has treated me well. I was frustrated because as a guy with a 25 reputation grade at the time, I was curious as to why no one wanted to learn how to make my famous meatloaf, hear about how I used mangoes to intensify certain experiences and other stuff that I felt was genuine and of value. Truth is folks, it's a lottery ticket as a new guy to hit a whale.
I got frustrated and was looking at any article I could and would try to figure out how to make a post out of it. I'm talking borderline plagiarism. DO NOT DO THIS! Just as a whale may find your great original post and hit you with a lottery upvote, dolphins, big minnows and whales alike may read your garbage and remember you post absolute crap and never look your way again. So, a lil advice, stay away from the garbage and keep putting those lottery tickets out there.
- GET FOLLOWERS THE RIGHT WAY, AND A LOT OF THEM
Getting a large number of followers is a key to getting views, getting views is a way to get votes, and getting votes attracts dolphins and whales, folks. As my followers grew, so did my success! There are right ways and wrong ways to get followers. Sure, you can scour the introduceyourself category all day and gain a bunch of 25 rep individuals who may never visit the site again, or you can take different approaches to individuals that will look at your content for what it is, comment and upvote on a regular basis.
a. Actually read the stuff you upvote, and treat your upvotes sacred. When I upvote something, I always click on it and give it its due time. In order to do so, I always find something in a category that I am interested in, such as money, anarchism or politics. If someone writes a catchy headline and posts a video with no narration of their opinion of said video, do you think they really deserve an upvote? A comment? Hell, they didn't give you a comment from the get go. Let it pass and look for a better article to spend your upvote on.
b. Begin following people with good content. When you do this, not only do you regularly see their material on a regular basis first in your feed, you'll also become a regular contributor to their articles. Enough good comments, they may take a liking to you. With that, dialogue and learning starts. All the sudden, your masterpieces from your first week really look like the dogshit they were, and you set a higher standard for yourself. Like Yogi Berra said "You can't fly with the eagles, if you're hanging around with a bunch of turkeys"
c. Comment well, but only when you have something worth saying. While everyone likes the occasional "atta boy" or "good article", those comments wreak of desperation. If you are going to comment, at least vaguely refer to some part of the post that you found interesting, or question the author, in a respectful manner, of course. I was debating someone about abortion on their post who had the opposite opinion as mine, but due to the fact that I added value, and was respectful, I got an upvote of my comment from the counterpointer, and it fetched me more than some posts I put out there!
- Go to a Steemit Chatroom or Team Speak 3
I find this is the best way to not only commisurate with your fellow Steemit community members, but to also hear some voices and debate about everything under the moon. (And get to promote your latest, greatest gem. Go ahead, get started!
However, waaaay better than that is to take a Saturday night, have a few adult beverages, get yourself a good headset (Walmart has really good quality gaming ones for under $40 bucks, and speak live to really cool folks!
The following post describes waaaay better than I can how to get started. And when you're halfway there, all the folks in the live voice chat are very helpful.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@fyrstikken/introducing-steemspeak-com-a-voice-community-and-24-7-radio-station-for-steemians
Well, hope this helped some of you get started and helped you to move in the direction you are looking to go! Upvote, comment, and by all means, promote this post if it was helpful to you. That's what keeps this train rolling.