10000 FOLLOWERS & SOME THOUGHTS ABOUT STEEMIT BLOGGING SUSTAINABILITY
Obviously, I couldn't have done this without you!
To end up with over 10K followers already after previously never really being online is huge for @papa-pepper. Recently, on my trip to Texas to hook up with @xtrodinarypilot, I hit 10,000 followers. This puts @papa-pepper in the top 20 for all of steemit, which is insane.
First off, I wanted to thank all of you, as it truly means a lot to me. When I first started, I never thought that somehow I would be catapulted into the forefront of this community, or that I would be able to meet so many wonderful people from all around the world, not only online, but in real life too!
However, it is not without difficulty or concern that I reach such milestones as this...
SUSTAINABILITY?
According to this source, here is a definition of "substainability:"
the ability to be maintained at a certain rate or level.
I use that word in reference to our steemit blogs these days. Many of our blogs have grown rather nicely, even to the point that they seem almost unmanageable at times. How in the world can 10,000 steemians follow @papa-pepper, and how can he possibly interact with and support them all? That is exactly the question with which I am frequently faced.
It is the purpose of this post to share a few of my recent thoughts on the subject. Hopefully, some of what I share will bless you, and maybe you may even have some good insight for me on the matter.
VOLUNTARY INTERACTION - NOT OBLIGATORY
So many times, especially recently, I have been receiving "complaint comments." Though they vary slightly, the basic story is the same, and goes something like this: "I upvote and resteem your posts, but you do not upvote and resteem mine."
Trust me, I realized early on in my steemit interaction that there would never be a way that I could support everyone who supported me. Truth be told, most of my post preparation and other activities are done offline, and my actual time online each is not all that much. Often it is spent trying to post, reply to comments, curate, and encourage others. Still, there is no way that I can upvote everyone or even reply to every comment that I receive.
There are certainly some longtime steemians like @kus-knee, @gringalicious, @rigaronib and others that I would like to support by upvoting every post that they make. Their posts are always professional, original, and quite frankly I want to support the person behind the account, and not just their specific posts. However, as they can testify, I rarely make my way over these days.
Also, there are tons of newer users joining our community every day, and I would like to meet and support many of them too, but my time is limited. I still have to get work done, raise my family, sleep, work on building my homestead, and other tasks. Now, more than ever, I admit that I cannot get around, curate, comment, and interact as much as I would like to .
For this reason I must remind people that activities like following, upvoting, and resteeming are voluntary and not obligatory. No one is required to follow you back if you follow them, or resteem your posts if you resteem theirs, or upvote you if you upvote them. If the sole purpose of you following, upvoting, or resteeming the @papa-pepper account is so that I will do the same to you, you will most likely be very disappointed. That is the truth of the matter.
If you choose to follow, upvote or resteem me, I thank you. If not, you are free to choose to do so as well.
REAL FOLLOWERS - WHAT WOULD YOU SUGGEST?
Of the over 10,000 accounts following @papa-pepper, 4591 of those are "dead followers" according to http://steemit.deadfollowers.info/, a handy tool created by @mynameisbrian. That means that although 10,000 is a great, big, milestone number, only 5475 of those accounts have posted in the last month. I realize that just because they have not posted doesn't mean that they are still not "active" in the community on some level, but I wanted to compare voting for a moment.
Many accounts post more than once a day, and many others far less than once a day. However, let's imagine that each of my "active followers" posted once per day on average. While I could vote on each of over 5000 posts on a daily basis, I guarantee that I could not actually read them or make a comment on them. Simply put, there is just not enough of me to go around.
If I used an autovoter bot, I could just upvote each person that I follow with a tiny %, but I curate manually. How then should I even try to support others and encourage them?
MY SOLUTION
My solution now is the same that it has been for months. In an attempt to bless, support, encourage, inspire, and interact with as many steemians as possible I try to give back in many ways.
Many of the gifts that I have sent to others are just that. Whether it is T-shirts, peppers, garden seeds, or even the STEEM "COMMUNITY" Silver Rounds, I am always hard at work shipping things out to other steemians all around the world. I still have some shirts and Silver rounds to get out too. Obviously, I cannot ship a free present to everyone in the world, but I certainly do a lot of it anyway.
The other main way that I try to bless others is by running contests. As @quinneaker noticed, my contests are a bit different from a lot of other contests. You never need to follow me, upvote the post, or resteem the post to enter. You don't even need to like me. All you need to do is follow the rules and you could win.
I have literally given away thousands of dollars worth of prizes in my time on steemit, all because I wanted to. For me, it was just a small token of my appreciation for this community and platform. Though I may not make it over to your post and upvote it, you are still free to try to win as much STEEM and SBD as you want from my own personal wallet.
THE LEARNING CURVE
While every steemian is free to choose how to use their upvotes, they are also free to choose how to use their down votes, AKA flags. Personally, I have never flagged another steemian.
