Succeeding as a Minnow in Steemit: Communities

The Struggle

I have heard and seen first hand so many minnows joining steemit for the thrill of the money, yet leaving after few days, dropping the whole idea due to their posts not getting the proper attention, proper votes, or the anticipated support or success.
Others last few weeks, yet always the problem with what to write, what to share, and again, how to get the proper votes and the steemit success..and then gone..

..Is Real

Yes, the struggle is real. With around 600,000 registered steemit users (and bots) at the moment, the number of active users comes down to a much lower portion of this at the moment.
Still, competing with ten of thousands of active users is NOT an easy task, and requires motivation, persistence, and basically a community or support group that can teach you and help you how to grow and succeed in this platform

Communities

Luckily to minnows, many communities have been created by different initiatives to help new comers and less noticed steemians, take the correct path to get noticed and receive the proper attention.
Now while there are many that I might not be aware of or have had little interaction with, yet this below compilation would list those ones that I am most familiar with, along with some information pertaining them to the best of my knowledge:

MAP/Mapsters

#MAP (Minnow Accelerator Project) or #mapsters is a fantastic effort lead by @rycharde to help minnows grow.
Frequent competitions are conducted, and based on the quality of your posts, you could be eligible for SP delegations.
I have been accepted into MAP a long time ago, and I'm sure you would love it there!
To join: https://steemit.com/mapforum/@accelerator/how-to-join-the-map-community-minnows-accelerator-project

Steemitbloggers

#steemitbloggers is an amazing community created by @jaynie to connect bloggers from all across the world, to share and support each other.
A key requirement is mutual support, meaning you would need to upvote and comment on a daily basis for a different member, otherwise you risk of losing your membership on the discord channel.
Recently steemitbloggers quality articles started getting upvotes from the @appreciator project, which provides members with higher valued rewards.
To join: https://discord.gg/QZcW43N

Minnow University

#MinnowUniversity is another excellent effort that I came to learn of recently. The name says it all, it's a university where you learn the keys to success here at steemit.
Essentially the aim is help educate new users on how to succeed using the Steemit platform.
The project is initiated by @swelker101 , and supported by @isaria and @kubbyelizabeth
You can attend their webinars, but also watch recorded sessions.
To join: https://discord.gg/dSWKmcG

Promo-Steem

#promo-steem provides great tutoring for new minnows, while conducting tutoring and review sessions for your blog posts, to make sure your posts are of the needed quality to succeed.
The project has several whales on board who could upvote your great content.
This effort on discord is lead by @futurethinker
To join: https://discord.gg/brBrmeW

SteemSTEM

#steemSTEM - a superb community that aims to help STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) related high-quality articles get proper support, attention, and upvotes.
I am personally thankful to steemSTEM as they were one of the first communities I have received support from across the months.
You could get a greatly-valued upvote by writing an excellent "scientific" article.
This work is co-founded by @lemouth and @justtryme90, and has a nicely active chat room.
To join the chat: https://steemit.chat/channel/steemSTEM

Utopian

#utopian-io is an amazing effort started few months back in order to support open source work and contributors.
Whether you are a developer, a quality assurance engineer, a translator, a project owner, a graphics designer... you could receive high vote to your effort if your post/effort qualifies.
Your posts are submitted to utopian via the utopian.io steem interface, and then evaluated for proper
I am proud to be a utopian supervisor on this project.
The effort was initiated by @elear, and has and still is growning immensely.
To join the chat: https://discord.gg/ut5TbkC

Arabsteem

Last but not least #arabsteem is my own baby :) I started this initiative to help new and existing Arab members grow, but also to bring in new Arab people to steemit !
We've been offering our daily upvotes to quality posts (with the limited SP we have), have an active curation trail that adds to this vote, compiling daily curation digest of the best articles, but also actively promoting steemit online, offline, paid facebook campaigns..
To Join: https://discord.gg/fTaT8b6

Success..?

While those communities and many more exist here to help you learn, grow, and start getting some good results on your posts, yet the key remains in your hand to write proper contributions, high quality posts, and avoid plagiarism .. all while having fun !

Again, a big thank you to all those communities and all the others, and I do hope this comes in as helpful to as many minnows out there, and thank you for reading through!

@mcfarhat