What better way to show your appreciation for a fellow Steemian’s hard work than to resteem his or her post? (Ok, besides a 100% upvote from a whale).
As a casual Steemian and irregular poster, I never thought about how my blog appears to others—its content buried beneath a bunch of other people’s posts.
Resteems serve two purposes for me:
- To pay compliments to authors
- To ‘bookmark’ stuff I intend to come back to later (because Steemit really needs to work on its interface! Bookmarks and a search function that brings up recent and relevant results would be just super. Mmmkay…)
But as 
It’s something that should be obvious – I know when I look at blogs, if it’s all resteems, chances are I won’t follow (unless those resteemed pieces are really good or relevant). But I never gave it much thought – for my own blog - until the last 24 hours.
I was chatting with a potential new friend earlier in another comment section, giving unsolicited life advice – as I do – and she said she’d follow me (if I spent half as much time on my own blog as I do in other people’s comments, I’d actually have a decent one…but I digress…).
As I compared our blogs, I panicked. Her stuff was really good, no resteems to be found, and my latest piece was from nearly two weeks ago, and buried underneath a bunch of resteems – two of which were contests.
It finally clicked if anyone is judging me by what’s on my blog – it’s hardly a reflection of actual me, let alone, Steemit me. Thing is, I have stuff to say. I have strong opinions and lots of ideas and comments – not all of it rubbish, some of it maybe even interesting – but no one would catch even a glimpse of that unless they spent a serious amount of time sifting through my feed. And like the ubiquitous meme says:
So…what to do? For those of you (I say to the bots reading my blog) who participate in contests that require resteems - is there some ratio of resteems to your original content that’s acceptable? In general – is there a ratio?
How do you cope with the guilt of not resteeming a ‘friend’s’ post, oh you strong willed Steemians, you!
Should you just never resteem, and never participate in contests that require it? (are those frowned upon too? is 'never' too extreme?). I really don’t know.
While as of now – with just three to four weeks left until I meet my first kid (who is kicking away, hiccuping hello, and pounding her little feet against my ribs as I type this) – chances are that I won’t even begin to realize the potential of my blog until spring…though I know I’d like to at least try eventually.
But it seems like my chronic resteeming could sabotage any chance of ‘success’.
Since attention spans are short – and I’m verbose – I’ll save the discussion of unwritten steemiqutte for another day. But it’s something I’d like to bring up briefly here.
Another thing I learned from Mr. Denmarkguy’s comment section is that seasoned Steemians don’t want to see too many posts from the same person in their feed. There seems to be an annoyed vibe with posters who do too much. Is this because they feel obliged to upvote the people they follow? Is it just bad form? Is there a Steemit guide on etiquette somewhere where I can find these answers?
So many questions, so much to learn. I’ve been here a while but still consider myself ‘newish’.
It makes me wonder am I the only casual Steemian out there? Is anyone else on here erratically sans a long term plan? Sometimes I feel like there are only newbie minnows with lofty goals and seasoned Steemians with admirable wallets, engaged audiences, and well-crafted niches. Then of course, the omnipotent whales, who occupy another realm all together (and judging from flagging wars in trending…aren’t always the nicest guys, reminder to self…don’t piss one off!) Still finding out where I belong ☺