Hello Steemians,
I've been on Steem for 2 months now and it's been great, but I've noticed a lot of you can use some help to so here's some keys to succuess. This perspective is partially shaped by my decade plus experience, Social Media Marketing Skills, Marco Economics, and my User Experience Design Background.
1. Content
In order to succeed on any social network you need content. Preferably your own original content that either came from your inner creative or thru documenting your journey.
I highly recommend you find your craft and let your creative flow onto Steem in order to create a nice grounding for your page and profile. For example, I've always been good at Art & Photography, so this became my base to start since it was the most natural and easiest for me. In my first month I posted approximately every 24 -36 hours of my own original content just to hit to ground running.
I've noticed some people like resteeming a lot, but on Steemit I don't believe this is the most beneficial to you unless you're entering a contest and following the rules to entry. You don't make curation rewards from resteeming. That orginal author gets possible higher rewards through higher awareness.
Some people resteem friends from the real world, which is great too, but you must remember in order to succeed on Steem's Social Network you absolutely either need original content or to document your journey.
There are other ways for a beginner to succeed, but this is the most beneficial way. Whether it was the infancy of Youtube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and so on a vast majority of the big name influencers today got their start by showing their creative to the world and/or documenting their journey.
Steemit and the various other Steem Blockchain apps are backed by your creative content and increases in value as the number of valuable content grows alongside the number of active users. This means the your content will become more valuable over time as your reputation and following grows.
2. Community
The community has been my focus since I started Steemit because engaging with my following and the community means a lot both to me personally and the overall Steem blockchain. Here on Steem you will find Users ranked via Dead Fish, Red Fish, Minnow, Dolphin, Orca, and Whales. On Busy.org you can see this on any users profile page. Knowing the user levels will give you a better understanding of where you should focus some of your time.
If you travel, find a Dolphin, Orca, or Whale whose content you like and wish to model yours after. I'm not saying copy the information but rather the template or style of the post. This will make your own posting structure easier to create.
Still, the main reason to get behind a Dolphin, Orca, or Whale is that by engaging with their content you could even higher curation rewards by commenting and if that comment is upvoted by the Dophin, Orca, or Whale as well as the community.
It only benefits you to engage with the community and showing gratitude. If you just leave a comment like "great post" or "nice photos" you most likely will be passed over. That doesn't work well here on Steemit. Give maybe a sentence or two. Nice and sweet. To short comments do not provide value to the post nor community, so why should the poster give you a reward.
As for Self Voting many debate this, but I am more against it than for it. While I think it's ok to self vote your post here on Steemit I don't think it's ok to self vote your own comments. This is frowned upon in the community just as much asking someone to follow your or "follow for follow"
This is not genuine. This is not the Way.
Self voting your own blog post I consider more like a signature, whereas upvoting your own comment I believe takes from the community selfishly as well as you may not fully understand how the upvoting system works. It's ok. We've all been there.
You should be using your upvoting power mostly to upvote quality content in the community, not your own comments while asking someone to follow you.
Each Steem user initially only gets about 10 full Votes per day before your Voting Power can needs to recharge. Steemit gives you the option to choose the percentage of Voting Power once you become a Minnow (~500+SP). I prefer to use Busy.org in this matter because it immediately gives you the option to control your voting power. If you're running out of Bandwidth a lot this may be your solution other than Powering Up. You can go from having 10 full votes to 100 partial votes if you use lower Voting Power Percentages.
Besides the bigger fish I recommend hanging out in the #IntroduceYourself tag community. Everyday there's tons of people signing up and making their way to Steemit via the "Crypto Boat" as I call it. Many new users are most likely to follow you if you're genuine and provide them value while giving a welcoming greeting. Give them a helping hand.
Perhaps you tell them about the Peace, Abundance, and Liberty Discord Channel or mention the Steem blockchain apps to help bridge the transition for them. Do it in kindness and generosity. Not for the upvote. Either way you're giving value and people will start following you.
Whether because of the base foundation of content you've made for your blog, for your gratitude, or even your insight people will slowly become your ally. Trust me my friend. Everyone wants to lower this learning curve as fast as possible and your helping goes a long way.
Engaging with the Community while simultaneously playing for Legacy and not money will take your account to the Moon in the long term.
3. Consistency
Consistency is something each one of us must find, but I will say unless you have some amazing plan posting on your blog once a week or once per month won't cut it. Social Networks always favor posting daily.
Whether the algorithms prefer this or the community it's has become very clear over these years heavily immersed in social media that Daily Posting is preferred. I mentioned earlier in this post how for my first month I aimed to post one post every 24-36 hours ideal. I believe this is a doable goal for most. Especially if you're already on other social networks.
