The 5 main reasons why posts goes wrong
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The “Steemit team” doesn’t often speak up but this week there were two things which caught my eye.
Today I want to address one of the items, the quality of the posts on Steemit.
Every day we see a small number of high quality posts, we see a significant number of absolutely terrible posts, and the large bulk of posts that are just... average. The writing is okay, the photos are okay, the presentation is okay.
These 'average' posts are the most frustrating posts. With a bit more effort and a bit more guidance these posts could move from average to good.
As curator and moderator I cannot agree more with the statement that there are few “high quality post”. Is there potential? FOR SURE!
I have seen numerous posts where the authors are more than capable of pushing their post to the next level.
I am not going to tell you how to write a good post as there are numerous posts already published on this subject. I want to tell you about the 5 main factors I see where so many Steemians go wrong. I am going to give examples of what is wrong and examples of how you can improve on the wrongs.
1. No catchy heading and extremely long headings |
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Steemians can write headings which consist of more than 30 words!
They see other authors doing it and so they follow. With my return to Steemit I also thought that it was supposed to be like that. Wrong!
First impression is lasting impression, never forget that. Keep it short and sweet. There is no need to put your club status and your delegations in the heading if it is in your tags.
The only time that you must have a long descriptive heading is when the contest rules the heading of the post and it is long. Even those who holds contest should be aware of not making the compulsory heading too long.
❌ WRONG!
#Club100 The dairy game(23-Aug-22) What I did today going to town meeting friends. How was the day? #Burnsteem25 #steemexclusive
✔ RIGHT!
My day, 23 Aug 2022: Off to town, meeting some friends
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2. The intro doesn’t catch the audience attention |
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“I am well today, how are you today”.
We are not writing letters my friends, we are writing posts. Sometimes the “how are you” fills more than the 25% of the post.
It often feels that the author is trying to make up for the 300+ words a post must consist of.
Keep your intro interesting to make sure the reader is going to read every single word of your post.
❌ WRONG!
How are your today my friends? I woke up and I am also well. Hope you are having a good day. My day is good.
✔ RIGHT!
What an exciting day I had to today!
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3. Post with less than 300 words |
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I have seen ample posts with very few words and in many cases the words doesn't make sense at all.
Sharing images with a few words is not going to help you to win the race.
We all know the famous words of Churchill. Well, I want to change it today.
Never, ever, ever write a post of less than 300+ words.
The most important factor, don’t write "garbage" to make up the 300+ words. Garbage is not going to get you to be noticed.
To be on the save side count the physical content as words and not the heading, nor the image and for sure not you name at the bottom of your post.
❌ WRONG!
Today I found a yellow flower in my garden. I like flowers. The flower is yellow with black dots and it is beautiful. You can find the flower in my garden and I like flowers. This flower in my garden smells nice.
✔ RIGHT!
What a surprise it was today to found a beautiful, yellow, black spotted and good smelling flower in my garden. I love flowers.
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4. Boring posts |
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We get tired of reading the “same posts” over and over again.
Most posts on Steemit is about “The Diary Game”. This on its own is a challenge as an author you have to compete with so many other authors who is also writing about their day.
We get to read about daily hygiene routine. I promise you that the readers don’t want to read about it day after day. They want to read about interesting things you did and how you did it.
Best, if you can share something they can learn from your day you have nailed it.
Authors use dairy instead of DIARY.
| Word | Meaning | ImageMeaning |
|---|---|---|
| Dairy | milk products |  |
| Diary | to journal your day |  |
Authors post their daily routine day after day. Readers gets tired of reading what you do day after day. You have to write about other interesting things also.
Make your posts stands out by keeping it interesting and different. In Steemit you don’t “drive” what the Jones family next to you is driving, no, you want to be different.
If you write about an item or object tell the reader the why, the where, the how, the importance etc.
Posts are written in one paragraph! Never do this!
Make sure you post is easy to read by breaking it up in short paragraphs and by using bullet points and other markdown styles.
Share your knowledge, share your skills and share what you love doing. We all want to learn from you. If you had to repair a roof tell us what you used, what it cost and how you did it.
❌ WRONG!
I woke up this morning and I first went to the bathroom where I cleaned myself. I then had said my morning prayers and had breakfast. I then went to town to buy some items which was needed for me to cook lunch today. When I got home I made lunch.
✔ RIGHT!
