Curating Steemit for Dummies.

For all you fine folks whom titles like this are addressed, I will be adding notes so you won’t feel left behind. Don’t feel bad. I’ve left a super special :) just for you at the end of each note. After all, you deserve it for making the “For Dummies” name what it is today. :)

Hello my fellow Steemians, today I am excited to bring to your shallow attention span the subject of content curation on Steemit.

Although it has different definitions elsewhere, on the Steemit platform curation is merely a fancy word for upvoting. :)

Curating content on Steemit, is a dutiful process indeed, and shouldn’t be taken lightly.

By content I primarily mean posts, but this term could also refer to comments. :)

The first rule of being a “grade A” content curator is: “Read the content.”

I know this sounds horrible, but go ahead and give it a try sometime. You may even accidentally learn something. :)

After reading the content take a moment to think upon the information you have just read. Try asking yourself some questions. Did I enjoy this? Have I learned anything from this? Did this make me laugh? Is this content worthy of the digital currency trail that it’s printed on?

If you can answer yes to one or more of these questions, you may just be looking at some content worthy of your creation.

I know that it is often difficult to ask yourself questions, as there is no one around to tell you what to think. Don’t worry though, it gets easier over time, perhaps you will even learn to think for yourself. :)

There is an old phrase, “never judge a book by its cover.” Here on Steemit a more fitting version would be, “never judge the worthiness of content, by the value of it’s upvotes.” The prevalence of bid bots and voting circles, make the dutiful curator's job much harder. Regardless of the quality of a post, you must always factor in the amount of reward pool pillaging that has resulted from the posters self promotion. Do they really deserve your curation if they have spent $200 SBD to make a $10 SBD profit? “Ouch Brah, lay off the reward pool depredation.”

I know how tempting it is to upvote a trending post worth $300+, in hopes you will get some curation reward. But... You won’t, the bid bots have beat you to it, and you my friend have fallen for the old “Steemit Bait n’ Take.” :)

• There are rare exceptions to this for “extraordinarily important content.” So use wisdom when looking to find the exception.

Wisdom is a character trait one tends to learn by reading stuff and asking oneself meaningful questions. :)

Now there are many more qualities and attributes to becoming the best of the curators, but no one is asking you to be the best. That being said, if you choose to follow these simple steps, you just might find a much better Steemit in the future.

I tried my best to keep this short, I know that there is a meme over there that is calling your name. Thanks for the read. Peace :)