A day on the New section - Introduceyourself
Today I have decided to spend almost all my day in the New section (I know) of the introduceyourself tag. It was a though day for me, as I am not used with such a high volume of content to look at, some of it was in languages I've never seen so I skipped that part, and try to curate and spread the small knowledge I have gained since I am here. I know there are witnesses and users who just do this as a normal activity, but for me it was not that common. Let me share with you a little of things I have found there:
Spam - A lot of it!
I know that most of the times this is the reason why people never use the New tab, especially with no tag selected. The amount of posts was untraceable for a human being, especially because I was spending time trying to comment and tell everybody what is wrong and what is right and welcome the new people to the platform. But it was another kind of spam too.
I found at least two people spamming and asking the newcomers to follow and upvote them. They was @ashishgj-agj.inc and @arvindkumar. They had comment like the following:
As you can see, I have flagged them, I know some may judge me for doing so, but trust me, that was the only way I could stop them (at least for a while). At first I have asked them to stop spamming people, and explained why this is bad, but nobody gave me any attention, and their comments kept coming to each post under the introduceyourself tag. They were actually hunting the posts here if I am allowed to say so. After a few flags (and I don't have that much SP) they stopped.
I find it really mean to go to the people under the introduceyourself tag and spam them. I remember when I was new to the platform I barely understood anything, there was a lot of information coming on to myself and a whole different thing from the basic and classic social platforms and spam comments are not what I wished. I even remember that I have seen a few posts of @ned (on that time he was much more active) and he was announcing SMTs I think. I was asking myself who is this guy, what is he talking about and why does he have so much success? This is just to make you remember what it means to step into Steem and hope you will catch on the way. How evil should someone be to go to these new users and spam them to gain followers before they understand what is going on?
Some good content
So after I finished with the spam comments, which made me happy (and left me with a smaller amount of voting power unfortunately), I have found some good content. I remember just the post of @xeccedentesiast which I have curated, encouraged to go on and write good content, and then kindly resteemed. I was happy to see that introduce yourself post reaching the Hot section after it was curated by me, that made a part of me proud.
I know I have curated more content, but this was the best and relevant example I could give. This left me with pretty low voting power at least for me as I am trying to curate much posts at pretty high voting power.
What everybody wishes is much harder to achieve - Steem followers!
This one really caught my attention:
Surfing the introduceyoursel section, at the end of my day (it's getting late here :) I found this post which it was actually a question for steemit people, rather than an introduction. The article was containing only the following question and a gif
Outside of directly asking for a follow, are there any tips on getting more followers?
I was more than happy to replay with a short explanation so this article contains a part of Posting my comments series:
I would suggest to never ask for people to follow you. I never did this even though right now I would have had a lot more followers if I did. Simply post good quality content, comment to other people posts (but with real comments not just spam them with a Great job) engage with them and a part of them will follow you. It is better to make friends you can trust or who you can have fun with, rather than have a lot of followers who do not care about you. Look here at this article for new people on the platform. It contains some important guidance which will help you a lot. And never expect a huge and exponential growth because that is simply impossible. Everybody needs time to develop on the platform and few just wait to make it until that point where they have a lot of followers and people who support them and who they are supporting. hope this helps, even though it is not exactly what you are searching.
PS: Next time you want to ask, I suggest using the asksteemit tag. You can replace the introduceyourself with it, as this is not an introduction post. Good luck!
Today I have tried to offer the newcomers a better welcome than they usually have and I encourage any of the more experienced users to do the same and help the people who just join the platform to find their place here among us. This will be a progress I think, for the platform.
I think I have the idea to made this incursion in the introduceyourself section after I have seen @son-of-satire's post a while ago where it was mentioned I go to the "introduceyourself" tag to welcome new users and I realized I was very rarely doing that. Also another person who made me thought of doing this is @swissclive's post about encouraging newbies who I think makes some great job in helping the platform by offering his votes this way.
Wish you all the best and steem on!
Good stuff man. I will have to check out your work more often.
Thank you so much, I will wait for you next time!
You left me speechless, what a nice surprise!!
Thank You Soo much for the Christmas gift @mejustandrew Much appreciated!!
By the way, I think you did a great job today, on the NEW section!! 👍
I am so glad it made you happy. I was wondering if you are going to notice it :)
I didn't notice, I was not expecting to see anything in my wallet... @lidac showed it to me, guess she keeps an eye on my wallet...:)) Thanks again!!
