Margaret Cousins said,
Appreciation could make a day, even change a life. Your willingness to put it into words is all that is necessary.
Source: Pixabay used under CCO Creative Common License
So I thought it was time to appreciate this great community. Yes, and I will be an ungrateful member of the community if I fail to do this at this moment. Although, am still a few followers to 1000 followers with 56 reputation and not my one year anniversary. Appreciation doesn't have to be a celebration of reaching a milestone in the community; it should be about appreciating the community itself. So I thought of where to appreciate this community, and I found out that the Steemit blockchain network is the best option to do so. I called Steemit my home, and here is why.
How my home has affected me
Let me first state the effect of Steemit on my life or the adjustments it has caused in my life. That should be the first section because I am so grateful to Steemit.
In a word, Steemit is a home to me because it provides all that a home offers. It supplies love, knowledge, care, comfort, and much more.
Steemit has widened my experience in so many things. Sometimes during discussions with friends on several areas of life, I wondered where I learned some things that were meaningful and impactful to the talks, and could only see Steemit as the source.
It has boosted the creativity side of me.
It has also helped me understand the core principle of writing. For instance, my supervisor always complained of my work not being coherent (flowing together), but Steemit has brought an end to that.
Discovery of the Diamond-Steemit
That feeling when you discovered steemit, supplying energy to your life(The indispensable lucozade boost)
This story will serve as the basis of my advice to the Nigeria community and other country steemit communities
Wandering through the tens of WhatsApp groups on my phone, I saw a message in one of the groups talking about blogging and earning. Earlier before I had always wanted to own, create, and design a blog, but was not passionate/less concerned about it. Only to see this message in a Nigerian blogger WhatsApp group (ufarblog), and I am someone who was always looking for online legal opportunities to make money.
Quickly, I visited the article on his blog to see what this blogging site entailed. Did I mention I had invested in several Ponzi schemes? Of course, many, all in a bid to earn money online and attain self-sufficiency from my parents. Reading through the article, I developed a feeling for the site. The Nigerian blogger created two WhatsApp groups for Steemit. Several Nigerians joined, and we all agreed to drop our usernames and likewise posts. We decided to follow each other and upvote each other’s posts, which didn't last for a week. Steemit was not looking like what we expected it to be; it was getting hard or let me say, it was hard.
One of the abandoned groups
Day by day, many left the group, many abandoned and neglected Steemit, leaving me and some other guys on the WhatsApp group and the Steemit community. It was one of those guys who told some of us to do an introduction post after earning like $4 from it. A good Steemian you might say, there is more to that (got the earning through a conny way), he advised us to use a female foreigner’s picture. I did but regretted later as the earnings were not coming forth.
Soon I was the last man standing in the group which has now become a refuse sites for different ads. Looking through the trending page, I decided to get the secrets to being successful on Steemit. I had to go through the Steemit faq and other people’s posts on how a minnow can survive on Steemit, most especially that of @cryptoctopus, @surpassinggoogle, and @jerrybanfield. It was from all these people I learned the secrets of success here on Steemit: commenting, writing an excellent post, and adding value to the community.
Despite knowing all these secrets, it was still challenging to earn big payouts. So I learned the principle of patience and consistency. It was a hard journey. Still, it is, but these policies are making it easy and making Steemit a home away from home.
Contribution to the development of my home (Steemit) and projects
Steemit promotion
I prefer to call myself a silent laborer. I have invited several students of my FUNAAB to Steemit whom I am currently mentoring. Many of them in return has also attracted people who are too under my mentorship. Some of them are: @adetola, @addempsea, @rharphelle, @real2josh, @olubamisedaniel and others. We are planning to promote Steemit in FUNAAB and Abeokuta through lectures, conferences, and meetups. But the one-on-one promotion has been spreading, and we intend not to stop until a more significant percentage of Funaabites and Abeokuta residents join Steemit. We have a group but we currently inactive due to our examinations. I also promote steemit through sharing of links to Facebook.
