It all started for me less than a year ago when I found out about a new blogging platform that gave out cryptocurrency for creating content on their blockchain. Being a super nerd that loves cryptography and all things Bitcoin mixed with a 15-year passion for blogging I knew this was going to be big.
After joining the Steem blockchain back in June of 2017, I ended up without a working computer for a few months, and the fact that I bought my first home then as well put content creation on the back burner for a few months. Then at the end of August 2017, I jumped in full force and began to take Steemit as seriously as I have so many blogs in the past.
In the past eight months or so I have managed to build a following of just under two thousand from zero. This growth is with no fame following me like many others with this growth have. I am not saying I grew the fastest from zero either but that it is possible to have a high return on your time when following a few key factors.
How To Grow Your Blog
Networking
To grow your blog to new heights you need to meet other like-minded bloggers on the Steem platform. I recommend the @minnowsupport discord chat for anyone looking to meet other new Steemians. There is also @thewritersblock which is for everyone who writes creatively and the @creatorsguild where new bloggers can ask questions and have their work proofread before posting to the blockchain.
When we join a group intending to network and build our blog, it is best to give from the start. Entering a group only to get more upvotes, views, and comments are wrong. People are good at sniffing out other people's intentions. When we join a chat room to take and not give only hurts us.
The best approach is to provide additional people upvotes, views, and comments and not ask for any in return. This approach may sound counterproductive, but we gain more when we ask less. When the other people we are networking with seeing how much we help the community, they will want to give back to us in return.
Guest Blogging
Guest blogging is a big part of the growth in traditional, self-hosted, blogging that I believe we need to bring to the Steem blockchain. It's a great way to get our names out to new readers both for the writer and the person posting to their profile. It's more than just a resteem it's providing content and promoting that content around the internet my two people instead of just one.
Take the writing of a guest post much more seriously than you would for your blog. Each post we make for someone else puts both them and us on the hook to uphold quality. Do not offer a post that has little or no effort for the reasons listed above. It will make you look bad not only to the host but their audience which could be quite extensive.
Use Simple SEO Techniques
SEO is an acronym for "Search Engine Optimization" and consists of tactics to help get our content into the search results for the correct terms people search for. We all need to keep SEO in mind when we write our content.
Keywords are the foundation of good SEO. Your keyword is the topic at hand. If the post is about Bitcoin Cash, then those two words make up your keyword. Finding your keyword is easy to do, and we all know what it is before we even start to write. But, we can get more granular with a little effort.
Photos are a great place to put your keywords and are almost always overlooked. Before uploading an image to Steemit, it is good practice to change the name of that image. When doing so, use the keyword or phrase in the name. This method allows us to pump up the number of times our keyword is on the page without coming off as spammy and awkward.
Have The Growth Mindset!
The opposite mindset is known as the fixed mindset. It keeps us focused on talents and outcomes but misses the process. When we have this fixed mindset, we run into challenges and give up. This lack of motivation is because we think we are not good enough or that we could never learn what it is that we need to learn.
The growth mindset is said to be 65 percent of our success, and only the remaining 35 percent is actual ability. We desire to learn and improve after every success or failure. The growth mindset is not something that we need to train for or study to be the best. All we need to do is change our outlook on life.
Keeping Readers On Your Blog
Keep Your Profile Professional
Your profile page is the most significant asset you have outside of creating fantastic content. It is here that the potential follower can see your consistency, your personality, and your niche. Use your bio section wisely as it may be the only information someone has about your and your blogging style.
Don't leave your background image blank, jazz it up and add some personal flair to your profile. If you look at mine, you see that it is very techy and hacker like and I love it! My background image expresses who I am at one level and gives my profile page the feel I want it to have.
Everyone looking to grow should make their first image in their post have the title of their topic overlaid with a relevant background. You can see that is how I do mine day in and day out. This consistency allows the people scrolling through the feeds to look at your post and get a sense of what it is about. Every chance we have to catch an eye the better off our growth will become.
