So it's been a whole entire week of being active on Steemit
(although I created my account over a year ago - don't judge me),
and I wanted to do a post on what I've learned so far on the platform.

I know some of you might hardly believe it, but I'm far from being an expert.

With that said, maybe I can help my fellow minnows along on their Steemit journey.

A lot of this is knowledge passed on from whales that I look up to.

So get comfy, pour yourselves a big glass of Wild Irish Rose, and let's begin!

In no particular order:

Blockchain

If you don't quite get what blockchain is, the video below should help.

Alternatively, the lovely Hive account@stellabelle has a thorough post on blockchain that's really easy get your head around, you can find it here.

Reputation

"So much depends on reputation - guard it with your life."
Law 5: The 48 Laws of Power

Your reputation is determined by the number of upvotes you receive from fellow Steemians. You can also lose reputation by having your comments and/or posts flagged by those with a higher reputation score.

SMT, SBD, SP, WTF?

Steem/Smart Media Tokens (SMT) are acquired through upvotes to your posts and/or comments. You can buy, sell, transfer or withdraw these.

Steem Blockchain Dollars (SBD) are a platform asset where 1 SBD is equal to at least 1 US Dollar (US$)

Steem Power (SP) is the juice that gives you influence. The more SP juice you've got, the more money your upvotes give. Not only that, it also increases your curation rewards.

Curating

Curating is upvoting on content.

Upvoting your own post is fine.

But for the love of all that's good and holy, do NOT upvote your own comments.

Do you really want a visit from Lumbergh?

Powering up/down

Powering up is the process of converting Steem Tokens to Steem Power.

Powering down is the process of converting Steem Power to Steem Tokens.

Powering up/down is done from your wallet.

Vests

Vests are the meat and potatoes of your Steemit account, its true value.
It's all about increasing vests, since vests go up in value over time.
Unfortunately, you don't see vests in your wallet, but as Hive account@cryptoandcoffee
mentions in his post on vests, you can verify your number of vests by going here:

https://steemdb.com/@yourname

Just replace the "yourname" with your user name.

You can then calculate what those vests are worth in steem by using this
calculator

Ok cool, so how do you increase vests anyway?

Three ways:

Creating content.

Curating content.

Powering up.

Well, four ways if you also count witnessing.

What's a witness?

According to the Witness FAQ created by Hive account@drakos - (Thank You!)

"Witnesses are elected by the community to witness the production of blocks on the Steem network. In other words, they run and maintain nodes (servers) that generate the blocks containing all transactions (i.e. posts, upvotes, comments, transfers, etc.), which are added to the blockchain."

Be sure to check out the rest of his site for tons more information about the platform.

I wouldn't have known about a lot of this without Hive account@valorforfreedom, so be sure to check his Steem School posts. You can start here.

Alright, now what?

Still here? Okay here are some other things:

Don't follow someone, and then be all, "Follow me too now, ok? Ok?".
If someone wants to follow you, they will.

Share your talents, goals, stories, recipes, anything!
There's always someone who will appreciate what you have to share.

Don't be a jerk. This one's pretty easy. Never met any here though.

Post consistently, comment and share,

Most importantly, have fun! I've had tons and have learned SO much in such a short time as well.

And finally, be patient. You'll be like this guy soon enough.

Kira

Images courtesy of Pixabay and Giphy.