Now you don't need to get offended, I'm not trying to say you have a short attention span. It's human nature that we tend to glance over things on the internet . What I am referring to is the upvoting, curation, of stuff here on steemit. While I wouldn't say there is an epidemic. I have seen concerns in more than one chat that newer or smaller authors are getting ignored. To an extent, I do think this is happening. Part of it is anecdotal evidence and part of it is science. This post is a friendly reminder to everyone. Especially the newer people/minnows that it's important to take part in all areas of steemit.

What am I talking about?

Just stay with me for a moment and I'll explain everything. Think about your average time on steemit. Most likely you look at a few posts, vote on a few posts, maybe comment. Look at some of the top trending articles in a few categories and take a break. It's easy to vote on those top trending posts, but how many of those posts did you look for lesser known authors. I'll break it down a bit further.

Gmuxx has a series called Hidden Gems which highlights under appreciated authors. Tabea also has something similar called steempearls. They both find lots of high-quality content/authors who are getting little attention. If you'll take a look some of these authors are putting out very high-quality content, which doesn't seem to get as much attention as you would think. In searching, I've found authors as well who seemed unappreciated such as steemknowledge and his did you know series or artsyppl and her drawings. Like I mentioned, though this is just partially science and human nature.

Take the links below, for example, our attention span tends to be very short. When searching through Google a whopping 90% of clicks are on the first page. The very first results get the majority of these clicks with 29%. The second link is 13% and so on. In our busy lives, it's hard to spend hours scouring a place like steem. The reason why I'm bringing this up is because very often, but not always, the top trending people are whales with huge followings. It's very easy for them to be the “page 1” of Steemit and for others to get overlooked. This is a perfect example of what a person will do on a web site such as reddit, steemit, etc.

And what are you asking?

Now don't misunderstand me, this isn't some us vs them thread. There's nothing wrong with whales. I've talked to a few and I'm a huge fan of some. I follow @dwinblood for example and love his stuff. Definitely follow your favorite big authors, upvote, resteem, reply. All I’m saying is that when you can take the time to check out stuff from smaller people too. Steem is an attention/content driven market. And this content is forged by contributors, both old and new. Much like small business is the continuing life blood of any country so are the waves of new users who are joining us.

Take the time to interact with them. Even if you can’t afford an upvote due to drained voting power talk to them. Read articles posted by new people. Give advice, offer opinions, resteem, share and curate their stuff if you think it’s good. Upvote when you can. I get excited every time I get an upvote even if it’s only 0.5 worth. By taking the time to interact with all people here it will help steemit continue to grow and also encourage new people to not only join but stay with us.

End of the day, let’s all work together to share the love and make steemit a great place. Remember, we need all types of people. Authors, curators, people who do both and everything in between. If you want ideas on good underappreciated people to check out feel free to check out Gmuxx and Tabea . I’ll also be working on starting a series similar to them myself in the near future. Peace everyone and steem on.

Resources:
http://www.protofuse.com/blog/first-page-of-google-by-the-numbers/

https://www.infront.com/blogs/the-infront-blog/2015/6/17/value-of-first-page-google-results

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