Encourage Sharing & Engagement
At the end of each of my posts, I ask anyone to comment a topic that would like to see me cover. This does not mean that it will happen every time, but it will get them thinking. You can also ask a question in your post and ask them to comment their opinions. Anything that fosters engagement, that you can respond to, will help to strengthen your tribe and the bond with your readers.
Of course the more you share your content, the more your post gets around the internet. It's also good to encourage your readers to share the posts they like. It's not sleazy it's marketing and we all need to do it if we want to grow to our highest potential. Also, make sure to let your readers know where to find you outside of Steemit for further engagement and interaction.
Thanks For Reading!
If you have any topics that you would like me to cover please feel free to comment them below and I'll add them all to my list!
All images came from royalty and attribution free sources unless specified.
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very good write . Helped me understand the growth path a lot.
The most important thing is networking in accordance with the list at number one yours.
And in addition, maximizing the use of correct tags also helps our blogs be seen by many people.
Thank you for sharing you
Awe yes! Tags are needed on every post that we create. I have yet to make a post about the importance of proper tag usage.
Now a post on proper tag usage will be much appreciated @jrswab.
Those are great tips sir @jrswab I'll use these as my guide. Thank you sir ☺️😍😘
Welcome, thanks for reading!
Great article. I learned a few things from it. I had over 1 million subscribers on YouTube before I was banned. I am still able to take something valuable from this article, and thank you for that. I have not yet used networking or anything like that. Right now I am just relying on my writing. At this point, I do not want anyone to know who I am. There is a reason for this. I am writing now. I was doing videos before. I have completely switched my style up. I no longer choose to gain attention through controversy and bad publicity. That will not work on this platform. I have chose to write, rather than do videos, to keep my identity Secret. Thank you for the informative post. It is greatly appreciated
Happy to be able to give you value even when you had so many followers on YouTube. If you ever want to chat outside of Steemit I am always around on Discord. It would be cool to pick your brain about your pass success.
Haven't even tried Discord yet. I've only been here a little less than 2 weeks. I was banned from YouTube in 2008 or 9. It was right after Google bought them. They started censoring really bad. Success was easy in my early days. Once YouTube grew, it became harder to gain success. I am guessing that steemit will end up the same way. The more competition, the harder it is. It wasn't that hard for me in the beginning. I gained my audience pretty easily. There were not a lot of us on YouTube Back Then. Most people were just posting videos of accidents and things that they thought were funny. I started back when the word Vlog was invented. I'm not saying steemit will have the same path as YouTube. Steam it obviously has no censorship. Censorship is what ruined YouTube In the End. I am just saying it will be harder to gain ground once the masses start flooding in.
I have spend only two months on this amazing platform and have chances to interact many nice persons here, like you. definitely I am not a famous or known person here but today the number of my followers crossed 800! Should I take this as a sign of success or not because I think no more than 3 or 4 persons among them really upvote or comment on my posts. Therefore, I came to this conclusion that having a big number of followers is not a big thing but the increasing the number of real followers is everything.
I have been benefited a lot by following your skill building articles and motivations posts. Have a great time!
Congrats on passing 800 followers! Yes, you are correct, the total number is a bit misleading since many of them may not be on steemit anymore.
Keep up the hard work mate.
The way your steemit account has grown in less than a year is simply great,congrats for the achievement,& thanks for the tips,you are incredible person.
Thank you for the kind words <3
Excellent article! I joined Steemit very recently and I found your words very useful and inspiring. Looking forward to know more of this subject.
This is an awesome post! Due to personal stuff it's been hard for me to get back on the horse, but I'll try my best come back in full force!
Thanks for this! I joined in August but didn't delve in until September. You're doing great!! Networking is so important so they say, but I'm not the best at it. The sheer number of people at PAL is just intimidating... I'm glad I joined a smaller group @thealliance. We are a family of about 200 people. My main focus is with them, @theresistance, @familyprotection, and now @informationwar. That's enough networking for me, I've got my hands full but I manage lol. Too many connections and my head spins. That said, I have nowhere close to 2000 followers yet...great advice and STEEM ON! :D
Thanks for this! Some really great tips I can put to use immediately!
