And I did a happy dance :) Here's the full explanation of why being on Steemit helped me to win a t-shirt in a contest against a lot of others.
What happens, when you arrive on Steemit as a freshly picked minnow? You do a search on Steemit to find posts that interest you, right? And you also look for posts that explains how Steemit works, don't you?
That's what I did, at least. I'd read an excellent manual, which helped me a lot (thank you, 
Okay, okay, more about making money, too. Right. I said it.
My search led me to posts about leaving comments, commenting contests and more, and I started reading.
This is my summary of what I discovered:
A good comment must reveal that you have indeed read the post. You can do that by mentioning one or more of the points the author brings up.
A good comment ads value to the post.
I don't think my comments truly sucked before I read more about it here on Steemit, but I know that I've put more focus on writing good comments afterwards.
So when I received an email about writing headlines, and the best comment would win a t-shirt, I was in.
Here's the T-Shirt I won
This is how I did:
- I read the article, thought about it, and got ready for commenting.
- In the comment, I mentioned one of the points from the blog post, which I agreed to fully.
- The author had asked us which of his ten headlines we liked the most. I had an idea for what I thought was a better headline, and I wrote this headline in the comments.
I was lucky (thanks to doing a lot of rehearsal on Steemit), and the author liked my comment.
Afterwards, a lot of copycats tried my method with coming up with new headlines, but today, I learned that I had won. Yay!
What Have You Learned On Steemit and Use Elsewhere?
Are you putting more effort into writing blog posts? Or comments? Or have you added new structure to your day? Gotten up earlier like 
Tell me about it in the comments. And let me know what you think about using Steemit knowledge elsewhere.