There are some practices which don't work so well on Steemit. Rather than working, they limit your chances of making any gains. It doesn't matter whether you are new to Steemit or have spent some time here, there are a few things you should stop doing right now!
Let's see what these things are...
1. Blind Following
One of the biggest Steemit mistakes people do is blind following. When you follow people without looking at what they are all about, blind following is what you are doing. Blindly following others is destructive because it floods your feed with low quality posts coming from people you never tried to know about.
Know who you follow. Follow quality Steemians and interact with them.
This is how blind following works. Don't do it!
2. Mass Following
Mass following means following huge number of people. It is different from blind following because it concerns the number of people rather than their identity or quality. But, blind following is the ultimate culprit behind mass following as well.
I have seen people who follow thousands of profiles, may be in the hope to get followers back. However, it not only fills their feed with crap but also the followers got this way are of no use to them.
The best followers are the ones who follow you out of liking or inspiration because you shared something which they found useful.
In a mess of so many people, you become irrelevant. Do not mass follow!
3. Valueless Comments
Do you have followers who add no value to your blog or content through their detailed comments and deep interactions? Consider following situations.
- Do you like it when someone leaves a completely irrelevant comment on your post?
- Do you like when people just type two words or just one word as comment?
- Would you mind if someone copy paste a comment containing link to his profile, asking follow for follow?
Now put yourself in those situations. Do you think it is of any benefit or value to others if you leave useless comments on their posts? The truth is that you won't like such comments on your posts so, you shouldn't be originator of such comments on others' post as well.
Steemit rewards value addition. If a person adds no value to Steemit or you, why follow him/her?
PS: You can have a look at my comments to see how I interact with fellow Steemians.
Now that's a useless spammer!
4. Repelling Good Steemians
Last but not the least, the worst thing to do is automatically repel good Steemians because of posting bad content or doing any of the things mentioned already in this post. Why would the shining stars of Steemit interact with you? Why would they care to upvote your posts?
Stop the follow for follow trend. Start interacting in a valuable way and you'll find yourself in good environment on Steemit.
Don't force good people to say that to you.
Conclusion
I have covered Steemit on my blog in much detail. This post another contribution towards a better Steemit community. All these points are personally followed by me and I have seen huge benefits in such a short time. Sharing this knowledge and guidance is my way of adding value to the Steemit community.
This post hopes to achieve the following aims.
- Practical advice to my followers to avoid the useless practices.
- Educating new Steemians so that they could have a better start.
- Creating a better community by getting rid of unwanted behaviors.
- Reaching out to maximum people so that they can benefit from it (not possible without your resteems).
I hope you liked this post. I am thankful to you for reading this and grateful for your upvotes and resteems.
@ilyastarar great post as usual.
Blind and mass following are the two worst things one can do to himself in my opinion. Because of these two things you miss a lot of good stuff that can help you to understand and use steemit in a better way.
Making relevant comments on posts is the best practice specially for the newcomers. When you make relevant and fruitful comments on posts it helps you to understand how the platform works, enhance your writing skills and make you noticeable.
Thanks @ayeshanor for the wonderful summary of my post. Understanding the platform, learning how to write and being noticeable are great outcomes of well thought out use of Steemit features.
Hey man @ilyastarar, i just got off your post on "it's not important that i have 3,000 followers..."
Combining that with this post is the right meal for the newbies on steemit, i will put the points together and use them as a guideline and also use the points to teach new steemians that i am inviting to the platform.
Thank You once again
These are good points but I do have to ask why do steemit stars not reply to even a great comment on their post? Do you just get to point where you just let it ride because you can? And another thing I noticed on that point is a lot of those whom have thousof followers seem to Resteem more than posting original work, what’s up with that? Thank you for reading and I look forward to hearing back from you.
I understand. It becomes difficult. Most people wish to reply but it may not be manageable. Some may even afford to ignore but they don't know that the community also starts ignoring them.
I personally think a comment is a great deposit and it should get some return. A reply and even an upvote of some value.
Thank you for replying! You are right about those whom choose to not reply, losing followers that they worked hard from the beginning to get. I always feel a personal approach is always the best idea. Too many people/business lack that now days. Again, thank you and glad to see you aren’t one of them :D
I have the same issues with spammers. I start sending randowhale for people with good content and also leave a comment to every spammer. First is usually a guideline like yours, if they continue, the second is a warning and at the third offence from a spammer is a visit from steemcleaners. I think this is a very reasonable procedure.
It's a very reasonable procedure. Thanks for making the community better. While we should appreciate good authors, the not-so-good ones should be guided, warned or discouraged as well.
@ilyastarar; i'm fairly new to Steemit, other than just looking into who you're following and for what reason, what would you do to build your following in the meantime? How do you really become a part of Steemit?
Welcome to Steemit @mpotter. It's nice to meet you here. What I do to build my following is that I interact with people here. Your comment is a good example of interaction.
I have blogged quite a lot about what to do on Steemit. You may find good things if you scroll down my blog. Wish you happy steeming!
Thank you for that! I always enjoy a little friendly, knowledgeable interaction! Happiest of steeming to you as well!
In the beginning, comment more and post less. Comment on good posts from great authors. You'll not only get upvotes on comments but also some followers (and of course an increase in your reputation).
