Hello Steemit,
I’ve officially passed the 1-month mark since my first #introduceyourself post and what a journey it has been. When I first discovered Steemit I was hesitant to start blogging as I felt like I needed to learn so much before I could actually start. So, I spent a couple of weeks just reading posts and learning about Steemit. I felt overwhelmed by everything that could be done on this platform (in a good way), so if you are new and reading this and you are in the same boat as me, my first piece of advice is to just start.
Don’t hesitate and just start. I have learnt so much more by just blogging and jumping right in. That being said, I am still learning so much every day and am still a Plankton, albeit a month-old Plankton. What is a plankton? We are the newbies of the newbies of Steemit and will hopefully flourish and grow to become a Minnow, with the ultimate goal of becoming a Dolphin or a Whale.
Read my full #introduceyourself post here
This is a short summary of the information and tools that helped me during my first month on Steemit. I convinced my sister @tingyo to join Steemit as well and found myself relaying everything I learnt to her about how to use the platform and how to grow her account as a Plankton, so I decided to put everything into writing and share it for any other newbies that could benefit from this information.
Read the FAQ
This may sound like a stupid tip but it has all the information you need to know to understand Steemit. I know it is very long and does get a bit complicated for a newbie but it is well worth the read. I read it twice when I first discovered Steemit and still find myself referring to it quite often to re-read certain parts of it.
Read it here. Read it here. Read it here. Read it here.
Invest in Steemit
If you have the spare funds and you really believe in this platform you should definitely invest in Steemit and power up to Steem Power (SP). It is a long-term investment but if you are in this for the long-run, getting some SP into your account will give you more power and influence in terms of voting. I personally was only able to invest a small amount and power up to 50 SP but I found that even this investment greatly helped me when I started.
Not financial advice, just my personal opinion, do your own research and only invest what you can afford to possibly lose
Mindset – Patience Is A Virtue
As a small fish it will take time, patience and perseverance to grow your account and following on Steemit. Especially if you don’t have the ability to invest in the platform to kick-start your account. You will likely see little to no rewards for your content until you grow your following. So as a newbie, a major focus will be to start connecting with other Steemians.
Set yourself some goals with a deadline to give yourself motivation and milestones to work toward. My first goal was to reach a Reputation Score of 40 by my first month, which I managed to achieve just before my deadline. Celebrate your achievements when you can, even if they are small goals, as this will give you that winning successful mindset, motivation to persevere and just because it will make you feel good! It is also wonderful to share your success with Steemit, as I found that reading other’s success stories was a huge motivator on what I can hope to achieve as well.
My long-term goal is to continuously focus on producing quality content and not-so-much on the monetary gains. Although it is super exciting when you receive your rewards, if you primarily focus on quality and interacting with the Steemit community, I believe that the money will automatically follow. If you simply focus on the money rewards and you don’t receive as much as you expected, you are setting yourself up for disappointment, which will just discourage you.
Mindset is so important – so stay strong, be patient, persevere and you will succeed!
Quality over Quantity
You will read this everywhere but all Steemians appreciate quality over quantity content. My belief is that if you don’t have anything worthwhile to post, then don’t post at all. I don’t like to have my feed flooded with useless posts and prefer to have posts that are well-written, useful and inspiring. I shy away from the spammy posts that have one sentence written with a random picture taken off google that give me no value.
My favourite posts are travel blogs at the moment as they have such beautiful photos that give me ideas for my own travel bucket-list. I also love reading other Steemian’s achievement posts on how far they have come on Steemit. They are very inspiring!
Learn Basic Markdown Styling
If you are like me and don’t have much tech background, you will need to learn some basic Markdown Styling to make your post look and read well. I am very noob in this regard and have only learnt the bare minimum to make my blogs easy-to-read and understand.
You will find a Markdown Styling Guide on your Steemit Post page. Direct link here for easy reference.
Be Genuine! Commenting is King!
Be genuine in commenting and replying all your fellow Steemians. I really appreciate and love getting comments on my posts, so I always try to reply each genuine comment that I receive. You can always tell when someone is being genuine or if they are just spamming you with follow for follow and vote for vote comments.
This leads me to my next point of leaving genuine and valuable comments on other Steemian’s posts. I read a great post from @ilyastarar that taught me just HOW important commenting on other posts are. Please read his full post as he explains it all much better than I ever could.
At the end of the day, be real and genuine in all your Steemit interactions and leave those quality comments on posts that you find useful and engaging. This is how the Steemit community grows and is so welcoming and encouraging. Something that is not found on other social media platforms. This community is one of the reasons I LOVE STEEMIT!
Join Contests!
These are one of my favourite activities on Steemit. I love the idea of Steemians running contests to get other Steemians involved, with the winners being rewarded. As a newbie, this is one of the greatest ways (that I have found at least) of engaging with the community and earning some STEEM or SBD if you win.