Being a newbie myself I often searching through the new section in the hope of helping other newbies but I can get lost and find myself hours later only to nite that in the last few hours I found nothing much of value.
I'm not a huge fan of the vote and follow reposts as I'm only going to folfollow someone I find value in not someone who begs for follows. It's also super annoying when you know they haven't even looked at your post. I had a lady asking me in French to follow her with a huge spiel about how detailed my post was. I had to use Google translate to understand it but given it was on my a picture with no words. It was clear she hadn't read it. I would have flagged her but I only became aware of how voting power works and I would much rather use my limited power for good. Lol.
Oh, this is why I am currently asking the people who are a bit older to the platform to focus on the introduceyourself tag. Most of the times their flags and upvotes are pretty important (much more important than mine) and they may be able to guide the newbies and remove spam pretty efficient. It is true that this involves hard work. I have spent plenty of hours there in order to clean things up a bit and I am sure that this is not enough. And in what involves spammers that are writing to your post without even reading it, you can see that here at my post was a guy (@alirajput44 (25)) who commented and welcomed me to the platform as this would have been my introduction. Which is not :)) you can see that after I replyed to him, he deleted his comment. Usually with this kind of guys who spam I firstly check their other comments, in order to see if they spam everybody and how much they are abusing. After that I just warn them. If they don't stop there, I flag a few spam posts. If that doesn't stop then, I get a little angry (which is not happening too often at all) and ask the help of a person with much more SP than I have. It was only one case when I needed to do so, and the guy who helped me remove spam was @swissclive. He is totally dedicated to the good of this platform and his flags erased the visibility of the spam guy (unfortunately for the spammer's account)... Thank you for sharing your experience, I would recommend you to focus on growing your account before helping the newcomers to the platform. This way you will be able to give them a little more help :)
Thanks for responding. Thank you for the advice and the knowledge. i am trying to grow my account and my reputation but know it takes time a dedication, lucky I have one, the other I will find around other commitments, its lucky its Christmas holidays so I can focus a little more than I normally would. I'm working from home today but about to sign off and read Steemit instead.
Hey @mejustandrew , I am not sure what to say but I am really really grateful for the efforts you made for my post and helped me made it to the Hot list. thank youuu 😊 Also I would like to give compliments here on your post. This post has been very informative and really helpful especially for someone like me. Thank you for the key points you made here I will definitely follow these as I venture the world of Steem. Thanks again! 😊😊
Hey, you don't have to thank me, it was my pleasure. You know, good content is pretty hard to find through all the spam and posts that don't bring anything to the platform. And your article was pretty good, actually the best that I was able to find yesterday. Who would have thought that even with lack of experience on the platform a new person would do a that good post? I guess the main point here is to offer more than you actually receive and now this is what I am focusing on. Good luck, I am glad to see you have come to comment on my post :)
I really can't help but be grateful :) I am a newbie here and the fact that someone appreciates my first post and even curated it for having good content, wow. It's really overwhelming. And I know I will learn a great deal from you and your blog posts. I actually think you are an amazing person just to see you giving more than you can receive is very inspiring. Keep spreading kindness and
good etiquette here and am hoping to see more of our posts here :)
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Hello, it is clear that you did not read my article. I am not new to steemit (I actually am new, but not that new). This is a clasic example of spam in the introduceyourself tag. I have added this tag to my article because the article is about that section, not because I am introducing myself. I hope you do not spam everybody like that or people are going to come after you ;)
Resteemed by @resteembot! Good Luck!
Curious?
The @resteembot's introduction post
Get more from @resteembot with the #resteembotsentme initiative
Check out the great posts I already resteemed.
Resteemed by @resteembot! Good Luck!
Curious?
The @resteembot's introduction post
Get more from @resteembot with the #resteembotsentme initiative
Check out the great posts I already resteemed.
@originalworks
The @OriginalWorks bot has determined this post by @mejustandrew to be original material and upvoted it!
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Nice post
Your post had been curated by the @buildawhale team and mentioned here:
https://steemit.com/buildawhale/@buildawhale/buildawhale-curation-digest-12-27-17
Keep up the good work and original content, everyone appreciates it!
Thank you, now I get what that curation means!