YOU SHOULD BE POSTING NOW (PART ONE)

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There is a recession in the steemit hemisphere. As at the time of writing, steem was $2.06 according to @penguinpablo’s steemnow.com update site. I, personally, have never experienced such a dip since I joined steemit. This is harkening back to prices in 2017 and there’s a possibility that it will drop further before it shoots up again.

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This dip has greatly affected the platform as it has gone eerily quiet. The input has greatly reduced as people no longer feel the urge to write. I can understand this as there is nothing like a huge potential payout to motivate one to write a lengthy post, edit it and pimp it all over discord and steemit chat but right now that incentive is gone.

People look at their post and see potential payout dropping every hour and they do not like how they feel; I do not like how I feel and so we have decided to stop writing or at least, you have decided to stop but I am still writing as you can see.

Discord servers are quiet and chat channels filled with just dedicated members. It feels like a church after a Sunday service; those who only come to church on Sundays are gone. The ones remaining are those who are in one society or the other, one group or the other; those dedicated members of the church, who are there every day whether a priest is preaching or not.

But should it be so? Should the good times be the only time when we pile up into the platform with posts; great, good, bad and terribly bad? Why do we not utilize the steemit platform when things are bad like these past weeks? Why are we not utilizing the opportunities that are on the platform?

When you talk to a person whom you are trying to onboard on to the platform, the key draw in most cases is ‘you will make money posting stuff online.’ When people hear that there is money to be made, they want to be a part of it.

Many come on this platform with unrealistic expectations. They come with facebook and twitter mentality and expect to start making big bucks instantly. Even those who have been blogging forever before discovering steemit still fall into the same trap; they do not take their blog serious.

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For those of us who own blogs out there, how many times do we post on the blogs? How much have we made since we started posting? Those of us with 5000 followers on facebook; how much have we generated either directly or indirectly from your posts on facebook? But you still post, don’t you? And you do it every day, right?

It is because this is my blog. It is an extension of who I am. This is my work space and my professionalism determines how serious you take me.

Some of us might say that the posting method of steemit is rigorous; you have to edit with markdown to make the work look appealing after writing and editing for grammar and all that; facebook does not have that. You also say, it is tiresome to go around discord servers dropping links and chatting and commenting, hoping for some upvotes; facebook does not do this. I understand all these sentiments and there are some mornings when I have a rather lengthy post, like this one is gradually turning out to be, and I just want to copy and paste the damn thing then go back to sleep but I don’t. You want to know why? It is because this is my blog. It is an extension of who I am. This is my work space and my professionalism determines how serious you take me.

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Early this morning I was reading a post from one of my favourite bloggers here and he talked about why it was advisable for us to stick to our blogging despite the dip in the price of steem. He gave some reasons which included the fact that you who still stick to doing what you were doing before the dip, would have gone far in the steemit hemisphere compared to those who went on a sabbatical. I have decided to follow along his line of reasoning and explore the incentives that can be garnered from steemit.

I have put together some possible benefits of being a member of steemit, of sticking it out through the good times and the bad times, of making your steemit blog a professional arm of your life. Some of these benefits might not apply to everyone as I listed them based on the perspective of one who considers writing to be his occupation.

BENEFITS OF POSTING ON STEEMIT ESPECIALLY IN A DIP

• Confidence: before many of us came on steemit, our writing was mostly tentative at best. We had written stuff that mostly sat, gathering mould in our bags and wardrobe. We didn’t see the talent we possess or could explore if we but try. Some of us sang in the bathroom, had dreams of becoming stars but were too afraid to hold the mic in a studio booth to do a song cover. Many of us did artworks that revealed so much of our inner turmoil then hid them away or tore them up; yet since coming to steemit, since coming into the discovery that our skill can be incentivized, we are now sharing all these parts of us with the world. We are coming out of our shells, we are exploring our abilities confidently.

Steemit builds confidence in your abilities. For as you post, there are instruments with which you are encouraged and shown how good you are. There is curation from @curie, @ocd, @sndbox, etc, there are comments from your readers which tell you how well you are doing and there are upvotes which show you how much the people around value your work.

When you get such encouragement, you begin to see value in your work and in yourself and I tell you that this kind of value is worth more than steem. This confidence is something you can take out there and use at any time. It does not dip but continually moons as you feed it. The only way to feed it, is to do more.

• Education: Steemit is a content creation service. Everywhere you turn there is information waiting for you to digest and you even get paid to get it. Let’s forget the money aspect now, let us consider the knowledge aspect now.

There are so many things you can learn from steemit, just from reading through blog posts. From gaming to the sciences; from health to parenting; from food to culture to religion, etc. There is a glut of information here on steemit. You can learn something new every day, if you bother to try. There are experts and professionals that you can contact for free on topics of concern and they would willingly answer your questions. Are you utilizing this benefit?

Apart from the steemit blogs, there are discord servers too, where your every question can be answered; be it on blockchain or coding or building a website or investment or writing even. People with various skill set are all over discord and they are willing to share their knowledge with you. What have you learnt since you joined steemit?

• Innovation: Before I joined steemit, I had considered myself to be a poet only. I had written some fiction and nonfiction but I had considered them to be inferior work and not worth sharing. I basically lacked confidence in writing prose. When I joined steemit, I was stumped on what to write. I could not write only poetry, every day. I needed something else to make my blog more interesting; put a little element of variety in it. So I decided to try my hands at a story that had both poetry and prose. My aim being, to use the quality of my poetry to cover up for any lapses my prose might have. I did it and to my amazement, it was well received and it was my first curie curation.

It should be noted that I had not done this before but I was pushed by the platform to be innovative, to try something new. Yes, the steemit platform encourages innovation. Let’s see a new style of writing, let’s hear a new sound. It might not be superb but we are all in beta here, experimenting is allowed and success is very possible.

The good thing about innovation is that it opens your mind to possibilities outside accepted norms. It builds your skill and confidence too. Steemit encourages innovation and rewards it. It is a benefit for you to reinvent yourself, your blog, your skill every time. Bring something new to the table and wow your audience. They will keep coming back and when you are faced with challenges, you will be spontaneous with your reply because innovation has become a part of you.

• Writing every day: writing is a muscle. Its development is based on how often you use it. If you stop to write for years, when you go back to it, the difference will be very clear. It is therefore important that as someone who considers writing to be his or her passion or occupation, writing should be done every day.

Steemit allows you this opportunity. The platform gives you a reason to pen something down every day. It might be a haiku or the chapters of a novel you are working on but you are writing every day. There are writing prompts to help you deal with writer’s block, there are contests to test your skill, so you have no excuse not to write.

There are writers here who are working on books and they are sharing each chapter here on steemit. They are getting to write the book, stick to the schedule they had laid out for writing the book and they also get free feedback from both established writers and readers. Why then should you not write? It is an awesome benefit, i tell you.

I will stop here for now. Stay tuned for the concluding part of this article. Stay safe and stay steeming. Thanks for stopping by.

TO BE CONTINUED

All photos were sourced from pixabay except the first and second photos.

Peace

©@warpedpoetic.

art and flair courtesy of @PegasusPhysics