The great majority of Steemit does not vote for witnesses. And a small amount of the people voting do not even know who they are voting for and why they should vote for these people.
The Witness system is based on votes. That means the more and higher votes a witness gets, the higher he climbs in the ranks. And the higher he is on the ranking list the more blocks he will process.
1 block = 1 Steem Power, that means your vote plays a part in how much a witness earns depending on your Steem Power (without delegation).
You have 30 votes for witnesses and not more, however, you can remove a vote and give it to another witness.
So who should you vote for? In my opinion, a good Steemit witness must be skilled in Linux (technical knowledge), he must have the resources to upgrade and maintain his servers (money), and he must be social (posting, commenting, communicating with people on Discord, etc).
There are a couple of witnesses that do not do that. Check out the top 20 witnesses blogs and see how often they post. Do they answer all comments? Do they talk with the community on Discord? Are they greedy with upvotes? Are they inactive?
Depending on how you answer these questions you will see who deserves your vote and who not.
As an example: I will never give my vote to an inactive witness.
So now you know some basics about the witness system and why your vote matters.
If nobody voted this system would not work, you guys directly support the supporters of this blockchain with your vote!
How to Gather Votes as a Witness
Gathering votes as a witness is no easy task, it is like running a campaign to become the president.
You have to talk with people, you have to show up, you have to say what you are doing, why people should vote for and more.
So I thought about a little system. And logically I started asking my best friends here on Steemit if they give me their votes before I started to ask people from my friend list.
I recommend that you write something like this into your witness folder and adjust it depending who you write to:
"I am looking for people that vote for my witness efforts. And since you follow me I had to ask you. Would you vote for me or not? If you would not vote for me then I won't be butthurt, but then I would like to hear what I can improve as a witness (if you have time)."
That question gives them the possibility to dodge giving you a vote without worrying that you are gonna be "offended". So they really decide with logic if they want to vote for you or not which is good.
Then you go down your follower list, and I recommend that you install Steem Plus (created by @Stoodkev, that is a witness, give him your vote) sort your followers after Steem Power.
After you have done that you add everyone from that follower list to the file till you have reached 1000SP Minnows.
Then you write down how many votes they have left check here to see how many each person has -> (https://steemdb.com/@valorforfreedom/witness and replace 
Yes means they gave you their vote & no means they didn't give me their vote. "No Vote Yet" means they said they will vote for me but haven't done that yet.
You will ask these people again after 24hours, maybe they are busy right now or had some difficulties.
Ask them something like "I saw that I didn't receive your vote, I guess you were busy. If you had technical difficulties then please let me know if I can help you."
To find out who voted for you go to: https://steemdb.com/@valorforfreedom/witness and replace
To see a great witness ranking list by @Drakos click here: https://steemian.info/witnesses
Vote to Increase my Witness Rank: Witness Vote
Get More & Higher Upvotes: Steemfollower
SteemSchool Website: Website
SteemSchool Discord Community: Discord