Though I certainly have seen some things that are "flag-worthy" I have chosen to not personally downvote others. Many of the same comments that you see being made on my posts are often flagged on other posts, and sometimes others even flag the ones of my posts "for me." However, because of cultural differences and the "learning curve" that comes with online interaction here, I have not done so as of yet.
Like many others users, I'd rather not see a long line of replies on my posts that range between "upvote me" and "nice post." However, this seems to be what we are stuck with at the moment. For the record, if you tell me to "upvote you" chances are that I will not. If you tell me "nice post" I may not believe that you even looked at it.
On the contrary, when I see real comments made by other steemians who obviously read my post, often it encourages me to use my freedom to check out their recent posts. I do not have to, but I can choose to. If they would have chose not to leave a real comment, I would have chosen otherwise.
CLOSING THOUGHTS
In closing, I want to end on a happy note. You guys are amazing, and I could not have this many followers without you choosing to support me. For this I am forever grateful and thankful. It seriously means a lot to me.
I know that many choose to look up to @papa-pepper, and I just wanted to be honest at this time to share some of my thoughts and struggles with you. I wish us all the utmost success, but also want us to consider how we should proceed as our follower base continues to grow.
If you have any helpful suggestions for me, please let me know. At times I feel overwhelmed by the cries of others about my lack of support for them. I know that I truly do not owe them anything, and that I cannot possibly "support" everyone with upvotes, so how should I proceed? What would you do in my situation?
Thanks again everyone!
As always, I'm @papa-pepper and here's the proof:
proof-of-10K-followers
Until next time…
Don’t waste your time online, invest it with steemit.com
Man there is no way you can keep up with 5000, or even 500 Active and engaged followers. You have to pick and choose. And no matter what you chose to do, people will holler at you that you aren't doing enough.
There is a sense of entitlement to Steem that should not be allowed to succeed. Work should be what is rewarded. Proof of Brain. There is nothing at all wrong with the way you are doing it. Keep on Manually curating.
So a couple of the options....
Do nothing, don't vote, don't curate, just sit on your SP. Plenty of people do this, and it doesn't accomplish much for anyone. I don't think this is the option for you.
Manually Curate, as you do. But maybe spend more time considering the person you are voting for and what your upvote means to them. Someone who has been active for a year and already has a lot of success, your upvote might not mean as much as it does to someone who has been here a short time and has had little success, but is trying really hard. So maybe adjust percentages. Still upvote the guy who has been here forever, but upvote him 20% and save 80% for newer users.
Delegate SP to someone you trust to Curate on your behalf. I've seen more and more whales with smaller and smaller personal upvotes because they are delegating to OCD, or Curie, or a friend who curates on their behalf. It keeps the SP working, however does not benefit you with curation rewards.
I'll tell you one thing I would love. When you have an active and involved following like you do, if you see someone who is really trying, and whose blog reaches out to you, a resteem is worth more than an upvote. Having those extra eyes that might end up following the newer user because you resteemed their post, that's a huge reward. Obviously this is more of a time investment than just giving an upvote, so might not be feasible for you. But maybe you pick a couple of people a week who really strike you in your comments, take a bit to visit their blog, and pick a post to resteem if it impresses you.
As you said, you give a lot more rewards in the gifts you send out and the efforts you make. No one should ever be questioning how you use your vote. But they will. And you asked for thoughts, so there you go.
Bottom line, do the best you can with the time you can give it, and don't sweat the small stuff like whiny followers. :-)
Thank you for all of that! You are right, it is exactly what I asked for. Thanks for the honest evaluation of the situation.
you are doing very well in steemit congrats brother and thank you for helping me I appreciate it much.
some very good points here, and I love the one about resteeming
this was so interesting to read and I think your spot on
I am one of those followers (and, I hope, friends) who benefitted from @papa-pepper’s generousity. As witnessed on these photos of the gifts I got by mail from papa a few weeks ago:
I never got to thank you properly for these wonderful gifts, @papa-pepper. I want to correct this lapse of good manner on my part by expressing my gratitude here and now.
I’ve been wearing the
steemit.comfriendship bracelet since the day I received the package and I was rocking the T-shirt you sent on the Night of Steem in Lisbon.If everyone had a spirit as generous as yours, this world would be a Kingdom of Heaven already.
Wow! So glad to hear that they made it! Very cool! Did you ever post about it? If so, I must have missed it! So glad that they made it all the way to Sweden!
Yep – and it looks like you just have found my (newly published) post about it too! ;) Once again: many thanks from the bottom of my heart! You are my role model on Steemit and in life.
