EcoTrain Question of the week:

“What is the best message you can write to someone new on Steemit who has just posted on the ‘introduceyourself’ tag?"

This question was posed in our #Ecotrain group for our question of the week. I struggled with this one as it's not the deep philosophical writing we sometimes do. However it is a very important question. The conversion rate for new people joining is very low although improving all the time. Part of this is due to all the things you have to learn. It can be daunting. I often try to gently guide new people I feel will make great content on steemit with a nice comment. Below is more than I normally say all at once, but all important. I am by no means an expert. I am still fairly new myself. But I have learned much on my journey so far. There are no shortage of great articles on all the topics I bring up. I am not going to link to them all. Part of learning is exploring Steemit!

Hi! I'm Tim that's me up there. Great to see you here on steemit! Steemit is a great place but it is easy to get frustrated at the beginning. Luckily there are a lot of resources for new people! And below are a few things I was taught that have helped me when I was starting out. I hope you find them helpful.

My advice to people joining steem is this -- first don't expect to get rich. This takes work and time. But there are ways to make your first days and weeks on steemit a bit easier. Make it something fun that you do. If you're too concerned with making money in the beginning you will likely be disappointed. So manage your expectations and hopefully give it some time.

The first the things I think people need to know is etiquette. I say this because often into posts are inundated with "follow me "
comments -- 99% of these people did not upvote or read your post.

1. Don't beg in comments for votes and followers. And don't reply to them. Our first gut instinct is to say "sure!" But vote begging and follow me comments are largely frowned on. It's not the way to grow an organic following. That person probably did not read a word you wrote. Your content should be what draws people to you.

2. Leave genuine comments. This shows you really read what your commenting on and care about it. This means a lot to the people who wrote the posts. Comments can get more upvotes than posts at times.

3. Find like minded people and interact with them. Join the #minnowsupportproject if your new. Find other groups and like minded people and talk with them on discord, steemit chat or slack. MSP-PAL - The Minnow Support Project and Peace Abundance and Liberty are invaluable resource for new people. They have tons going on including classes, workshops and they even have their own radio station at MSPwaves.com. Get involved in the community! They exist to help new people.

You will also find other groups like us the #Ecotrain! Having a group of people to work with and support each other can be a great thing!

1. Learn what how to do basic formatting "Markdown styling" Bold, italics, links
   ( etc. )

2. Personally I don't like auto voting and auto curation. Manually curate and vote! Exceptions would be when you're joining something like MSP you have one auto vote for them for the minnow support post promotion service.

3. Realize this is still beta and one big experiment.

4. Never plagiarize. If you have to use a picture that is not yours cite the source.

5. Make goals. " I'm going to do this for 1 year and re-evaluate"

6. Realize that people with a ton of steem power can and will do better. They have more voting power and thus get more followers. While this is not entirely fair. It's a work in progress.

7. Learn how Steem affects your voting power

8. Learn what witness do and how you vote for them.

9. Learn what delegation is and how it works.

Peace!

Most Important be you and have fun!!

Member of -
#Ecotrain
#Minnowsupportproject
#Whalepower
SSCP