This is how I've been putting my Voting Power to use to support folks that are making the world a better place, even when I am not logged in.
When I started using steemit almost 4 months ago I was following only a few people and I had a lot more free time. I was able to keep on top of everyone's posts and did a lot of manual voting.
Now that I just moved and spring is here, I am starting a new garden, meeting folks in the community and much more. I find it a lot more difficult to consistently find the time to manually use my voting power to promote quality content every day.
I ended up setting up a system of auto voting + following curation trails to help vote on the content of steemers I want to promote - even when I don't have time to do it manually. If you are curious to learn how I did that.. read on!
I was inspired to write this post when I read 
This is in line with how I prefer to use my Voting Power. I want to vote on posts made by people who are helping to create a better world. Those people I believe in and whose efforts on steemit and efforts in their lives are part of positive change and positive transformation. I believe these votes can in part help to encourage people to continue contributing to positive change. And also to help reward them for it, regardless of whether they need encouragement or not - because I want to. That is the gift economy that
Auto Voting
When I first heard of auto voting (which was within a few weeks of my signing up to steemit) I was turned off by the idea. As I mentioned above I was happily manually curating as much content as my SP would allow, every day. I was diligently keeping my SP below 100% so that I could make the most of it.
I also thought that if I used an auto voter, I would be defeating the purpose of manually curating because I would not be as interested in supporting some posts as I would be in others.
As time went on I found that I could not always put that much time into steemit so I decided to try SteemVoter in order auto vote on some of my favorite steemian's content. I found that the benefits far outweighed the downsides and continued to use SteemVoter to this day.
What I realized is that SteemVoter allows me to support a group of steemers that I believe are contributing to a better world. My vote can help encourage their positive actions.
So what I did was start adding accounts into my SteemVoter to support with my votes. I chose those that I was manually voting on anyway.
As time went on I added more steemians that I wanted to support into SteemVoter. The nice thing about SteemVoter is that I can adjust how much percentage of vote I want to apply to each account. So I can fine tune how much percent to apply to each account so that I don't over spend my SP too fast.
When I first signed up with SteemVoter it allowed me to vote on up to 50 accounts I believe. I enjoyed using the service so much I ended up upgrading to premium and it allowed me to add up to 500 "voting rules". Now it looks like their unpaid service allows voting for up to 3 voting rules. It is too bad that they lowered it so much, but I imagine they needed the funds to keep the service going since it is so popularly used.
Also I should note in January they offered a discount sale for upgrading to premium. Hopefully they offer more sales in the future.
SteemVoter website:
How to setup SteemVoter:
Basic:
How to use Steem Voter - Step By Step Instruction [ 
Detailed:
Understanding SteemVoter : Learn How to Use SteemVoter to Automate Voting and Maximize Curation Rewards! [ 
Curation Trails
I also found out about curation trails shortly after signing up to steemit. But I didn't use them because they seemed complicated and I didn't quite understand how they worked or what their value is.
It turns out curation trails are another great way of putting your idle SteemPower to use and support quality steemers. In my case I want to support folks that have similar interests and are in my opinion making the world a better place.
What I am doing is following one or more curation trails. As a follower of a curation trail I am placing my trust in the hands of a curator to support the type of posts and steemians that I would like to support.
There are many accounts that are hosting curation trails, so it takes some time to search through them and see who might be doing curation work that you want to support.
There are two websites I know of that support curation trails. One is Streemian and the other is SteemAuto. They both work quite well. I mostly use Streemian because it seems to have more curation trails at the time being.
Where to sign up to follow (or host) a curation trail:
This post is aimed towards folks that want to create a curation trail, not follow one. But it is helpful in understanding the concepts:
What are Curation Trails and Delegated Steem Power [ 
Finding the Balance
The trickiest thing about setting up auto voting and/or following curation trails is not eating up all your voting power and not using so little voting power that you are not maximizing the potential.
I use SteemWorld.org to keep an eye on my voting power percentage. I like seeing it under 100% because that means that I am making use of my voting power. The longer it is at 100% the less it is working for me and for others that I share it with. I also don't like to see it too low because the lower it gets, the longer it takes to regenerate.
It takes some tweaking and adjusting to find the right balance. Luckily SteemVoter allows me to adjust the percentage of all the voting rules I have set up.
Streemian and SteemAuto let me scale my votes in by percentage. This means that if I follow some curation trail and I set my votes to scale in at 50%, then my votes are 50% of the vote percentage of the curator I am following.
I can adjust both SteemVoter and Streemian to find a good balance of my SP usage. It has taken me some time and patience to keep an eye on my voting power and make adjustments, but it was worth my effort because once it is in a good place of balance it is mostly hands off.
I still prefer to manually vote on posts. Some days I manually vote more, some days less. This is part of finding the balance between manual and auto curation.
Conclusion
I want to share my SteemPower by voting on quality content made by folks I want to support. I can diversify my votes between:
- People I want to regularly support
- People that are supported by curators that I trust
I want to encourage people to continue helping to make the world a better place. I can do that by sharing part of my share of the rewards pool. In my case that is including people that are homesteading, gardening for self sufficiency and contributing to the world with love and generosity rather than fear and greed.
SteemVoter, Streemian and SteemAuto help me accomplish this even when I don't find the time to manually curate my favorite content every day of the week.
Your Thoughts?
Would you, do you or did you use any of these services? Why or why not?
Who is 
?
?I am a ex-suburbanite turned permaculture homesteader. Follow my journey and I will share what I know and am learning along the way. You can learn more about me in my re-introducing @sagescrub post. Wishing you abundance in your life!
Know that I am likely NOT an expert on the subjects I present. Please do your own research and be your own expert!
