Twenty-two days ago I remembered I had a Steem account. The price of Steem was booming and I was amazed to see that my intropost rewards(at the time being worth $21.91) being actually worth over $240 at the current rate. I also saw all the posts about people reaching 1000 followers in a month and people becoming millionaires in a few months. Since both the followers and the theoretical millionaires intrigued me, I set out to do the same. By posting and getting followers.
I must say I haven't become a millionaire, I am even less worth than twenty-two days ago; It seems that I am not that good at making posts, and simply do not have the time to make them. But I recorded the number of followers I had daily together with my activities on the Steem platform. Which gave me the following result.
Figure 1 The amount of followers and certain activities plotted in one graph.
As you can see, I started with 25 followers, it had been 4 months since I created the account. So I gained 75 followers in twenty-two days. As you can see in figure 1 I also gain followers on days I had no activity at all on Steem. So, the curious science fellow I am, I tried to think of a way to recreate the trend of followers. But I can't get a result that satisfies me. But I will give some insight in what gives the most followers, if that is something you desire of course.
Replying to introduction posts
From what I saw, around a quarter of the fresh Steemiters will follow you when you welcome them into the community. And by welcoming I do not mean saying:"Welcome to Steemit!" but a message that shows you have read and reply on what they just wrote. That is easy enough, since most people post pictures of what their hobbies are.
This is easier than replying to trending / hot posts, but if you want to earn Steem at the same time, this is not the best way to do effectively to earn followers and Steem at the same time.
Replying to trending / hot posts
In this category, the writer will probably not follow you, but others will. That is, if your comment is good. By this I mean reflect on the post and add something to it. Most of the trending / hot posts writers are so called whales, so an upvote of them not only rises your comment for more to see, it also earns you Steem! On the days I replied to these posts I made the most followers on a day. You should not try to go easy and reply on short posts, but reply on the lengthy "good" posts; "Good" posts are the posts you actually want to read yourself, because this makes it easier for you to engage into it.
This is a lot harder than just replying to welcome posts, but you will both earn Steem and (more) followers.
Posts
Making your own quality content is of course the best to make both Steem and followers. But making quality posts is hard, but if done correctly, make it worth it. I evidently am not good in making quality posts, or my posts require a different audience. So, do not use the data / ideas I post here if you can actually make catchy posts, because you will probably totally destroy my results visible in figure 1 ;).
This is harder than all the other methods, but if done correctly, this is the only thing you will have to do. I would advise you to still welcome newcomers and reply to trending posts, because it is fun to engage in the community!
Chat promotions
Whenever I made a post, I would also post it in the promotion channel and the channel which subject matched the post's subject. This will attract traffic to your post, and a few followers. But you will also attract people that will PM you to make upvote agreements. This is probably not the thing you want, but I wanted to tell you this on forehand; Most people will just post in the right channels, and it makes a nice place to see nice posts you would otherwise miss. I would strongly urge to always promote your posts in the chat, because it will make people discover you.
Conclusion
So if you just want more followers quick, you should reply to introduction posts, but bear in mind that a lot of new accounts will become inactive because a lot of people quit quickly after 2 or 3 "failed" posts.
If you want active followers, a bit of Steem and are not afraid of doing a little work for it, reply to trending / hot posts.
But if you want a ton of (active) followers and a lot of Steem, make your own posts.
Final words
I recorded my followers purely out of interest, I am not trying to make the perfect method of getting followers or Steem. I just wanted to see why and when people would follow me. Below this I will add another graph displaying growth and activity. If someone would like all the data, I will gladly share it, but it is really nothing special, and you could extract it yourself from the block chain; If you do that you should probably taka the data from popular users, which is probably better.
I would also like to say when I reference to followers, I do so not to make someone a number, but it makes the writing easier.
Appendix
Figure 2 Graph displaying the difference of followers and activities combined.
Here is the "Activities combined" a summation of all the seperate values except for followers seen in figure 1.