I've done a number of posts over the few months I've been on Steemit where I talk about the benefits of commenting. I talked with one guy who told the new Steemians that he mentored that they needed to be doing 30 meaningful comments per day to start with. That would get them enough exposure to get started.
There are so many people here who are fighting for attention. If you're not willing to do the work to bring them in, they won't come. They'll go to someone else who is doing the work. Leaving comments is sort of like marketing. You're leaving messages from which people can see the quality of your work. If it appeals to them, they might visit your blog and end up "buying what you're selling."
It's nice as an author to have people post meaningful comments because then you can know that the audience is engaging with what you're saying. The spam comments are annoying, but they're not unexpected.
The thing that resonated the most for me was that I shouldn't pressure myself to post. I've had a goal to post once per day and it has taken a lot of work to do so. I don't just post a picture, I post articles that take time to think up and then create. I see people posting 3-4 times per day and I think I'm doing something wrong, so I appreciated you saying that quality is more important than quantity. It's a good reminder that I needed to hear. I'd rather be know for high-quality work every few days than low-quality work multiple times per day.
First of all thank you so much for taking time to write such a detailed response.
Your words remind me of myself when i started out on platform. For some odd reason, i made it a target for myself to post at least once everyday. Soon i realized that i was running out of ideas and i was putting too much pressure on myself for no reason. There was a point in my life when my 15 months old son (19 now) would not stop crying on certain instances and instead of attending him, i was busy writing posts. I am not proud of it.
So i have kind of learned this lesson the hard way that posting everyday will not get you anywhere. I have come to realize that i have got to stop treating steemit like a ticking time bomb. This platform is not going anywhere and i have to learn to keep the balance between this and my family.. so now i post like after 3-4 days and i couldnt be happier.
Comments, however are a different story. It does not take more than 5 minutes of your time and is totally worth it..
Somehow it makes me feel better to know that others are going through the same struggles. It seems that you've found a solution for yourself. I think one of the contributing factors is a number of accounts that will only vote on content every 24 hours. Therefore, to maximize profits, there's an urgency to post every day. Some of them are subscriptions that cost an upfront fee, so in order to make that cost back, there's pressure to post. I need to get rid of that mentality. I'm still making small gains on posts, so I shouldn't worry about sunk costs.
I think another reason to post more often is that people are generally following so many other authors that the thought is "they'll miss my posts, or stop following me if I'm not producing content." I think that's a lie too... or if it's true, who cares? Like in your example, taking care of yourself and your family is more important than making sure that your steemit followers don't forget about you.
You're right, comments generally are easy to fire off. You can read a quick article and dispense some sarcasm back in the form of a comment. ;)
Thanks for the dialogue!
Your struggle is real and i have lived through the exact same thoughts and moments..
There is one more thing regarding what you said about followers leaving you. If i am being totally honest, i have made followers based on my content quality. When i used to post average quality level post, my followers did not grow in numbers. Believe it or not i had 22 followers for a complete month with zero increment.. however the moment i started making long quality posts, they started to incease by leaps and bounds.
Forget about maximising your profits... this is a never ending loop. You will never be satisifed with the amount of upvotes you get.. the hungrier you’ll get, the farther you will wander off from life.. keep it simple.. rewards will come to you. Take 3 days to post and before making the post, research on it a bit to refine the quality of your post.
And you are asbolutely spot on about comments ;)