Okay, the title has been written down, now the rest of the post. It is a question where I, to be honest, don't have the answer on. But I would like to share my ideas about it.
The start
When you start on Steemit, there are 2 possibilities.
- Like in my case, you don't know anybody and start to create a community.
- You were recruited by friend(s) who already had/have a Steemit account and you just roll in to their community/friends circle.
The middle
Once you have created a group of followers and a list of people interested to follow, your feed is started to fill up. Depending on the amount of Steemains you follow, you will have enough posts to browse through to fill up the amount of hours/minutes you are willing to spend here! Also when you do post, your post will be placed on the feed of your followers.
The friendship circle
At this moment, you will get some comments, you will have enough to comment on or to upvote.
But probably the comments you are getting are mostly from the same followers (your Steem friends) and probably you will upvote most of the time, the same authors.
I have to say that there is nothing wrong with this. I am, partly in the same situation. I do upvote some posts of Steem Friends without reading them, I do comment on 50% of the posts which do occur in my feed. Just like some of my followers, are using automated votes so they don't read my posts. It like scratching each others back. But was this the real idea behind Steem?
But here is nothing wrong with this!
The community around you, is probably a result of shared interests. Hopefully it was not build based on the follow-you-follow-me principle. So, it is all natural behavior.
But this is also some kind of problem. Most of us, stop to find new friends.
So how do you created new friends circles or expand the ones you are having at the moment?
The new posts
Most of us occasionally browse through the Hot, trending or promoted tags. But how much of us, really browse through the new tag?
Well, according to me, we should do this at least once a day. Most of the post here, are written by people you don't know. These authors could have a shared interest with you, or are just writing post which could be really interesting. By placing genuine comments on the post they wrote, will expand the friends circle. Don't look at reputation or there Steem Power. Ignore this for once. For all we know, these also could be the new whales. They could be just experimenting here, to see if they like it or not, and could have the plans to power up hugely, if they do plan to stay here!
Commenting on comments
This is a hidden gem. Probably you did place a comment on a post, to start an interaction because you like the article. We, often, do comment and then wait on a reply. When using busy, we will be notified, we using Steemit, you will browse to the replies tag. Why don't you read the other comments?
These people also did like the article or could be having a complete different viewpoint. By replying on these comments, you could expand your circle of friends! Because you both were interested in the same article, there is already a shared interest.
Back to the circle of friends!
I'm drifting a little bit. From asking to the question, to state this I did not have the answer, to find out that I do have to respond positive in the question!
Yes, Steemit is one or more circle of friends. Belonging to a friends circle will increase the visibility, will increase the chance of being upvoted, or more important to have interaction.
But don't walk in circles, have to courage to find new Steemians, who could become a member of an existing or new friendships circle. Expand your horizons, it will not disappoint you!
What are you ideas about this?
Do you browse randomly through the new posts or do you stick with a predefined set of tags.
Or you do only read and comment on the post, who do appear on your feed?
Keep the faith,
Peter