If you read, write and upvote posts, you should vote for Witnesses. It's quicker than those activities. But who?
List of witnesses: https://steemd.com/witnesses
If you are very new to Steemit, you may not know what Witnesses do. The EZ non-technical explanation is that Witnesses keep Steemit running. Most of them are, and have been for a long time, invested in the success of Steemit and the value of Steem currencies and vests. They work on self-initiated programs for Steemit.
The technical aspect doesn't matter from pespective for end-users. Steemit Inc. has built-in incentives for Witnesses to have optimal technology in the way that system is set up. You can read in the Whitepaper search term 'witness'.
Not everyone is using their votes! Yes, your vote does matter! They all add up.
The top 19 Witnesses get the most SP, to my basic understanding. It is good to be on top! The top 19 are decided by our votes!!!! Many are good at creating initiatives that are good for us End-Users, but not all witnesses are the best at self-promotion for our votes. So let's do that for them. The more SP they get the more curation power and funds for projects our favourite witnesses will have!
Mining Rewards require Steem Power After the first month, Steem miners are paid in Steem Power (SP). SP is liquidated through the two-year process of “powering down.” This means that miners must wait for a long time, likely many months, before sufficient mining rewards have been powered down to allow them to recover the cost of electricity and computational resources.
(from the Steemit Whitepaper)
Maybe you are frustrated right now as your posts aren't earning much and your upvotes don't have weight, but if you have patience and contribute via participation, all of these things could improve for end-users like us. Especially if you do where you have a say, and vote for Witnesses.
How I decide which Witnesses to vote for is from the perspective of someone who is only a user, poster, community member of Steemit. I don't know personally any of the developers involved in Steemit and was not invited by anyone.
Many of you are end-users only, as am I, and I hope I can convince you to vote for Witnesses and make it easier for you to decide!
We can concentrate our efforts! Reply to this topic with who else should get our combined Witness votes!
I believe that fellow end-users of the platform will agree on the same criteria
How I decide what Witnesses to vote for, in a short summary, followed by examples and evidence you can see with your own eyes:
- The projects they work on
- Community interaction
- How active they are at voting, and the type of content they vote for
- Who people I follow have voted for
- Diversity
You can see posts about what Witnesses are currently doing and what they will do in the future by filtering with the #witness #witness-category tag.
EDIT: See this post by 
I will write a few examples, this is by no means definitive! And maybe new people will run for Witness still.
Projects Make a Difference! They don't make themselves.
For example, 
https://steemit.com/witness-category/@anyx/anyx-cheetah-and-steemcleaners-witness-update-08-10-2016
If you can't sell/buy steem, SBD, SP, what's the point? 
How do I know what the whales do?
Everyone love Whale Watching!
If you haven't heard of these sites, you need to check them out:
http://steemd.com Is where you can find steem stats on yourself and any Steemit account. steemd.com is created by 
You can go to https://steemd.com/@radioactivities and see who I have voted for Witness so far. Just scroll down to the bottom. Here are my Witness votes:
On catchawhale.com you can see a list of the Whale accounts as well as their last time online, how many votes they make what hour of the day, which are their favoured users and topics to upvote! by
Look, a recipe for Witness pie:
If you are an English Second Language speaker, you can see what Witnesses vote for people who post in your native language.
To see updates of Witness projects, check out tag #witness-category
From #steemit-guides filter, there is this detailed post about Witnesses
Edit: 
I misread from his witness update. Many projects in that one! jesta witness update - full time begins - 2016-10-07 read here: https://steemit.com/witness-category/@jesta/jesta-witness-update-full-time-begins-2016-10-07
Witnesses are rewarded for these qualities, services, and of course running their node by getting powered up by 1 STEEM for each block they produce. By being paid in Steem Power, witnesses are further incentivized to be committed long-term and also to contribute to Steemit curation.
A Full Steemit User's Guide to Steem Witnesses
by
I vote for 
TL;DR Nobody ever agrees on everything. but you know what, we have 30 votes to use! I still have 10 left! Let's use them all. Let's use them to vote for as many of the same Witnesses as possible!
Please Resteem, tell the world!
This is a Pay Me 100% in Steempower Post!
If you are a Witness and would like to be added in this vote campaign, leave a reply. If you'd like to advertise work you've done for Steemit, please leave a reply here. Promote yourselves here. Not everyone is great at self-marketing, I hope more exposure can be obtained for those who fall in that category but have been putting lots of work into Steemit-related activities!