Recently I have had some friends and family to join steemit and I remember what it was like when I first joined. I was completely lost, didn’t know what to do and how to do it! I tried reaching out to others that I knew on the platform but they were too busy to try and help me get started. With that being said, I thought that I would take a few minutes to write down a few of my own guide lines that I “try” to go by in hopes to try and help others in my circles or any others that may stumble across it.
Now, by no means am I trying to imply that I’m an expert on the steemit platform or that I’m a huge success or anything. But, I can say that I have come a long way since last summer. Also remember that these are just friendly tips and my opinions of how a steemit account should be run. Feel free to pick and choose which, if any parts of this post that may help you.
Don’t SPAM! This is a HUGE NO-NO in my book! Spamming can be done in several different ways. One popular method is for new members to make a comment on someone’s post asking to be followed or voted for. Another method of spamming is trying to promote your own post in the comment section of someone else’s post by posting the link to your page. This isn’t really rocket science so if it feels like you’re spamming someone then you probably are.
Quality Posts and Over Posting: This is pretty important guys! Think about building your reputation from the ground up here. I’ve followed some guys that were pumping out 20 posts per day, every day of nothing but pure garbage. Needless to say that I don’t follow them anymore but in their head, they thought that the more posts that they got out, the more exposure they got and the more money they would make. This might work if you’re lucky but I wouldn’t try it myself. More than likely you will develop several people in your feed. Just imagine the same person flooding your feed every day with shitty posts. Trust me when I say that it will get old fast and you will either mute the person or delete them all together. Quality posts are also more likely to earn you higher rewards as well as respect.
Be Consistent: It’s very important to stay consistent on this platform if you want to be successful on it. If you’re spotty with your posting and commenting, then you might get forgotten easily. Also, putting in constant work on the block-chain will result in constant cash flow (hopefully). This is really important to the people that follow me because I have such a bad memory and I follow so many people, my feed is always flooded. But if you make comments regularly on my posts, then chances are good that I’m either going to give you a good upvote or visit your page and/or both just because you're in my recent thought.
Quality Replies: Ohhh, here’s another good one lol! Guys, there’s nothing more insulting than for someone to spend hours on writing an article or working on a post just to see someone leave a generic comment that is unrelated to the topic. I have seen this hundreds of times and it never serves the person well. The person doing it is trying to spam or manipulate the system by going around copying and pasting as many comments as he or she can in attempts to get promoted faster. It would be like someone leaving a comment like this on this exact post: : “Great photos, please follow me for votes!”. That’s actually a double whammy. It’s spam and a generic comment lol.
Be Original: Do your own thing and be good at it! Don’t try to plagiarize because chances are that you will get caught by the cheetah bot that patrols the posts. I’ve also had someone to steal my material that the cheetah missed but a fellow steemian caught one time, it was pathetic.
False Flagging: This isn’t like YouTube and you just can’t go around trolling and false flagging everyone without repercussions. Chances are great that if you start doing this, your account reputation will be smashed so bad that your comments can’t be viewed due to your low rating. There’s also great support teams that can assist with people that plagiarize and cause trouble. On here, the community does a great job of policing it’self!
Give Credit: Always give credit where credit is due. If you obtain information from WikiLeaks, then you should cite them in your post. Same thing goes for other steemians, if you got an idea from another steemians article, then you should give them credit and post a link to their article.
Give! Try to look at using this platform as more of giving than receiving and I think you will do better imo.
Loyalty! Be sure to take care of your loyal followers! This is a big thing for me. I will never forget the first person that helped me on here and I try to always be loyal. I also try to treat the people good that frequently support my work. On steemit, there are apps for everything. Your phone can notify you of everything that happens to your account. You can be notified if someone stops or starts following you, comments on your post, reply to your comment and even tells you what percentage of a vote they gave you! So there’s not much excuse not to take care of your loyal supporters.
