What I have learned lately on Steemit by @kwadjobonsu

Hello, fellow Steemians. I hope every one of you is in good health? Today, I will be sharing knowledge on few factors that have helped me in my journey on this amazing Steemit platform. I joined this platform in the year 2018; however, after a year of activeness, I took a long break from the platform and recently became active. During the dormant period, I made a pretty bad financial decision: I powered down all my Steem Power till there was 5 SP left, and cashed out my earnings. Hence in return, I struggled a lot. Not only because I had limited transactions on the platform, but also because quite a lot had changed regarding the structure of the website. I have gradually found my feet, and I am finally making significant progress. To this end, I would like to use this opportunity granted by @mcsamm to share with you information on a handful of factors that have aided me in my return.

The first element that I would like to bring to your awareness is the judicious use of Resource Credit. For the newbies who have no idea what Resource Credit (RC) means, I will try and break it down for you. Resource Credits are credits that cannot be transferred and increase based on the magnitude of a user’s Steem Power. Any transaction executed on the Steem blockchain diminishes a user’s RC. Instances of transactions include Commenting, Upvoting, Downvoting, Resteeming, and many others. I believe fathoming this concept is very instrumental to the success of any beginner and most users on the platform. I say most users because even with a mare 23 SP, I am currently ranked #71,937 out of the million Steemians out there. This shows statistically that most users on Steem currently possess very little Steem Power. Now one may ask how does knowing RC of any help? Well, once you know that you are limited in the number of posts and transactions you can carry out on Steemit, it would help you prioritize your actions and also aid in avoiding spam. It takes 5 days for an account without any daily activity to fully recharge its RC. Thus, 20% recharge each day if no transactions are carried out. Once an account runs short of the required credit for action, an error would be displayed notifying the user to wait for a while or power up a specific amount of Steem. Let not forget that powering up also diminishes RC, and I had to learn this the hard way. There were times when the notification would indicate that powering up 0.233 Steem would be enough, and I would power up exactly 0.233 Steem only to find out that a new request of, let say, 0.173 Steem is still needed. To check your current level of RC, you can hop on to Steemworld.org/@username Replace your username with your Steem username.

The RC status is the area under consideration. For nerdy information on how to calculate RC, you can use this link: https://developers.steem.io/tutorials-recipes/calculate_rc_recipe

User engagement is the second factor under discussion. Engagements can be categorized into several forms: voting, commenting, resteeming, following, and many more. There are benefits to engaging other users’ content. For example, Resteeming a different user’s post increases the exposure of the post by making it accessible to your followers. This aids in spreading timely information and interesting projects. It is no different from retweeting on Twitter or publicly sharing someone’s post on Facebook. Providing good comments to the post of other users is a particularly vital habit that every Steemian should emulate. I cannot count the number of times I received significant worth of upvotes from big accounts for comments. To provide a good comment, you would have to thoroughly consume the published content and give a related and reasonable contribution. I have realized several newbies fall short of this habit. Some of them are fond of providing cliché comments- and even worse plagiarize comments of other users. Admittedly, cliché comments get rewarded sometimes, but it would be good for the Steem community if we engaged with profound thoughtfulness. Additionally, the act of providing upvotes to good content can also go a long way in motivating the users to do more of what they do. I think everybody can relate when after publishing a great piece on the Blockchain it goes past seven days, the only reward is a dust payout. Currently, my SP does not fetch a cent of Steem even when I vote at 100%. Hence I am a little held back on upvoting since I have very limited RC and that I have to manage it sustainably. However, users with large SP can be instrumental to the growth of other users by upvoting content of good quality to help keep the makers motivated.

One thing that I have lately become cognizant of is that the Steemit platform is very serious about recruiting new users. The NewComers’ Community and Country Representatives, in particular, exceptionally usher new users into the community. This habit makes the platform very alluring to newbies because there is always someone ready to help. Admittedly, Steemit is a difficult place to navigate alone as a new user. Hence, the presence of Communities and Representatives makes navigation in the Steem ecosystem quite feasible. Also, the achievement tasks that have been put in place to aid newcomers in understanding the various aspects of the system are very resourceful and a great initiative from the pioneers. The reward systems that have been put in place to motivate active user is mind-blowing. Without a doubt, Steemit will attract more users in the years to come. Who knows, we could surpass the traditional social media platforms.

These are the few points I wanted to touch on. Thanks for reading.