I like your explanation of your behavior on Steemit in relation to commenting and upvoting. I still don't know why people keep on begging others for votes or such. For myself, I can relate to what you are saying about sometimes voting on the person behind the post instead of voting for the post itself. I think everyone on Steemit just needs to have a nice time writing nice things and let the community organically vote, comment or blog. Also, I think it is just a nice gesture of you to send free gifts across the globe. Just keep on living life! Cheers
Thank you.
UPVOTED and FOLLOWED!
Wow that's a huge amount of followers :)! Keep up the good work!
When I began on Steemit, I would resteem and upvote posts that were doing well.
As I matured on here, I stopped looking at the trending page altogether- except to see important Steemit info. I started upvoting and resteeming content which fit the following criteria: unique, informative, & thought provoking, and it had to be from someone who was working hard. I realized I was growing quickly here and many people looked up to me and my upvote and resteem has helped them so much!
I came across an article by @ethandsmith that was very well done. He had worked extremely hard on it and it had great info I knew many of us could use. It was at the 6 day mark at less than $5. I upvoted it as I found it useful, then I resteemed it to my followers. Of course my full upvote is only 14 cents, but it deserved my full appreciation.
The next morning I woke up to see it was at $65. I was so happy that I had resteemed it, it was llike a natural high! It made me feel so good to have been able to do this for him- and it cost me nothing but a few seconds of time.
An upvote or resteem from someone who is looked up to, as you are, means a great deal to someone who is struggling each day with whether or not to quit Steemit. Steemit is hard work, and it may not seem like it but a little thing like that will refresh the spirit similar to those starry eyed days when you first registered ;)
What may seem a small gesture from you could mean the world to them.
With great power comes great responsibility ~ you are there now, Papa.
People look up to you on many levels. You are the epitome of success from scratch.
You are proof that with hard work you will get rewards.
I noticed you a few weeks after I joined and you were "only" at 5k followers, and even then I was like wow after reading your story. You are an icon now, like it or not, and you set the stage for all the newcomers :)
Thank you so much for that, and for your wonderful interview! That was a gem to see how it well it did.
You make some good points there, and share some good advice! Thanks for everything, always!
Anytime, Grande' Pepper!
Oh my, where is my head?
I was so focused on answering your question I totally forgot...
Congratulations on 10K! I know it must be surreal!
I know what is going through your head, and my response to that is: Papa? You earned this. You deserve it, and much more <3
I remember the morning I woke up to find that post had made $60 almost overnight. I wondered how it happened, and I realized that it was because of that resteem.
I'm still grateful for that, so now I'm always looking for ways to support other users who could use a boost.
I also remember the day that @papa-pepper replied to one of my comments on your interview post with him. He sent me over to his YouTube channel to watch some of his videos and listen to his background and testimony.
I do my best to support both of your accounts now, @arbitrarykitten and @papa-pepper, because your attitudes toward the community are extremely honorable and evident in whatever you do.
I recently decided to use small portions of my voting power to trail the voting records of some accounts that I believe to be excellent up and coming curators. They are @qurator, @muxxybot, and the brand new @r-bot. I trust them to vote up great posts, and I hope I'll be able to find more accounts to support.
Keep up the good work! I enjoy every single one of your high value posts and comments. Thank you both for sharing.
congrats and cheers to more ;)
Thank you so very much!
Tis always awesome reading your posts when I get the chance. Not only did I make a friend and brother here on Steemit when I met you but I met someone whom I look up to and admire for the life they live and the family they raise.
Heck, most of the times when I catch your posts they make me laugh and smile and that is much needed in ones life.
Thanks for being here Papa-pepper and congratulations on 10,000 followers!!!
~ @Timbo
Big respect @papa-pepper. For those of us who are talking about and actively promoting steemit as a platform which can do great good, you are a HUGE inspiration. Keep on supporting those minnows, as I know you will, and demonstrating excellent behaviour in the community. Peace, my peppery brother from across the pond.
Thank you for the encouragement.
"Nice post", LOL
Congratulation on your achievement sir I see that you have quite the following and it is very nice to have such a wide variety of people to follow you. I have had many followers on other social networks like Instagram and Twitter and things like that but I'm mostly developing here and hopefully I will get to you as many as you one day we'll see what happens thanks for your inspiration, be well.
Thank you @krazypoet.
@papa-pepper,
First of all, thank you for visiting my post recently. I really appreciate.
Reading this post I realized that you have been a great writer here to have been followed by 10000 accounts. That's a milestone as far as am concerned. I am going to get there.
Yes, you are right that you cannot reply or upvote everyone. Sometimes, I get such messages and I begin to wonder where is it coming from. The idea of telling me to come to your post because you came to my post don't just appeal to me. I follow some people just as you follow me. If I have to upvote everybody then my voting power would be seriously tampered.
I like the fact that steemit is not a get rich quickly platform because anyone who ask for upvote is in this category.
That is my opinion.
@stevenmosoes
Signing out.........
Thank you for sharing your opinion, I appreciate it.
My pleasure.