It actually took me a while to understand what good and bad a steemian could benefit from resteeming posts made by other people.
Like me, so many people have in the past resteemed other people's posts without having an idea of why they should or shouldn't resteem a Post.
To cut the long story short, why should i resteem a Post?
Resteeming someone's post will only help the author of the post gain more popularity in the community as well as more followers. It enables the author reach a wider range of individuals.
How does this benefit me?
I will only benefit from resteeming someone's post if i have already curated the post. i e i have upvoted the post and therefore now want to make it reach a larger number of people so that the upvotes can increase and my curation rewards invariably elevated too.
Will resteeming posts not made by me give me rewards without me upvoting the post?
As explained above, you will gain nothing if you did not upvote or curate the post and you resteemed it but rather you will help the author gain more fame as well as more rewards for his post.
The disadvantages of resteeming someone's post is that if you have raised followers who are used to what you like, post and used to and you now begin to resteem posts with a totally conflicting ideology different from your followers, they might unfollow you and thus you might be loosing your popularity. Just as the saying "building a city is hard and difficult and can take a hundred years but destroying it is not so difficult and may take just one day". Be wise!!!
What to do then? The only way to gain rewards from a Post is to upvote the post first before resteeming as i think they are both inseparable.
I believe with this self explanatory write up, someone has been enlightened enough about resteeming another author's post.
Yours truly,
Gospel