Self-Voting: Cough, Cough! I don’t know if I want to even mention this topic or not lol. This has and probably still is a sensitive subject and it’s not one that I care to argue about. I will however give my opinion on it and mention the opinions of others I know on the subject. But chances are great that if you are just starting on here, you don’t know what’s frowned upon and what is considered proper so I will give you my OPINION. If I write an article then I will upvote my own post, especially if it’s one that I put a lot of time and effort in to. Some people think this is not ethical but the majority of the people I know consider it okay to vote their own post up. Voting your own comments left on other’s posts ….mehhhh! This one is actually frowned upon by most everyone I know (Even some whales) so I don’t do it. Now, I could see an exception to that if like someone asked me a question that required an in-depth and time consuming answer and I spent a lot of time replying to someone, but that would probably be the only time I would do it, if I even would do it.
Voting for Others: Voting for others can be confusing when you first start out, I know it was for me. After a certain point, you will get a slider that you can control the percentage of vote strength you give someone. When you’re at 100% voting strength, you get like 10 full power votes (If I’m not mistaken, please correct me if I am.) and after that your strength starts to go down and in turn the value of your vote goes with it. Then after my power is depleted, it needs time to replenish. It doesn’t take much time but I try not to let mine get below 80% power. I like to give full power votes so my power gets drained pretty quickly. Everyone uses their votes differently. I feel like I’m generous with mine, although I only vote on things that I think deserve a vote. What I think deserves a vote will be different than yours. I try to vote the peoples posts that show up in my feed, although I can’t possibly do this for everyone of course. People that regularly leave genuine comments on my posts usually get votes too. It’s common for new people to think that voting for someone costs them money when it doesn’t. I thought the same thing when I started. I thought that when I voted for a comment and saw a penny show up and then the next vote showed zero, I was like “Well, I gave all my money away.” Lol. It was just that my account wasn’t worth hardly any money and therefor my vote wasn’t worth much money. But like now for example, if I voted for a comment and it was worth a dollar, that dollar doesn’t come out of my account. So don’t be afraid of voting for material that you want to vote for, it actually helps you! Like I mentioned earlier, look at it as giving rather than receiving and you will go far!
Witness: When I first started, I was bombarded with different people wanting me to vote for them to be a witness. At the time, I had no clue what a witness was or anything. A witness is an extremely important responsibility in this blockchain and voting for someone should be a serious thing. I voted for the guy just because I thought he seemed nice :/ lol. But, I didn’t know any better and that’s why I’m trying to give you guys a heads up. If someone wants you to vote for them as a witness, do your research on what a witness does and then investigate the person asking.
I’m sure that there are other things that I have left out but these are some really great basic tips to think about implementing in your own steemit journey. I hope this has helped someone and if I can answer any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask.
You will get some long ass comment on this one. Lol.
I will try not to screw this up. I am new on steemit so thanks for all the great tips. It took me a long time to read that some time I have to read things two or three times or I can’t remember it. I have had this problem all my life with reading and writing. Thanks to spell check and talk text it’s a big help. So some times doing this stuff is like standing in front of a group of people giving a speech if you’ve never done it before. I am not looking for a pity party just letting you know bro I will try my best for you guys and hope it’s good enough or you can 🖕🏻Yourself. Lol jk. Keep up the good work and it was cool to see you in the chat last night
Oh man, you and I are more alike than you know! I'm the same way with having to read things multiple times so I will understand it or like you said, forget part of it. Grammar and spelling is one of my weaknesses that continues to get worse every day. When I went through rookie school, I took a mini tape recorder to class and recorded the instructor everyday because of my short attention span. Back when I grew up, we didnt gave ADD and other learning disorders so to be honest, I probably have something like that but was never diagnosed with it, just had to work harder lol. When I went through instructor school, I had to stay up until like 0300 in the morning every night studying because that course was so difficult for me. It was a 2 week course away from home, kinda like a boot camp scenario. When they told me that I passed, I literally broke down crying. They asked me what was wrong and I told them that its just been a really rough 2 weeks on me mentally. And then the first time I actually taught a class...damn! So I know where you're coming from and it's all good! Writing about myself and posting pictures of myself is definitely stepping outside of the box for me. But so far I don't regret it. To be honest, it actually helps to get on here and let a few things out where I'm such a hermit all the time.
I really enjoyed that hangout too last night. I need to do that more often!
Wow your right man a lot the same. I had a similar story like that when I was in Boot Camp and in training to be a mechanic. I was a mechanic a year before basic so I know way more then 90% of the others taking the same class. I didn’t have time to study for a test they give us. It was read the book then take the test. I failed and that set me back three week 😔. Oh well right. I made it through the rest with flying colors. Well it’s good to know someone that can understand the Challenge.