Our Whatsapp Group
STEEM GREEN
At my early stages on Steemit, I started a digest based on agriculture which aimed to educate Steemians on the working principles behind farming. But due to schooling, I had to stop posting for some months while I focused on curating for curie. But I am back to my first love. The homesteading tag here on Steemit is more about posts displaying how their farms and homesteads look like, and there are not many educational posts on agriculture. So the digest focused on highlighting reasons why people should invest in agriculture and farming, what they should know before investing, how to manage the farm, and what is expected of them as a good farmer. It should be noted that this described problem is not limited to Steemit alone but cut across the internet. Most of the agricultural training and seminars are always in virtual forms. In place of this, I might be coming up with a project which will fill that gap using the Steemit blockchain as a backbone. My several attempts to seek help and support seem to be futile. Though the idea is in its developing phase, support and combination of ideas are welcomed. The name of the project should be STEEMGREEN. This will also serve as a way to promote steemit to farmers who are willing to learn the concept of agriculture.
Letter to Nigerian community
Source: Pixabay used under CCO Creative Common License
Indeed I appreciate every member of this great community; Nigeria is undoubtedly one of the most participating and a core member of the Steemit community. But there are some things I just want to suggest. (This is not a pointing finger game.)
There are too many projects from the Nigerian community focused on bringing people into Steemit than mentorship. Many curators will agree with me that there are just so many not too good posts from the Nigerian community. This all boils down to lack of mentorship. In my case, I have received several messages from people I don't know on Discord and Steemitchat asking me to guide them through the writing of posts, which I always try to do to a satisfying point. More than bringing people into Steemit, let's not forget to mentor people. Not surprisingly, this is what is happening in Nigeria. For instance, the ministry of education and jamb’s focus is not on the teaching of the students, but instead on getting admission into these educational structures.
Another advice is we should learn to be helping mates to our fellow Nigerians and quit the envying (or let me say beefing in Nigeria language). By only this (helping) can we build the Nigerian community. I would have loved to say more about this, but let's wrap it up. However, this advice could lead to a negative situation which leads us to the next recommendation—erasing the mindset of entitlement.
This is a piece of advice most especially to Nigerian minnows like me. Remove that mindset of entitlement. Nobody here on Steemit is guided by any rule to upvote you. If you are truly engaging the community and adding value, you will surely get upvotes. But more than the upvotes, build a relationship. I think this quote sums it up:
If your presence is not felt, your absence is not needed.
Family and friends
I reserved this for the last portion because family and friends are what give home its name. And following @lukestokes words in his post where he said relationships on Steemit are the primary currency of Steemit. These people I am about to mention did not only contribute to my current state here, but to me are like family and friends. I appreciate @oluwoleolaide; I guess he is the C.E.O of Steemit-lagos who mentored me at my early stage here on Steemit, especially not upvoting me due to cheetah's (my close friend then) comment (was not aware of plagiarism then). His style of mentoring was unique. @ehiboss also helped me too and I am grateful, especially concerning my Agric-digest post. And to my Steemit friend who helped me a lot, @greenrun with his nice words and encouragement and lastly @ogoowinner who also contributed to the agric-digest despite disturbing her with my numerous Whatsapp messages. Kudos bro. And to my entire followers and you reading this post, I say thank you.
Well done bro, you really poured out your heart in a glass cup. I totally agree with you on this one because to whom much is given, much is expected. Thanks for opening the ugly side of Nigerian education sector. We are watching out for your new project and i dont mind helping out to also improve myself.
Thanks to @green, @oluwoleolaide and @ehiboss for the good job.
Steemit has really been a home to many of us such that even during examinations, we couldn't just leave home!
Well done fellow steemian. Be awesome. Steem it!
You are a nice man, gracias
Worth it to read.. Thank you for sharing @tormiwah
I need steemit groups like those tho, just joined and dont even know what to do on this app yet😂😭
Yes.. Gud piece. Help is indeed key..
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