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Be forewarned that this will be a very long article, perhaps the longest post that I have written so far. This is because I want to share in total (no holds barred) how I achieved my over 700 followers milestone and how you can do it too.

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1. Who Is A Follower?

A follower is anyone who clicks the follow button on your profile page and your post will appear on his feed. One thing we have to realize is # Not All Followers Are The Same. Therefore the quality of the followers is much more important than the numbers of followers.

Firstly, I want active followers which means users who are active on Steemit who are more likely to read my post and vote for me. If most of my followers are inactive, then it is unlikely you can get a lot of votes.

Secondly, if possible I prefer followers who are interested and like my content, what I write should resonates with them. In this case, the chances of them voting for, commenting on and resteeming my post will increase exponentially.

Thirdly, it would be most ideal if my followers can become my fans. In this case, the line becomes blurred on whether they vote for me because they like my content or just because they like me. A case in point is a poor quality posts with lots of likes. Take a look at what @kevinwong has to say about shitpost

You can check who are your most loyal supporters/followers at SteemVP

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2. Why Are Followers So Important?

The attention economy is prevalent in the internet as well as on Steemit, there are just too many things on line that compete for our limited attention. On the Steemit platform there are hundreds of thousands of articles, and my articles will be buried in that pile. That’s where the role of my followers kick in. My article will appear on the feed of my followers just like my Facebook post will appear in my Facebook friends’ news feed. My followers can vote, comment and resteem my post.
More votes will mean more earnings. The comments given by my followers will make my contents more rich and interactive. Better still if my followers resteem, my post will even reach a wider audience. So the more followers I have, the wider will be the audience that my post can reach. Please note that there may be random users who happen to come across my article, and they too may vote, comment or resteem my post. The challenge to me is how to convert these random users into my followers.

For proof that followers are extremely important, just take a look at the trending page. These are the articles that are earning thousands of dollars. These articles maybe on different topics but the common factor is that each of these trending authors have lots of followers.

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3. How Do I Get Followers?

This is the million dollar question, how the heck do I get people to follow me. From my own personal experience and from my personal observation of successful bloggers here, the number one method of getting followers is, the more my contribution to the Steemit platform, the more followers I can attract. The more I can help others, the more followers I can get. Steemians can help other users in a variety of ways such as sharing tips with newbies, creating logos, developing apps or tools for Steemit, sharing tips on how to make money from cryptocurrency and the list goes on. An excellent example of contribution is the SteemJ.com by @jerrybanefield which is currently trending. Therefore it is critical for you to ask yourself, how can you help other users, how can you enhance their user experience, how you can encourage or motivate others. Only you will know what type of skills set you possess and how you can use it to help other users.

Another critical factor is the quality of post that you produced. The posts that you produce are in a way like your calling cards, these posts reflect who you are, and the time and effort that you have spent in writing the post. Therefore, quality is much more important than quantity. It is the quality post that will attract followers. You are building up your followers, reputation and presence at Steemit one post at a time. You will this post written by me on how to create quality content very useful.

The level of your interaction with other Steemians is highly correlated to the number of followers you will attract. The more active you are at Steemit, the more deeply your presence is felt, the easier it is to attract followers.
First of all, you need to interact with your followers on a regular basis. Your followers have taken the time to read and vote for your post and may even have posted some comments. The least that you can do is to acknowledge them by thanking. Do answer promptly any queries that they may have.

Secondly, you can also interact with other users in the Steemit platform through the following ways:-
(a) Do make an effort to comment on the post of other users. The tip here is to comment as if you are starting an conversation with the user. Read this post on why you should fill out the comments section.

(b) Take part in contests, giveaways and other projects at Steemit to make your presence known.

(c) Interacting with other Steemians at Steemit Chat and at Discord. There are different channels for different topics, find one channel you are interested in. There are some post promotion channels for the posting of links.

(d) If a non follower leaves a compliment on your post, be thick faced and invite him to follow you for more similar post. Since he has shown interest in your post, there is high probability that he will accept your invitation. However just leave it at that, and let him decide whether to follow you or not. Under no circumstances should you pester him.

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4. Where Do You Find Followers

(a) You need to know who the target audience for your post are. For this particular post, newbies and those who want to increase their number of followers would find this post very useful and there is a high chance that they will follow you if they come across this post. The best place to find newbies is in the introduceyourself section of Steemit. Therefore before you even begin to write the post, you should already know who your target audience are and try to think of ways to put your post under the eyeballs of your targeted audience.

(b) Using the correct tin tags will help to place your post in the right subject matter category and thereby reach your target audience. For this post, I will use the tags steemit, steem, newbie, howto, steem-help. For my poetry posts, besides the poetry tag, I will also consider using tags such as verse, poem and writing. You can also go to the trending tag to check which tags are trending.
If you abuse the steemit tag (i.e use the steemit tag when your post has nothing to do with Steemit), you maybe flagged by Steemcleaners.

(c) Be sure to hangout at the relevant SteemitChat and Discord channels as mentioned earlier.

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5. When Will I Also Get 700 followers?

Rome is not build in one day, building a followers base require time, effort and persistence. The correct attitude is very important and we all should take a long term approach as recommended by none other than @dantheman in his post.

Do not be too concerned initially how much your post earn. Even if your post earn 10cents or less, but you have written a good quality post, you will notice that you have actually gained 2-3 followers from that post. My advice is to keep on writing quality posts and as the number of followers grows, your earning will also increase. I wish I can tell you that there is a magic formula but there is no short cut when it comes to building quality followers, increasing your earnings and eventually finding success at Steemit.

To enter the giveaway contest you need to do all of the following:-
a) Up-vote this post;
b) Write a comment; and
c) Resteem this post

The comments that received the most number of votes will win 10SBD

Spreading positivity one post at a time.
Charles

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If you like my writing please up-vote, share, comment, and follow me. Please help me to spread the message of positivity and support on Steemit by resteeming this post.