👍🏻
Nice job @bluelightbandit! It warms my heart to see you reaching out to help new people. You have arrived as a Steemian in your own right.
That's the best compliment I could have received! I just remember being so lost and not knowing what to do when I first started. Kinda like now with trading crypto's on exchanges and stuff lol.
Thank you for this helpful post. I agree with your thoughts as a matter of good behavior and living in general. Being other oriented is a good lifeway, especially if one connects with like minded people.
I do perceive Steemit as a platform for cultural transformation. Moving away from the American culture of war and greed, to one of mutual respect and cooperation is a worthy effort. The Lucifarian beliefs adhered to my so many today result in low vibration beings who are not in sync with the higher vibrational age that we have entered. The higher vibrations have awakened our bodies to the realization that each of us is far more that we have been educated to believe. So today we awaken and walk into the sunlight. Each new day is more vibrant than the last. We meditate and transform ourselves, and when the gift of words is given we offer gratitude. Thank you.
Oustanding reply, I'm glad it was helpful!
This is a very helpful post not only to me but other "newbies" to the steemit community. I know you put a lot of time and effort in your blogs and I hope others will find this one as useful as I do.
Awwww, you can be so sweet sometimes.
Excellent ad vice to the new people coming to steemit. Always enjoy your posts and I think that you have good experience at posting what matters. Going to go see if I can find @carolina-girl. 🐓🐓
I put her ass in time out from steemit for a few days, she was making my pimp hand tense up a lil bit! lol nah, just kidding maybe. She's been a lil bit sick but I think sh'e going to try and write a recipe soon... if I let her.
If you let her! You know that kind of talk will only get you in trouble on here. Haha.
Hope she is feeling better soon. Sounds like you need a good kick in the a...🐓🐓
What can I say, I like living in the edge 😎. In reality though, I just literally got through helping her post a baking post lol.
Good advice for newbies, @bluelightbandit! It wasn't all that long ago that I wore those shoes too. Sometimes I still feel like a newbie! There is always something new to learn here.
You and I both, friend.
Nice post! (just kidding). Great tips and I especially like how you touched on the self voting discussion. I upvote some of my posts, like you if I put a lot of effort in it or if I think that it is a good post. I have no shame in rewarding myself for a job well done because I know that however I feel about a post, chances are that it might go unnoticed. upvoting my own comments though is a no-no.
LOL! Thanks for support! Everything you said is true; I have spent hours on a post before just to only recieve a few views. When I first started, I noticed someone voting up their own comments and I was confused whether or not this was acceptaple because this was a reputable steemian. I consulted with a mentor of mine on here about it and she told me her thoughts, which was basically what I wrote in the article. Although, even if I did spend a lot of time on a reply to someone, I still don't think I would vote it up...I dunno, just seems weird lol.
Would you believe that the very first comment that I recieved after posting this was spam comment lol? I swear on my life, I thought the guy was joking like you were but unfortunately he wasn't.
Very Informative. Thank you .
Glad it helped!
Great advice for newbies! I have an issue with being consistent as I'll be going strong and then poof! I run out ideas on what to post, what to comment, so I just shelf Steemit until inspiration hits again. Don't really know what to do about that..
It's funny how you treaded so lightly about self voting HA! When I created an article about it, it was amazing how many people came out with their guns blazing and I even lost a few followers over it, the convos got extremely heated!! So I don't blame you there.😂👍
I know what you mean about running out of content but I have a great solution for ya!
@lyndsaybowes created a tag called #walkwithme and tries to support people that use it, you should look in to it!
Yes walk with me posts are fun and inspirational!
This guide will be helpfull for newbies :D I remember when I startet in november I was so lost, but this community is great they told me all I have to know like you with this post :D
There are a lot of great people here that are always willing to help, that's for sure!
check this out.You have received an upvote from STAX. Thanks for being a member of the #steemsilvergold community and opting in (if you wish to be removed please follow the link). Please continue to support each other in this great community. To learn more about the #steemsilvergold community and STAX,
This post has been included in the latest issue of 'Notes'. Do stop in and see what the fam is up to!