Why do you need to post so frequently? Well, simply because your account won't nearly grow as fast. I've noticed many Steemians following the 1 post per day rule or having daily topics that rotate each weekday. This may aid your cause. My favorite are the contests from 
Remember, humans are simple creatures. We like simplicity and familiarity. If you post on a schedule your following on a subconscious level will start to inherently look forward to your posts. Some even seeking out more of your content to help lay them over. This is why Content and Community are very important keys to success of Consistency.
4. Bots
Bots are a highly controversial part of the Steem ecosytem. Many see them as either inherently good or bad for the community, but the are just tools and like most tools they can be used for both alignments. I personally have been using bots off and on since the early 2006 Myspace and Youtube days. So I have a really good understanding of how they've been leveraged for success as well as what type of bots to look for.
Still, I've noticed on Steem not all bots are created the same. There are Contest bots that aims to gamify Steem but building your XP and tag trails. Some are bidbots that help give you promotion and Trending/Hot/Active/ Community visibility like @Appreciator or @BuildaWhale.
Others like @Qurator is a curator that gives back to quality content daily while bringing along it's curation trail. A curation trail being a following of people that will support a post just because the Head Curator did.
Some bots are nearly independent roaming the Steemian world like S.A.H.R.A. which through algorithms they're try to predict highly valuable content, upvote, and aim to bring it's curation trail as well. Then there are bots like Cheetah which through its AI programing seeks out plagiarism and unoriginal content.
Still, most have a purpose and I would not consider spam being that they are following their programming while providing some form of value to the community.
Now I am not saying all bots are good or provide you with an ROI, but they are not holistic bad. Some are just at different stages in their development like the experience/reputation gain with humans as we age.
I'll go deep into the ROI and details of Bots later on another blog, but when chosen correctly they work. You just have to make sure the bot has enough voting power to do the task you want it to do.
For now what I want you to remember is that bots aren't purely spam. Spam is invaluable content and most bots from what I've seen are contributing or trying to contribute by following they programing. The same as us human. Still, you must be different.
Be Original. Bots have their place here, but so do you my friend.
You're a human. Be human.
5. Investing in Steem
On Steem you have the opportunity to invest your Time and/or Money to build your Steemit account. While just investing your Time is good I highly recommend you accumulate more Steem. Steem is beyond undervalued.
We are the faster blockchain cryptocurrency backed by a social media experience utility while still being the most scalable and one of the most secure in the world. Be proud of that and acquire as must SBD and Steem as you can afford.
Most people will tell you to Power Up all you can as fast as you can to achieve this.
I don't fully subscribe to that train of thought. While I agree that you should acquire as much SBD, Steem, and Steem Power as possible you need to think bigger. Like with business or like a brand. Steem gives you the chance to make your money work for you. While I will be going into my methods later I will give you a brief synopsis of how my SBD/Steem works to my favor.
Let's say I have $25 SBD. Instead of Powering Up immediately I use the $25 SBD to boost my articles to get more visibility and the higher chance to be put on the Trending/Hot/Active pages. Many of post have made it on these pages multiple times and this was intentional.
-I give 25 SBD to a Bidbot like @Appreciator or @Buildawhale. The Bidbot knocks up the value of my blog post to about $55 SBD.
-Now about 25% goes to Curators for their reward.
-My Authur payout would be $41.25 SBD, which already gives a ROI (Return of Investment) of 1.65X.
-Meaning I made 1.65 Times the money I put in.
-I rarely do 100% Power Up because it isn't worth it as long as the SBD is above Steem. Why? Because you can by Steem with the SBD and with the SBD at a higher value you will always get more Steem.
-For our $41,25 I do the 50/50 pay out. Half turns to SBD and other Converts to Steem Power.
-Creating $20.625 & 6.21 Steem Power..............if Steem = $3.32 USD
-Let's think about that for a second. 25 SBD @ $3.32 Steem is only 7.53 SP.
-With the 50/50 Bot Circulation you get 12.42 SP ($20.625 SBD + 6.21 SP)
I get Visibility, Awareness, AND you get an additional 4.89 SP = 16.23 USD to my account for FREE essentially. This is one of the many ways Bots can be used to help grow your account. It only benefits you to use some of these tools. Use bots with time out older than 3 days at your discretion. If you use a bot on a post after the posts 4th day you could be flag by a Whale or the Community. While I don't think the flagging is right per say I understand it.
Post for bots should be mostly original content though or you may be blacklisted (banned) for abusing the bot.
I hope this helped your journey and made you that much better of a Steemian.
Until next time my friends. Much Love.
-Nation
Name: Na'Shawn Jordan
Alias: Nation
Age: 28
Location: New Jersey, USA
Specialty: Art & Design, UxD, Photography,
Music, Gaming, & Emerging Technologies
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