Greetings! Salutations! And Hey guys from Tsu and Facebook!
I am still new here but my first week I did tons of research on Steemit and how it works and what everything means. I have had a lot of people ask me how to do things on here and I will answer these questions in the most simplest way possible.
Sure there are other articles posted on Steemit about how to make posts and what things mean but to be honest some of it written in a very complex way and sometimes people just want a simple explanation. So, here is my attempt to explain it.
What Is Up With The Voting Deal?
From what I have gathered this is how voting works. You have several different monetary resources. STEEM, STEEM POWER, and SBD or STEEM DOLLARS. The more Steem Power you have the more your vote counts. Everyone starts off with 15 SP which grows as you post and get upvoted. However you can buy STEEM from the market and convert it to STEEM POWER.
You get most influenced vote power when your vote power is above 60%. They calculate vote power based upon the assumption that you are only going to vote 20 times in 24 hours. Now from what I can see this is a "ROLLING" 24 hours which means 1 vote at 2pm will be removed from the calculation the next day at 1pm.
But as a first or second week minnow vote away. Your upvote is worth about a penny anyways and the more you vote 2 things happen. For one, you can rake in curation awards in 7 days time. Curation rewards help your STEEM POWER go up. Secondly, upvoting people shows you are an active user and are interested or recognize someone's work. The more you are an active upvoter the better the chances someone will follow you and upvote on your stuff.
Down voting is possible. But seriously don't be a butt and down vote unless its super super bad. It's rude to down vote and if someone is paying attention they can tell you have down voted them. You will deplete voting power and you won't get it back for 24 hours. If you must know how to down vote, you upvote then you un upvote.
Vote within 30 mins of the post being posted.
There are also several places where you can delegate a percentage of your voting power but that is for a future article. One last thing on voting is COMMENT COMMENT COMMENT on people's posts. Make sure tho you really read it and comment on it that's relative. People can and will upvote your comment which in return will give you an authors award in 7 days.
http://steemnow.com and https://steemstats.com/#!/ are two easiest sites to figure out your vote power and awards.
What Is This? Quick Facts!
Some people have asked what the number beside your name on your profile means. To break it down, everyone starts off as 25. The more you become engaged and the more upvotes you receive the higher the number will be. This states that basically you make good posts and people want to read / view your stuff.
It takes a rolling 7 days for your author and curator awards to be accumulated and paid out.
Every time you post, re-steem, or comment is counts as a post.
People can see your comments and replies so make sure they are all meaningful.
Your password is NOT RECOVERABLE! So create a text document label it some strange crap like monkey's in the attic and upload a copy to DropBox or Google Docs.
Voting power 50 /50 means your post will get 75% awards and upvoters get 25%. Your 75% gets broken down to 50% SBD and 25% SP. The upvoters will get a percentage of the 25% so make this easy numbers. A post gets $1.00 there was 4 voters. You would get 50 cents in SBD and a percentage of that in SP. The voters will get the 25% divided by 4.
100% power up means that it is all delegated to upvote / curator awards. If you upvote your own post you still will get the SP based on the percent delegated to you based on amount and other upvotes but you will not get any SBD from the post.
You can tag people in posts and comments by using the normal way 
Check out your stats and awards here https://steemitboard.com/
How to Write Posts!
A lot of people have asked me about formatting, photos, and links. There is a clickable link at the top of the text box that says Markdown Guide. You can click on it and it will bring up a new window that gives examples of markdowns / styling.
Drag and drop images is the most easiest way to get a photo into the post.
Cutting and pasting links is the most easiest way to put them in your post. Even YouTube videos. Just copy the link for the video and paste into your post. It will automatically embed video without any extra code.
Use relevant and popular tags. If you look to the right of your feed you will see the most commonly used tags.
I Hope This Gives You A Running Start
When my friends start asking about cash out when they get to that point I will write another article on that. Steemit does not use PayPal as a form of cash out but I will explain how to use the direct deposit features in PayPal so you can still get it transferred you PayPal account.