I woke up this morning feeling refreshed and ready for the day.
After my morning routine I had to go to town to buy some items which I needed to make lunch for my family. I had to make use of public transport to get to the market.
We have three different types of public transport in my town, taxi, motorbike or bus. Today I took a taxi. What a friendly driver I had.
I went to ABC market which is located in the centre of my village. What makes this market unique is that they sell anything from fresh vegetable to shoes.
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5. Wrong and large images |
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If there is one image Steemians like to post it is a selfie. What I cannot understand is why they don’t post the best selfie but the worst selfie, the one where the reader has to look up into their nostrils to see the face.
Don’t laugh! It happens day after day.
If you don’t know how to take the correct selfie you can read my post on it.
How to take the correct selfie
The same image is posted more than once in a post. You are not going to get away with doing this. Curators know very well how to “scan” content.
My friends, posting large images in a post is not good. So often we have to search for the words among the images which is very frustrating.
Some authors think they can hide the shortcoming of a 300+ word post behind their images.
You have to scale your images according to your text and line them left and right.
The best image – Horizontal/landscape
The best size - https://steemitimages.com/500x600/
Just add the above link before you image. You can then play around with the "500x600" and change the image to a size correct for your post.
How to do it:
)Plenty big images are used in posts addressing powering up.
We don’t want to see the steps you followed to do the power up. What we want to see is the proof that it was done.
How?
Create one image or share the images next to each other which will automatically make them smaller.
I know I said 5 main factors BUT I want to add one more.
6. Post are not checked |
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Wrong grammar, sentences not starting with capital letters and no punctuation are huge problems in posts.
Check your post before and after you have posted it and decided for yourself if what you have just posted is worth the comments and votes that you are expecting.
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The end…
We are not all fantastic authors but if you are willing to listen and to learn you can become the best author that you can be.
And if you still need help, ask! The admin and moderators of a community as well as your country representative will gladly help you.
All excellent points here.
Spelling is also important - there are plenty of spellcheckers available.
(Check your first sentence 😉)
And Grammarly may be a useful tool as well...
With content we prefer detail over vagueness.
With photos we prefer selectivity over quantity.
We really don't like repeated photos, and photos without captions.
Keep it tight, keep it tidy.
Make every word count.
Thank you
Now that would have been a great contest!
Spot the mistake for 10 STEEM (•ิ‿•ิ)
You're really amazing mod'm...
This is going to be a very interesting contest, it's just that someone will get caught here (5 points you explained). I also sometimes make this mistake even without realizing it..
This will improve the post quality even more, beware, someone is stalking you! 😂
This is a very good idea dear mod'm 👍
My dear stalker,
We are all human and we all make mistakes.
What count is how willingly we are to fix them.(•ิ‿•ิ)
In the end, we have nothing to loose if we try.
In Afrikaans, my home language we have a saying.
"Probeer is die beste geweer"
Best wishes
Your friend
And in German we say:
"Probieren geht über Studieren!"
That means: Trying is more worth than Studying.
I think I prefer the German saying as it has nothing to do with "guns".
(•ิ‿•ิ)
Oops, I supposed "geweer" not to be similar to German "Gewehr" but to German "Gewähr" - that is something like warranty.
Exactly! (•ิ‿•ิ)
08/25/2022 03:02:03
Quoting from the text at 13:34:24 on Wednesday 08/24/2022
The content has a missing letter "T" on the word steemit Which attracted the attention of sc01 by 01:15:09 Thursday And got corrected by 03:02:03
CC @patjewell
Hahaha!
I can see that you sleep at night and not during the day.
Well done! 👍
There are some more typos, as I have seen.
Should I fish them?
(Joke! Typos happen and happen, qualities as the above post fly over them.)
cc @patjewell
;-))
Haha! I have one word for you and I am gonna make sure I spell it right... PRECIOUS! (•ิ‿•ิ)
This is good news for us to take a closer look at our posts, hopefully in a short time you will see a lot of changes.
Of course this is a very useful input. I will soon attach this input in my learning in the community. Thank you sir.
Nuestra amiga ha publicado un excelente contenido, que ha captado su atención y apoyo, porque estos contenidos hacen falta en la blockchain para seguir enseñando .
Sin embargo habemos más usuarios en la plataforma que también hemos creado contenido para ayudar a otros a crear mejores y más bonitas publicaciones y aún no ha sido valorado ni revisado por usted .
