THIS: "Focus on Engagement: My suggestion is to not get too bogged down in the details of the math, curation rewards, and voting power. Focus on engaging with the community and voting on the stuff you like."
I SO agree with this! I only joined a few weeks ago, but my focus has been on heavily interacting with those Steemians whose posts I came across and really liked. You can leave lots of comments and boost your 'comment counter', but comments like 'great post' / 'thanks for sharing' / etc. are pretty meaningless.
Instead, I do my best to start a conversation. Or at least show the author that I have actually read the post, and share my viewpoint on the topic discussed.
I never ask for an upvote or follow. So my follower count will be lower than that of others. But similar to an email list, it's not about the amount of people that follow you, but the amount of people that follow you that engage with your content.
And the only way to build that kind of following is to (1) create really great content, consistently, and (2) engage with others who also post great content.
Focus on the long term. I have spent a lot of time on Steemit in the last weeks, and I have to say it's quite liberating to completely detach from any revenue my posts make (hint: not much). I don't care. I'm sure success will come eventually for those that contribute value to the platform. Yes, it may take (a long) time to get noticed. But I am confident that will happen, if I engage daily with fellow Steemians.
There are many successful Steemians that receive high rewards for their posts now, but made very little when they started out. Some examples that come to mind are @knozaki2015, @rea and @gringalicious. I'm sure there are many, many others.
Thanks for explaining how voting works for minnows, this was helpful for me!
Can we clone you? Like 100,000 times? :)
You can add me to the list. I posted for around 6 months, barely having any success. I stuck with it though and just kept trying to find ways to add value. It took a lot of time and effort, but I finally got there :)
...and if I might extent interacting and following up on (!) the amount of people that follow you that engage with your content.
I see lots of posts that seem to gain lots of traction and get lots of comments but the authors never come back to the comments and no one seems to care. I guess in the long run the system by its price discovery mechanism will take care of that but for now just knowing you can do better even if you don't get the immediate financial benefit is a good thing.
The liberating you talk about I can totally relate too as well. After I had gotten like a shitload of upvotes and positive feedback on the first part of a blogpost the third one got like 4 votes and 7 cents. Did I say f**k this and stop writing? Hell no. I'm just steamrolling this content out and if one post gets 1 cent and the next $1000 so be it. I completely agree with your sentiment here.
Yes, love the mindset there @peterschroeter!
And good one on engaging with your audience. Communicating with the ones that actually take the time to not only read your post but also leave thoughtful comments on them.
I personally try to leave meaningful comments on posts by other Steemians too (like I do on this post). And if the author of a post ignores me a couple of times in a row, I'm like: ok, I'll move on to someone who appreciates my reply to their content more.
Imo Steemit is not a one-way street. It's a social media platform, which means – to me, at least – interaction.
Absolutely. As I type this I see the value of my vote today went from 5 to 4 to now 3 cents. Thanks to your article and the comments I now know why and what's gonna happen with it :).