There are so many out there but my favourite challenges at the moment are:
- #dailyfoodphotography hosted by @howtostartablog – Rules found here
- Daily Photography Contests hosted by @juliank – Rules found here
- #sevendaybnwchallenge
- Tasty Tuesday, Toss-Up Thursday & Photo Friday hosted by @qurator – Rules found in each of their relevant posts
Join PAL on Discord – The Minnow Support Project - https://discord.gg/HYj4yvw
You can network with other Steemians through the PAL (Peace Abundance Liberty) Group and can join various Interest Specific or Country Specific groups – for example, I love the Contests, Food & Gaming Interest groups, and I have joined the @teamaustralia group.
The other benefit of joining this discord group is that there is an upvote chat that will allow you to get a free upvote from the @minnowsupport bot on your post every 30 hours. Simply follow the rules and type $upvote (link to your post).
Resteem your posts
Another free tool to support planktons/newbies/minnows from @resteemable. It’s very simple to use, you just need to replace the https:// in your Steemit URL and replace with “re” and press enter!
Join Steem Engine / https://steemengine.net/join?r=2142 & Steem Follower
These are relatively new for me so I haven’t played around with them too much, but they are free to join platforms that allow you to exchange your upvotes & follows with other users of the platforms. The @steemengineteam will also leave you comments.
There are limits on how many upvotes and follows you can issue to others, which helps to promote upvotes & following of quality posts and worthy Steemit accounts only.
Post via busy.org
This is another avenue to get free upvotes – simply generate and publish your post through busy.org and use the tag ”busy” and @busy.org will upvote your post.
I also love the website interface as you have a "Notifications” system and "Activities" area so you never miss a thing associated with your account. You can filter activities as well to find exactly what you’re looking for. There is also a voting slider to adjust your voting power for ANY user, unlike Steemit, which requires you to have over 500 SP before you can adjust your voting power. Busy.org will also display your current power and vote value so you can easily see your stats.
Join Qurator – Upvotes for Life
This one is a paid membership of 4 STEEM at the time of writing but I believe it is worth the fee as it enables you to have one daily upvote from @qurator. They feature and curate quality content to generate exposure of it’s members to the Steemit world. They also host three weekly photography contests as mentioned before – Tasty Tuesday, Toss-Up Thursday & Photo Friday
Use eSteem App on your mobile
I discovered eSteem while reading through another post created by @ilyastarar that explained the availability of an iOS and Android app for Steemit. If you are interested in this app, I highly recommend heading over to read his comprehensive summary of eSteem here.
I love the notifications system, the ability to bookmark posts that you can read at a later time, as well as the ability to create drafts and schedule your posts to publish at a later time and date. The only downside is that the app can be a bit glitchy and slow at times. That being said, I love using this app while I’m out and about and want to read a few blogs when I don’t have my laptop.
Monitor Your Stats
When I first started Steemit, I had no idea what my voting power was and often went on an upvote spree before I realised that I was down to a very low percentage. There are a few different ways to check your stats.
- Busy.org will show your voting power and vote value
- https://steemnow.com/(yourusername) – Shows your latest upvotes, curation rewards, author rewards and latest post rewards
- http://steemitboard.com/welcome.html - Shows your progress towards Steemit achievements from @steemitboard
- https://steemd.com/(yourusername) – Very comprehensive stats about your whole account, including your Voting Weight, Voting Power, Bandwidth and all activity that relates to your account. I don’t understand most of the information on Steemd but it has a few key pieces of information that are useful to someone like me.
Post Regularly
This is something that I really need to work on for my own account. I have been trying to find my feet on Steemit but I finally feel like I’m starting to get into a rhythm with posting and reading other’s content around my current life and commitments. So it’s time to practice what I preach, create a plan, stick to it, be patient and persevere.
That’s all from me for now. This was meant to be a short summary but it definitely morphed into something else. My goals to reach by the end of March will be to reach a reputation score of 50. Perhaps I’m reaching a bit far but if I shoot for the stars, perhaps I’ll land on the moon. My daily goal is to upvote 10 quality posts each day and leave as many meaningful comments as I can. I aim to post once every day but at the bare minimum 4 times per week.
If you made it to the end of this post, thank you very much for reading! I know it was long-winded but I hope you have gained some sort of value from my thoughts and reflection of my first month on Steemit. While I’ve already learnt so much, I realise that I have only scratched the surface. If anyone has any advice, or if there is any information that I have wrongly provided, please let me know!
-Frankie
Welcome to steemit society
Thank you! I appreciate you taking the time to have a look at my post
Great post, I can tell you put a lot of thought into it supernovastaffy
I couldn't agree anymore on when you stated:
That's the best way to do it!
Thank you! It took me all day to put it together as I had to keep coming back to it to change things. It almost felt like I was back in university trying to write an assignment. Based on a much more interesting subject though, so it's all worth it. Thanks for the comment, I really appreciate it!
This is an elaborate post about your first month and you have solid advices there @supernovastaffy :) Keep it up!!! I have joined Steemit for two months and yes I managed to reach reputation level of 50 and also aim to post everyday!
Thanks for having a read. It feels so much more rewarding when other's find your work valuable. It's great to know that it's possible to reach a reputation level of 50 within 2 months. I don't really understand the whole bots/delegation of SP etc so I'm hoping to reach 50 without needing to rely on those tools too much.