No me estoy quejando, solo expreso mi sentir de desmotivación hacia el esfuerzo por ayudar y el cual no es tomado en cuenta . Tampoco exijo un voto, pero que bien ha de sentirse por lo menos un comentario de felicitaciones o agradecimiento por el trabajo que se intenta hacer día a día .
Con todo respeto espero no tome mi comentario para mal.
Cc: @steemcurator01
That is why we have all the Communities with their community accounts, and the Community Curators.
And members of the whole Steem community.
Everyone can vote on all those other posts as well.
For example you could retrieve all your delegations and then you would be able to give a 4x bigger votes to the posts you think are good.
Exacto! Esa es una na buena idea sin embargo las comunidades en las que tengo algo de delegación es porque creo que merecen ser apoyadas por su bien desempeño, como puede verificar tengo pocas.
Otra opción y es la que tengo en mente es seguir acumulando SP para tener mejor poder de voto y seguir apoyando cada publicación de buen contenido.
Por ahora solo espero que suba un poco el sbd para invertir en más steem 😃 y celebrar mi segundo delfín que está más cerca que nunca .
Great! Your point "boring" is my favorite...!
Beautiful all the point you show us for about Good post how to write....
thank you so much i will Flowing all the role 🙏.
Very good summary! I would almost expect every user to take a look at these points. It must also be emphasised that Steemit is not a short message service (with birds ;-) )...
... and as a result of all the aspects you have rightly highlighted, it has to be recognised that no one can write such posts every day, nor should they. The "writers" should also realise that there must be "readers" who are interested in the posts. I don't like to read a post by a single blogger every day, I like variety. If they post too often for me, the votes for that blogger will be reduced or even cancelled completely.
I have read a great post from one of the Steemians who actually stated that Steemit should put more emphasis on attracting readers. I agree 100% with this. However, before we can get to that we must all work together to get authors to write better quality posts.
I must admit, I have learned a lot from quality posts on Steemit. Never too old to learn (•ิ‿•ิ)
Thanks for the engagement!
Let's try it on parallels / synchronously.
;-)
Ah! You mean like females can do ;-)
You've got it!
;-)
You have really told some very good points and I am really impressed by your points as I also post same routine in my diary entries 😂. But From now, I'll try to post some high quality content in my blog.
Your post is really worth reading and I am sure that It will help a lot of Steemians✌️.
I am so glad that you could learn something from my post.
All I ask is for that try (•ิ‿•ิ)
After all, it is not all that difficult. We all just need to follow the rules when we write.
Thank you for the engagement with my post!
Saw this post yesterday and I ignored it however while going through another user's blog I discovered it again and decided to take a glance. This is top notch and so timely.
Was even about to make a post when before reading this and now I'm feeling weak about making cus I'm a victim of so many wrongs outlined above.
Thanks a bunch anyway, it's just an opportunity for me at the right time to take corrections
You know what?
You are already a winner for acknowledging that you have made mistakes in the past. I can tell you, you are not alone. We all make mistakes.
What counts is what we have learned and put it to practice!
Good luck and thank you for reading and responding.
Excellent tips you've got here. If we can all follow these tips, we will all get it right and make it easier for curators.
Shortened and eye catchy titles, brief and pointed introduction, and the right type of image, are all good. Thank you my friend for this
There are for sure other mistakes also but if the authors starts with these 5, no 6, points it will for sure help everybody.
Thank you for supporting us day after day! It is appreciated 🎕
Thanks for reminding me of some of this important points. I also observed a lack of chronology in the development of the idea in many posts. When an idea is not developed properly, it often creates a lot of questions that ends up unanswered.
Your examples made it very easy to to get the message in each point.
This is so true... when you do not plan your post that is when things go wrong!
Thank you for reading and your two replies (•ิ‿•ิ)
It makes it all worth as I know you will practice and share.
A thousand steemians need to see this post. Notably, they may not be professional writers but they can be high quality post bloggers and this can be a good start.
You are so right! We are not professional writers but we can be quality bloggers! Wise words!
Thank you for engaging my friend! 🎕
I agree with you, sometimes posts look boring, the author only multiplies words, to reach 300 words. So 25% is "how're you"😊😊😊
Well, let's hope we can change it.
If all the communities will just encourage their members we can win.
Thanks for the support my friend! ☕