Greetings, Steemians and Steemettes!
And here I am, back again with the promised third post for today. With a bit more discipline and preparation, doing this would actually become quite sustainable, I should do my best to make this a long term commitment, at least for the saturdays and sundays. With that being said, let us talk about another Steemit related topic for today.
Resteems
Tell me how you like these new designs. I really wanted to try something new for a change.
What an awkward feature.
I am going to be straight forward with you here and tell you this: I am not a fan of the resteem mechanic myself. And that is for some various good reasons. In a perfect scenario, a resteem is actually helpful. You expose content, good content to a wider audience and help another account gain attention. This rarely if ever actually happens on a noteworthy scale.
In some other cases, contests use resteems as a tool for increasing their audience and participant count. Which is a neat idea for them, but does end up having poor repercussions for the one resteeming. In almost every case, the resteem ends up being useless.
There are also cases where resteeming is hurtful for you as a content creator. But I base this on my personal experiences and feelings on this topic. Let us go through some of these points.
Resteeming as a big fish
This is probably the only time where resteeming is actually productive for all parties involved. As someone who has a big following on steemit, you have the ability to give visibility to otherwise hidden content. To a wide range of potencial viewers, viewers who may have the ability to hand out substancial upvotes or strong resteems themselves. The number of people doing resteems like this is rare and living in the age of bit bots does not make this any easier.
On the other hand, resteeming can be a potencially useful tool if you want to be smart about curation. Giving someone your upvote early, then resteeming for the bigger audience can yield some decent results. But, of course, you need to have a strong foundation for this to actually matter. For any party involved. Let us put this to the side for now.
Needing to blow off some steem here
My blogging space here on steemit is mine. It belongs to me and I want to design and shape it in any way I want. Resteems end up being things that I have no further influence on after having placed them in here. Some do not have a problem with it, I do. I would like to think that people coming to my place do that because they want to see me and my content.
Having them go through content of others that has nothing to do with them or me would be an insult to my follower base, one that I don't want to make.
Which leads me to contest which are usually highly eager to ask for resteems. I have never resteemed a post just because I wanted to participate in a contest, nor will I. Unless the rewards are ridiculously and outrageously worth it.
Resteeming as a content creator
And that they have to be. I do not want to put some kind of contest I participate in just for the chance of maybe winning one SBD be a distraction from what my blog is about.
And neither should you!
There are plenty of you out there who have already established a very good and strong structure for their posts, found their niche and that is good for you. In fact, it is so good that you should not ruin it by destroying said purity with adding someone elses content for no real reason.
A bad business card
Tell me if this sounds familiar to you, will you? You see a new profile around here, maybe a new follower, maybe someone who posted a comment somewhere and you decide to give his place a visit. What you find is a bunch of resteems dating from anywhere between the last two minutes and the last two months. Careful digging may or may not give you the result of one or two actually self-written posts. And that is if you actually go through the motion of looking for it.
I have reached a point where I usually do not end up bothering with people who do not have anything to offer aside from the content of others. What would I even talk about with them? What point would there be in interacting with them?
I know there are some big fish out there who do nothing but commenting, resteeming and upvoting, both automated and manually, but those are a very small portion and you usually never notice they exist except for very niche situations.
But back to you. As a content creator, you want to leave a strong impression on people right on the first sight. That's how instagram influencers do it, that's how youtube thumbnail designers do it, that's how clickbait titles do it everywhere and it has been working out pretty well for them so far.
Having foreign content take the top spots in your list is not what you want.
What to do about it?
The above mentioned reasons are my take on why resteems are not actually free. They may not cost you any kind of currency, but you pay for it by making your overall blogging space look less desireble. And this in itself is not desireble at all.
After all, steemit is about sharing and rewarding high quality content, not about every man for himself!
So what can we actually do about it? Well, here is my take on it.
1. Use resteems in moderation
Resteems to me are like words. Spoken too lightly, they lack weight. If you only resteem once in a while, you show the people following you that this thing you just resteemed actually left an impact on you. Which is better for you and the one you are supporting than resteeming ten mildly amusing posts a day.
2. Combine it with a post yourself
Being in the month of #Upvoteplankton and the #minnowuprising, people are looking for ways to increase their post count. I actually did the following before I even heard about either of these movements, so here is what I do.
This is how it looks when I do my weekly promotion and resteeming post. Picture taking by me, of course.
Once a week, I write up a post about blogposts that left an impression on me. Usually three in total. These posts will get a resteem from me directly before I upload the post in question. This is what it would look like.
I usually resteem three posts at a time, it looks nice that way. Here as well, I would say that less is more but if you do like being supportive, you can just go and post more than just once a week like I do. Resteeming like this makes the entire process much more personal for every party involved, it increases your own post count and the resteemed party in question feels even better.
Everyone Wins
What could Steemit do to make resteems better?
I made the suggestion in another post earlier.
If resteems would have their own column right next to our actual blog posts, they would actually add to our own private space instead of potencially taking away from it. This is what a rough draft of it could look like.
It's just two screenshots edited together, but you get the idea! It does look much more pleasant and impressive if it is portrait some way like this, right? Doing this while also adding some more customization to steemits visuals would also help with keeping people to stay around here long term.
Sometimes we underestimate how vain we as humans are. Pretty things that make us feel good and special make us wanna stay.
With that out of the way, I will write my weekly promotion post tomorrow as per usual. Maybe I will change up the way I will handle them in the future as well, but if I do, you will learn about it tomorrow.
Did you agree with what I had to say here? Or do you have a better idea regarding this topic? Tell me in the comments down below!
Read more of Papa Rodin!
Tell me how you like these new designs. Wanted to try something new for a change.