RE: Want To Grow? Make Meaningful Comments And More Of Them
I initially joined Steemit in August of last year as a crypto investment. It wasn't until January of this year when I thought to try to grow my steemit account by being active on the website instead of just as a passive investment. I have tried a lot of different methods with varying results. It's been rather difficult to find that balance between trying to grow your own account and the Steemit community as well. I like your concept of making "meaningful" comments. You would think that this would be intuitive but I have found the number of useless comment to be quite abundant. I have also never considered making comments on a regular and consistent basis as a way of growing my account and community but it certainly make sense. Up until now I had made occasional comments on things/topics that I found interesting but had never done it anywhere near the level that you described. But hey, there's always a first and this seems like a quality way to accomplish both growth objectives. Out of curiosity, do you have any general guidelines that you use for upvoting amounts for the author? I certainly understand voting more for posts and comments that you really like and find interesting/valuable but how do you in general handle your upvote decisions? I suppose one could divide the average number of comments per day (50 in your case) by one's voting regeneration so using the 50 number again that would come to an average of 20% upvote (if I did my math right) per author/comment and go up or down on the upvote percentage based on how much importance one places on the content/comment. Anyways enjoyed your post as I think that I have found a much better way to grow both my account and the Steemit community.
re: personal upvoting guidelines
I guess I start by not treating anything, post or comments, as equal to any other. That means I'm usually adjusting the slider from one comment to the next, or one post to the other. I am also trying to spread my vote around, too, for as many posts and comments as possible. And, I try to keep my voting power around no lower than 85% or more, so as to maximize the upvote each time. Lately, that's not been working out so well.
Other than juggling those three factors, the only other thing I keep in mind is the dust payout threshold, which basically returns all rewards allocated to posts or comments that come in under $0.02 to the reward pool. That means giving a post or comment no less than $0.03.
After that, it's all on a case by case basis. I've managed to put aside for the time being the frustration of not being able to really ever reward anything what I think it should get, and just try to do my best to reward something. I also try to keep in mind what would benefit my own curation rewards, though I'm nowhere near to getting it right, and would probably have to narrow the spread to maximize it.
re: frequent meaningful comments
It's kind of counterintuitive, because some folks here don't think any comments are worth an upvote, but the primary reason for commenting more isn't for the greater potential in rewards. If it happens, great (and it certainly has some increased chance of getting rewards if there are more comments), but the real reason is just so people know you exist. If they're not seeing or reading your posts, then the only other way to make them see you is to drop in on their post.
I have all day to do this, so those comments are coming within the context of a 10-12 hour day. Things would have to be lined up perfectly for me to do it in less. So, there's the time factor involved. For that, I would say do as much as possible while keeping things pertinent and meaningful. It will take time, and you might need to be choosier where you comment (such as targeting larger SP accounts if possible). The bottom line is, the more you get out there, the more people see you interacting, the more people you will get to know and the more likely some of them will follow, autovote, or consistently engage with you.
Ultimately, obviously, you will need to find what works for you and makes you happy with the growth you do get.
I really appreciate you being willing to give me your thoughts/perspective on this as well as the extensiveness of your response. You have given me a lot of very helpful information and advise. This will definitely help me get a bit closer to trying to find that "balance" that I'm looking for.
On a separate note, this is the first time I have heard about the "dust payout threshold," so in addition to everything else I appreciate that.