RE: Does replying to your comment supporters matter to get upvotes/rewards for your posts?
I agree that those large accounts should make a point about interaction - as to whether it makes a difference to success - clearly not if your a big account, as to whether it does down here in minnow land I couldn't say with any statistical certainty, but I certainly feel that if I didn't reply to people's comments I probably don't deserve their rewards.
I'm still trying to figure out whether I find lack of engagement 'distressing' or not. I probably have about 20-30 people who clearly make a point of occasionally checking in and reading something I've written and making a comment, and I probably have about 40-50 who I do the same with.
I don't think I could handle more than that!
Even with the people who want to engage - they haven't got that much to engage with! to give you one example - @mountainjewel is an excellent e.g. of an account putting out excellent posts, and who clearly wants to engage ( they are active in two community/ curation initiatives (e.g. part of @tribesteemup and @abh12345's curation leagues, and more) - but check out their feed to see how little engagement they get.
To further this, I always come in the top 50 (I think) of Asher's engagement leagues and TBH, even though I respond to every worthwhile comment and make a point on digging around, I don't spend more than a few hours a week on this.
In short, even at the top end of 'engagement', engaging mainly means adding someone to auto-voter. Or to put it another way, I don't think people on here are that interested in engaging, in particular! Being one of those who does 'engage' it's a very, very small world! Maybe that's something to do with the rewards structure?
Of course, the record on here doesn't tell us anything about what's going on off-steemit.
As a teacher this doesn't surprise me, however, churning out content/ lecturing is much less stressful than engaging - interaction takes more time, and is more stressful.
Also, I don't think it's possible to churn out content on here, maintain a full time job outside, bring up kids and engage meaningfully with more than 30-50 people anyway.
But zero engagement, that's taking it too far for sure!
Thanks for the mention! Yeah I wonder if there’s anything we could do differently to get more engagement? Open to suggestions. For a while there, I had a lot of free time and would take more time to go out and find new people and comment on their stuff, that usually got the engagement going a bit more. Like a tit for tat thing unless you build relationships, like you say, where you “check in” on people. I do that quite a bit too.
But truly I think it just comes down to the money in the account (or appearance of money with consistently big upvoted). That’s where people flock to to earn! Totally get it!
Agreed- I always feel a little burn when people don’t bother to engage at all and just rake in the awards, not really adding any community value to the platform. But again, I know this place means many different things to different people and we’re all in different situations as you mention. I for one don’t have kids or a structured outside of the home job so I get to choose by and large what I do with my time. Good topic for convo!
I knew you'd respond, I was interested to hear what you'd say on the topic!
I don't think we need to beat ourselves up about lack of engagement, rather it's just a 'functional necessity' - people aren't inclined to comment because it's just exhausting!
It's just impossible to do that much of it, especially when you have to maintain a life outside.
BTW - I don't generally comment on permaculture things ATM as I'm hopefully heading that way myself next few months, but not 'in it' yet, don't want to jinx it!
I save most of my commentary for 'steemit issues' like this one. Bizarrely enough I sometimes prefer commenting on other people's posts rather than responding to comments on my own.
Also, there's a place for bants too.
Yeah it takes time to engage. Steem is a full time job :P But just hit-and-run posting with 0 engagement is not cool at all.