Great job on reaching 50 within that time frame. People like you are my inspiration on what can be achieved!
Congratulations! Your post has been selected as a daily Steemit truffle! It is listed on rank 2 of all contributions awarded today. You can find the TOP DAILY TRUFFLE PICKS HERE.
I upvoted your contribution because to my mind your post is at least 48 SBD worth and should receive 121 votes. It's now up to the lovely Steemit community to make this come true.
I am
TrufflePig, an Artificial Intelligence Bot that helps minnows and content curators using Machine Learning. If you are curious how I select content, you can find an explanation here!Have a nice day and sincerely yours,
TrufflePigTHanks for selecting me!
Hi @supernovastaffy, you've done very well for your first month! I wish I knew as much when I started :D Definitely a good idea to introduce more people to steemit and everything else you have mentioned is on the mark. If you are on Discord then you'll have to also check out @ginabot! Everyone who has used it has said how much easier it has made their Steemit experience - it's a life saver!
You can check out @newbiegames and @artz's contest posts for more competitions on Steemit, visit @newbieresteemday to join other people keen to help and support each other.
I have added you to my list of siblings on Steemit and please also feel free to check out the Steemtopia Network of Learning:
Thank you for stopping by and for your suggestions. I've set up my Ginabot so that should be extremely helpful. I love contests and can see that @artz has very comprehensive Steemit Contest Compilation posts - this will take me awhile to get through but I love the idea. Thank you so much for sharing and for being so welcoming! I really appreciate it
No problems! It is good to help people who are in #teamaustralia to get more involved, and you've done well to get not one but two family members on Steemit as well. Since you are also another Steemian from Brisbane we may even have crossed paths in the real world!
I think between @artz (all), @moneyinfant (writing contests) and @newbiegames (all) you get a fair bit of the contests going around so hopefully something there for you. And you'll probably need ginabot to keep track of everything relating to the contests :)
Ginabot has been amazing. I love that you can track your favorite Steemians activity. Thank you for the recommendations. Brisbane is quite small so I’m sure we may have crossed paths. And according to the six degrees of separation we should have some sort of connection through other people we know already
Thanks again for the support
No problems, please tell other people about @ginabot too! Yes, we are probably connected but since I am not very active on facebook I probably wouldn't know if this was the case or not :p
You just planted 0.02 tree(s)!
Thanks to @andhovesyan
We have planted already 5638.94 trees
out of 1,000,000
Let's save and restore Abongphen Highland Forest
in Cameroonian village Kedjom-Keku!
Plant trees with @treeplanter and get paid for it!
My Steem Power = 20713.33
Thanks a lot!
@martin.mikes coordinator of @kedjom-keku
You’ve had a great first month on Steemit. Good luck for the future.
Thank you for the encouragement! This community is what makes Steemit different to all other social media sites. Thanks for stopping by
Wow..what a information in one post..very helpful
Thank you for your comment and support. Hoping that this information will be useful to other newbies like myself :)
I just started this weekend and I must say that those are some valuable and helpful tipps, thx alot! Will use them in my first steps on steemit. Maybe you will take a look at my blog and see how i do? Would be nice to get some feedback😃
Thank you for stopping by. I'm glad to share what I have learnt so far. You've done really well to have a reputation score of 40 already for only joining this weekend. That is something to be proud of! Keep up to the good work. Your photographs on your blog are beautiful
Your Post Has Been Featured on @Resteemable!
Feature any Steemit post using resteemit.com!
How It Works:
1. Take Any Steemit URL
2. Erase
https://3. Type
reGet Featured Instantly � Featured Posts are voted every 2.4hrs
Join the Curation Team Here | Vote Resteemable for Witness
Congratulations! This post has been upvoted from the communal account, @minnowsupport, by NovaTheBlack from the Minnow Support Project. It's a witness project run by aggroed, ausbitbank, teamsteem, theprophet0, someguy123, neoxian, followbtcnews, and netuoso. The goal is to help Steemit grow by supporting Minnows. Please find us at 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 would like to delegate to the Minnow Support Project you can do so by clicking on the following links: 50SP, 100SP, 250SP, 500SP, 1000SP, 5000SP.
Be sure to leave at least 50SP undelegated on your account.
This is actually one of the most helpful and practical "first month on Steemit" posts I've run in to, great job! We're about the same age on Steemit, but you've obviously learned much more!! :)
Thank you so much for the comment and for the RE steem. It means so much to me. It makes writing these longer post worth it! I’m glad to help anyone that I can. Keep up the good work, you’re doing great.
It was a pleasure to do, you did such a great job! All the best!
that bandana is goals :P hahahaha
Hahah I love it as I’ve always been a huge Pokémon fan. I just couldn’t resist buying it! Thanks for stopping by 😁
duh gotta investigate your cool posts to follow for a reason! :P
very good and helpful post for steemit newbies, thank you in the name of everyone in desperate need of some advice ;)
Thank you for stopping by! I'm just happy to help others if they find my information useful :)