I have been trying really hard to move up the ranks through being active and helping out the #steemit hashtag on instagram and help sign up people from that community to Steemit. Feels so lame bringing in new members and then only being able to vote them up 1 cent when they introduce themselves... after 500 comments it also feels like whales only look at posts and dolphins are almost just as rare as them in comments.
Lately I burned out and lost the incentive to keep posting when a post about the facebook community makes 10k and none of the "whales" ever reply or reach back out to someone.
I have also invested 200 Steem of my own purchase so all you see in my wallet isn't just from what I've earned here.
Don't get discouraged. What @dan said is absolutely right. If your quality posts and comments aren't being recognized it may simply be that the usage of the site has exploded and whales can't be everywhere. This is a good thing because it means that usage is growing!
But as more and more dolphins (and just regular fish) grow up, there will be more and more powerful upvotes to go around all over the site.
New Chinese Dolphins here, i am a bitcoin long time holder, i heard and registered just a few days ago, i have 37k SP now, i am introducing steem to my Chinese friends and answer FAQs everyday, but It's hard to sign up even for my friends who is a software developer because of the Chinese Firewall, few Chinese use reddit, and it's impossible to sign up with a newly created account, Facebook was blocked too; VPN was blocked as well, not all of the place, but in some big cities such as Beijing, ShengZheng, etc. The police will talk even arrest you if you provide VPN service, One of my friend went to the police station yesterday because of this. And i posted about it, and tried to reach dan and ned in the wallet, and even posted on the github, but failed.
As you can see, the tag "cn" rise quickly , from nowhere to near top 10, because my friends and i posted a lot of posts for newbies, i upvoted every post in the cn tag to encourage newbies, and answered a lot of questions, and we are trying to build a Chinese community , we created QQ groups and wechat groups, the group numbers are growing fast.
Sorry to post here, i upvoted myself, i hope you developers was able to notice the problem and fix it for Chinese, thanks.
Yes, 99% of Chinese internet users don't have Facebook or reddit account, and Facebook is blocked by Chinese Firewall. They are very difficult to create a steemit account in China.
However, 99.9% of Chinese Internet users have QQ or Weixin accounts
I'd strongly suggest to @dan and @ned that Steemit team support for QQ or Wechat verifieation.
I've noticed that Cn tag moving up the ranks. I think you have spotted a massive potential market given the social media problems you describe in China. This would be a massive coup for Steemit if it fills the vacuum.
Great work that you do! I wish you much success with growing the Chinese community!
I'm Chinese too! Have a look at my article - I went on a Chinese dating show Fei Cheng Wu Rao haha.
That's a relief to hear! I'm hoping to get some wind beneath my wings as well, so I'm staying as active as I can and contributing as much as possible (without getting fired).
I agree, system is being used widely, usage will keep increasing. We will see some improvements, test few things and innovate. That is what we are here for, to not get stuck but move forward. btw, checkout #steemmobile. ;-)
Thank you @smooth, you will see soon those steem dollars will go to good use of the community for my next post!
Btw, since people listen to you, there is an account on Instagram called "steemit" and when asked if it was an official one it said yes, when asked to prove it by replying to me here, they gave no reply but still followed me and continued to make another post. So I hope you can warn users about their personal information and/or passwords.
Thanks again.
Upvote my post plz
duplicated
Don't get disheartened. Build your reputation over time. It will pay off in the end. Help people and the karma will eventually pay off.
It takes a lot of time and effort plus a lot of creativity to get noticed... ive been here for 10 days and rarely get noticed but my spirit wont be defeated. I will continue to be active and enganging and try to add value in this community by creating more contents and hope to get lucky that a dolphin or a whale will take notice of what i do... whining wont get us to the whales... we have to work for it... good luck to all of us.