I have done many exciting things in my life.

177 Scuba dives all over the world ...

189 Sky dives across Europe and Africa ...

Traveled the globe and have been to 5 continents during my travels. ...

But the most exciting thing that I have done recently was to join Steemit!

I have now been on the Steemit platform for just over a month. I can promise each and every one on this this platform, that I rate this experience in the same category as jumping out of a moving airplane or swimming with the creatures of the ocean. It is just amazing!!!

I love the conversation topics, I love the people that I meet, I love assisting the authors I feature, I love the way that the community around me have real opinions on the way the world should work! O man, I just love everything about this new social platform.

From minnow to Baby dolphin in just a few weeks!

I want to share my experience over the past few weeks with everybody on the platform, especially newbies that comes on board, as I want to ensure that each and every user on the platform, do not lose faith in the future of the platform. I hope, my story inspires new users and I also those who have not received the recognition they deserve. I hope by telling everybody, what happened to me, each of you might see something that you haven't explored or tried yet. I hope that this post, can maybe train another baby dolphin ... like me!

So here is what happened to me in chronological order.

Introduceyourself

I did my introduceyourself post, before the time when most of the introduceyourself post's hit the trending list. I am sure all of us that have been on the platform can remember the times, (which now feels so long ago) when the trending list probably only consisted of these posts. I persevered in writing at least 1 post every day. It became part of my daily routine to write an article, and some steemit accounts were hacked. I was getting serious withdrawal symptoms of not posting!!

Being Featured as an author

Luckily I knew @gavvet, who was so kind to feature me as one of his first authors that he now does on a regular basis. This blew new wind into my sails as firstly I was able to get rid of some of the withdrawal symptoms and secondly my posts were actually being seen!!! This was step 1 of growing my reputation in the community. You can read @gavvet's post where he featured me Steemit Addict and I can't get my fix here . Then the most amazing thing happened, my post Time Budgeting vs being managed by time was trending as No 1. This was probably the single most exciting thing that happened since I joined the platform. Why? , because it proved to me that my content can reach the top! All I needed to do is to keep on writing.

Then I was featured by @cryptogee 's

Cryptogee runs an amazing feature, once in a while, where he showcase a few new authors in a post. This is an amazing initiative. I haven’t seen one of these posts recently. @cryptogee if you are reading this post, please do another of your Spotlight post's again. This is extremely helpful for the community. You can read @cryptogee 's post Steemit Spotlight No. 6 - The Rising Stars Of Steemit! here This single post probably gave me the biggest boost in my mission to build a community around me.

At the time, I wrote many posts about building a reputation on the platform. This is probably the most important aspect in Steemit in my view and secondly you have to build a community of like minded people around you. I realized this when I read a post from @timd where he explained how important Dolphin's is in the Steemit ecosystem. In this post he explained that Dolphins will soon be more important than whales!! You can read @timd's post Why Steemit Dolphins Will Become More Important Than Whales here Although I always had it in the back of my mind to grow my reputation , this post gave me the focus that I needed. I now had a burning need to become a dolphin. It didn’t matter to me how small a dolphin I would become, I just want to be one :)

craigrant Topic Tag

I then read a post from @craig-grant which made a lot of sense. @craig-grant was trying to help other users to be seen, by posting their content into the craigrant topic tag. Again, I love helping other people and I thought I will try it. It boosted the amount of upvotes in my posts dramatically. Instead of only getting 20 or 30 upvotes , the upvotes started streaming in! @craig-grant Thank you for a wonderful idea. I believe you helped many people to be seen, by this idea that you had!

Now I am featuring other authors.

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I was humbled by the unselfish way that @gavvet featured authors to promote diversity on the platform, that I promised him that as soon as I have built my own following, that I will do the same to further his cause in expanding the diversity of content on the platform. I now feature other authors in exactly the same manner that he featured me. All Steem Based Dollars are transferred to the author which is featured in the post. This is important to the whole community as new authors are being seen. The next logical step, is that people that like these posts, follow the featured author. So not only do the author make some steem dollars, which is usually used to powered up to Steem power, we also learn about more authors and get diversity of content.

Now I have a base of followers which are growing on a daily basis.

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For me, this is the most important of all. Growing a your base of followers is the key to growing the platform in general. Obviously I am hoping that the guys that am following me, will all become Dolphins. Why ? To get to the point where you do not have whale votes to take you out of the deep black hole.

Final thoughts

My recommendation to everybody on the platform, is to not stop trying! You will be noticed at some point, but if you do not keep on trying, this cannot happen. You must always try to add value to the community, just like @gavvet , @cryptogee , @craig-grant and many others are always trying to do. Do not be greedy, try different things. Write on different subjects and most importantly, always be honest! Build a community of like-minded people around you. Help these new friends around you to be seen - Remember that this is a social media based community and it is all about meeting new friends!

I hope you enjoyed my Steemit journey up to now and I hope that there are many more exciting things to come in the near future.

Happy Steeming and chat soon!

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Please follow me on my blog @jacor if you enjoy my topics and content.

@jacor features authors to promote a diversity of content and new authors. All STEEM Dollars for these posts go to the featured author.

If you are looking to be featured as an author, please contact me via email - [email protected]

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