Precise & effective suggestions for growing up of newbies like me. Besides these I will add some more suggestions like -
Thanks for sharing such useful information. I agree on most of the point but disagree on SEO techniques because on Steemit we can’t apply much SEOs except setting some keywords manipulation.
In my opinion there is another tip that can help is include your recent posts under each of your new post by doing that you allow user to get more engagement with your blog.
I have created an open source app for recent posts widget you can check it here:
Recent post widget app
Hi @jrswab. Every bit of your information is worth applying. I've heard most of them but others are new to me and I'll take them into consideration and I'm ready to make apply and improve my blog and grow. Thanks
Hi i have a problem with my Blog, i try to create Original and Helpfull content for Spanish User but i feel lost this time because i cant generate engasment with my
It takes a lot of networking in the correct groups. Are you in any Spanish speaking groups that are focused on steemit?
Hey thanks alot guy!
Thanks for such an interesting article! It is really useful for me since I am new at Steemit!
This post has been resteemed from MSP3K courtesy of @jrswab from the Minnow Support Project ( @minnowsupport ).
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Thanks
Thanks for the useful information. I hope I'm not out of line but I have a question and can't seem to find a place to ask.
My account has very slowly but surely gained a little value since I joined a few of months ago. The problem is over the last few days I have lost worth, I understand the fluctuations and have looked over the charts to see if I find a correlation and haven't really. I see it's down the last few days but no more than it usually fluctuates.
It had seemed to be picking up rapidly but the took a nose dive and has been dropping ever since. I haven't did much the last couple of days so understand why it's not rising, but can't figure out the drop of almost a dollar out of a total of ten. Not a huge deal of course, but has me wondering if I have been penalized or something. I am used to fluctuations, but not this drastic. I know I should not pay so close attention to pennies, but seeing it gain motivates me, but seeing it fall like this has the opposite effect.
Could someone possibly have a look n see if anything is abnormal on my account?
👌
This is an great article @jrswab.
Thanks for sharing tips how to grow up on Steemit. Anyway it doesn't easy to do it. We have to be creative person. After read your article, it make me more motivation to one step go in front.
Regarding from Indonesian Steemian in Taiwan.
@ettydiallova
Guest blogging would be an interesting concept for steem you would be providing great content for free and having the owner make money from it but in exchange you would get some publicity out of it for your own profile.
GREAT ARTICLE MY BROTHER,WELL PUT TOGETHER AND INFORMATIVE,,
THANK YOU,EACH ONE TEACH ONE
@jrswab nice read, i found this really helpful
Wow your article its so good.i. need time later to read it carefully.i wish steemit had a fuction to save articles. But upvote annyways. And thanks for the information!
Thanks. There's a lot of new info here. I'll follow your suggestinos and research. I had not heard about the minnow support project.
Hello @jrswab I really enjoyed reading this post. I just started on SteemIt and still figuring it out, so thanks for the helpful hints, especially placing keywords in the image name, and asking readers for topics to cover. THANK YOU SO MUCH!
I am a trained writer, but have never made a living at it. I'm actually out of work right now.
People say I write interesting pieces. Here's one. I always wondered why so many millions of people love porn and strip clubs: I'm just sayin'. lol. Please share it if you like it...
https://steemit.com/life/@domeniq-x/strip-clubs-and-porn-what-s-the-big-deal
wow this is a realy a good post. this is help me to write good post
Great thanks
help me alot..
Thanks for the tips, I'm trying to reach out to people and comment, and find the time to write about some interesting things I'm doing. Good advice.
Thank you for this awesome post, i have been looking for information and advice about how to grow my blog as am new here on steemit, and you just clear all my misunderstanding and put me through, thank you, i just learnt something from your post, that i should not always be at the receiving side but also be at the side of giving
Sharing, good sound knowledge. To come to the platform to give rather than receive is in the right spirit.
Being a newb I really appreciate this post. Thank you for sharing.