Great question! As a new steemer (Is that what we call us?). LOL! Anyways, as a new steem person, there is a lot of spam on here, and I'm digging through it all trying to sift out how to gain followers on here. I have moved to my own personal 'fans' on other social media to bring people into this platform, because I LOVE the concept! And the potential is great. But aside from my own existing network, I definitely want to expand it.
@ilyastarar good points especially the use of memes...which website provided you with the funny links?
I use giphy.com for linking these gifs.
Thanks
I loath the post about how many followers they have but then when you look they are following thousands more. So they make themselves look more important than they are. People will follow you if your ideas are worth while.
Exactly on point @rusticman1 about how people think they 'have' huge following when all they have is just numbers.
I used to follow everyone who followed me until I realized I was being stupid instead of generous (which I believe in being). I changed my generosity to replying to each and every comment on my blog and upvoting the vest comments.
I came across a tutorial yesterday (mis)guiding people on how to get more followers. He was telling people to follow a shipload of people to get a percentage of followers from them. I intervened and left a comment there containing link to one of my posts on topic.
You have highlighted the issue well. Thanks a lot.
Thanks for this stellar post. I do find the whole f4f and mega-follow stuff disconcerting, and somewhat baffling. Some of the weirdest accounts I've looked at have thousands of followers, not a single comment made, no replies of course, and in their blog posts, only thousands of resteems = account value total of $2.32. I'd bet not a single post actually having been read too. Must get tiring and boring 😰 ...or are they running a script?
I don't know why they do this. It's probably because they never invest their mind and time in learning the platform. I have seen accounts with similar stats as you mentioned and I tried to guide them the way I could. When I felt the need of a post, I did this one and an earlier one as well to tackle the issue and may be educate the willing learners.
Thanks for reading and commenting.
I like your points
Thank you for liking my points. I hope you read my point number 3 as well. It is particularly about comments. Comments on Steemit should be valuable I believe and they should start a discussion or contain a detailed opinion.
Amazing piece of writing and practical tips for steemians.
Thanks for reading and leaving your feedback.
THIS IS MAINLY DO TO MISUNDERSTANDING AND A "RACK A DISCPRINE"...
That gif is from Metal Gear Solid, right? The snake or whatever his name was!
he he yes it is! that was Liquid snake revealing himself to the surprise of Solid Snake...deal with it! lol
Lol! That sucker! Surprised the hell out of me. One of the few games I have played and completed. It was very enjoyable. Thanks for bringing it up in the head
I am following you for this post, very relevant! and don't forget the ole "follow me, I 'll follow you bait and switch", where people follow you to get you to follow them then they unfollow you, it kinda hurt my feelings at first but now I don't entertain such games....If I find your content appealing, then I will follow you, regardless of if you follow me.
Thanks for this thorough comment. Following should be about quality and value. I did an entire post on the follow for follow trend. You can check it on my wall. It is a bit similar to this one but exclusively deals with follow for follow. I certainly dislike that trend and I won't follow anyone just because a person followed me.
I will check it out, thanks!
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STOPHay comentarios que muy lejos de ayudarte, te frustran en particular me esfuerzo en mis post porque estoy en un aprendizaje y es sumamente desalentador si te dejan dos palabras incoherentes y de paso te piden que los sigas, me gusta tu post es real muy real si queremos avanzar los que vamos empezando¡
I'm sorry I don't know the language.
Congratulations! This post has been upvoted from the communal account, @minnowsupport, by ilyastarar from the Minnow Support Project. It's a witness project run by aggroed, ausbitbank, teamsteem, theprophet0, and someguy123. The goal is to help Steemit grow by supporting Minnows and creating a social network. Please find us in the Peace, Abundance, and Liberty Network (PALnet) Discord Channel. It's a completely public and open space to all members of the Steemit community who voluntarily choose to be there.
If you like what we're doing please upvote this comment so we can continue to build the community account that's supporting all members.
Keep those good reminders flowin', gotta do it, gotta do it... lotta small fish in the seas !
Thanks man! Gotta keep it comin' yo!
Hello, I'm new in Steemit and actually this post makes me realize that maybe i'm not getting the platform right. Thanks for the advices, i would follow your ideas to use steemit in a better way.
Couldn't agree more. Why mass following if you don't want to clutter your feed? I like Steemit and very selective of people I follow. I tend not to resteem simply because I try to be mindful of my followers. They might not like me spamming them with resteeming.
That's the best strategy when it comes to resteeming I think. Followers are important and we need to be mindful of them.
Thank you for posting this. I just started out on steemit and am still getting a handle on the etiquette and just how everything works in general. When I first got online a few days ago I definitely did a bit of blind following out of not really knowing what was going on. But since I've figured out how to find artists and creators that I actually want to interact with and learn from and have seen just how much originality and authenticity is valued and tangibly rewarded on steemit. It's so different than what I am used to on so much of the internet. It was sort of shocking, in a really good way. Now I am so stoked to start sharing art and ideas with a genuine, interested, and invested group of people!
Thx for encouragement to decluter my following list. This one is really good: “Blindly following others is destructive because it floods your feed with lowquality posts coming from people you never tried to know about.” Thank you to show me the way to have nice and quality time on steemit 👩🏼💻☕️
Thank you so much, i leant a lot from your blog have been looking for content like this because am new in steemit,finally found yours and i found it very intresting .😄