I've been spending a lot of time searching the trending articles, just to see what it is people are reading, and what makes an article successful. Here are a few patterns I have noticed that I plan on including in my post from now on and maybe you would like to as well. If anything this will help everyone contribute higher quality content making steemit a more valuable and reputable environment.
Pictures
The first thing you may notice just scrolling quickly through the trending is everyone (I mean everyone) has a picture for their article! This is key, obviously, because it makes your article stand out. I shouldn't have to explain this in detail, but sometimes our brains are lazy and people get tired of reading every title and sometimes we just scroll through looking at pictures that stand out.
So if you want lots of upvotes, you have to post a picture! You can do this by uploading it to imgur and then pasting the direct link. Doing this should increase your upvotes dramatically!
Content Varies
One thing I have noticed is the content in trending for the most part varies. Though you always seem to find articles about how to get more steem hovering around the top (and now I'm writing an article about that... Imagine that) for the most part it can be about anything. Some common trends do include
*steemit
*cryptocurrency (bitcoin)
*facts/news
Basically if it would be popular on Reddit, it will probably be welcomed here.
Quality Doesn't Vary
Though the content varies the quality doesn't! You may notice some of the top content writers all seem to do thorough research. Some of them are fairly good writers but I've noticed even some poor spellers, grammar mistakes, and all around cheaply written articles can make it to the top.
Should this agitate you? No not really because the steemit community is accepting of mistakes but are not fools when it comes to information. If I learn something from your article, despite you poor spelling, grammar, and choice of words... Well I think you deserve my upvote! Especially with all the research some of the writers put into their articles, some spending weeks on one topic!
So you want upvotes? Research, research, research!! We won't accept guesses and ideas that are presented as facts.
Use Markup
Oh how pleasant a well designed article is. When someone goes through all the work of carefully designing an article you just feel compelled to reward them with an upvote. Steemit can accept some HTML but I've noticed some HTML doesn't work (I haven't found out why yet, that's another article I suppose) but fortunately steemit does accept its own markup language. It has really everything you need to paint a beautiful article that will keep your readers intrigued and attracted. For information on how to markup, read this wonderfully written article and throw him an upvote while your at it! prettify your steemit posts
Conclusion
Thank you for considering this post, I hope it was informative. Let's keep the steemit community progressing, and making those beautiful articles!