Visibility on Steemit: Then Vs. Now

Of late it feels like it's impossible just to get seen on Steemit. The continuous influx of new redfish users (a step below minnow - basically almost completely new. I first saw this rank on Hive account@steemitboard and agree that it's an important distinction) makes it so that even the hardworking, human dolphins, orcas (between whale and dolphin) and whales almost certainly find it impossible to keep up with all of the users.

According to Hive account@arcange's most recent post, the combined redfish and minnow accounts equal about 80,000. The amount of dolphin, orca, and whale accounts is a little over 1,500. That means for every account that has a meaningful amount of power there are a little over 50 accounts that don't. Let's a lot of work for those accounts when it comes to new account discovery and vote distribution.

The really big problem is that it's difficult to be seen on Steemit. When I first got on in September of 2016 (about six months after Steemit launched) you could have hundreds of views and votes (granted many of them by bots) just by consistently posting quality content. No longer is that the case. If you make good content (especially if it's better than the vast majority of content) then you really only have to worry about visibility. But visibility comes with getting resteemed, upvoted (increases reputation and puts you closer to the coveted Hot and Trending pages), and commented on (the effects of comments are trickier to discern, but it's clear that they have one and that it's important over time).

Today, you'd better have a good mix of bid bots, friends on Discord (not necessarily a bad thing, but it has nothing to do with the quality of your content), and powerful friends. Consistency is no longer enough. Quality is no longer enough. I think that's rather a shame.

So, what is enough?

That's a great question. I will say this: regardless of how much you 'get' the system or how easily new users blast past you, Steemit does reward sheer persistence. Just keep moving forward and you'll always pull ahead of those who quit for significant periods of time.

Also, continue to experiment. To a very large degree it really is a visibility game. So long as you make even half way decent content, be seen and you win. That's about as 'social networky' as you can get.

It might be worth considering some sort of algorithm that made you more seen the less that you'd been seen recently (in the new tab). It'd change slightly based on reputation, with higher ranked users never falling quite as low as new users, but with new users getting true top priority more often. I think it's worth considering anyway.