Post Promotions: Do's and Don'ts
We've experienced great interest in Steemit in last months. An enormous amount of new sign ups, and Steemians getting active again.
This is absolutely Great for the Community!
BUT unfortunately it also brought some very aggressive promotion tactics to our community!
Please Stop Posting URLs in Private Chat!
Recently I get multiple URLs posted into my private chat channels, each day. It is getting annoying!
I actually thought this only happens to Whales and Dolphins. I'm just a tiny minnow, with a ok reputation and a somewhat interesting amount of followers, but still my Steem Power is not that big, really.
To whom it may concern: I'll not respond to any of those URL posts at Steemit.Chat or Discord! I will not and do not open your posted link(s) at all. I may even remember your username and will not look at your future posts as well, even when they are of good quality.
Have Respect for your Fellow Steemians
I know, it is hard to get noticed when being new at Steemit. We've all been through this phase. I'm on Steemit for more than 5 months, and still putting in hard work to get noticed, to increase my follow base, to get votes in.
But, I do RESPECT my fellow community members. I will not approach them directly in a private message asking to upvote and follow. This is just too aggressive! Instead I use the appropriate methods.
Post Promotions
Use the topic channels on Steem.Chat and Discord Servers (SteemTrail and others). Take the time to read other promoted posts in these channels and give them up-votes and comments if you like the post.
Engage
Read and digest posts, and create relevant and quality comments. Seek the interaction with the author of the post and/or the authors of comments.
I'll assure you, this will give a much better result.
And remember, it takes time to go from 0-60 or 0-100. Nobody here at Steemit was able to do this in record times. Dedication brings you further. Being too aggressive will bring you nowhere! Any marketeer knows that, hence you do not experience successful direct marketing in the real world. Any marketeer knows it is about engagement, about the interaction. Reasons why this is the marketing style adopted in the world.
Have Respect! Then You Get Respect in Return!
HAPPY STEEMING
follow me @edje
Well said @edje I have noticed this too and it does not come across well.
Indeed! Hope this post and other on the same topic will create a better culture again.
Agree, everyone wants upvoting including me (especially after this powerful HF19 has been launched). However, I assumed everyone wants steemit to be a even better community, this relies on our "repsect". Please respect every author's valuable contributions, without this, steemit is nothing.
Respect is key to any community! Thank you for reading and your comment.
Hopefully people will get the hang of things. They will end up creating more rules for people.
Likely indeed!
You know it is a problem when you see a post almost nearly every day lately talking about this. I have considered writing one myself. I go on steemit.chat half as much as I used to as I get blown up on private chat by now. The irony is no one would even talk to me 6 months ago...lol.
Hard work pays of! And I agree, less post on topics like this would be fantastic! But for some reason they are required. I started to post my post as a comment to those who send me links in private chat. Sometimes they come back to one of my posts and I help them further in understanding what RESPECT is and how to go about at Steemit. Those who do not, well, I ignore them.
Feel free to write a post yourself :)
Thanks for stopping by and your comment.
Good post. I think over the last two weeks there has been an influx of newbies who seem to be spending their time hustling for follows and upvotes for zero input. I just ignore them.
I do welcome newbies who bother to introduce themselves and post good content.
Indeed, I saw somewhere to ID counter at more than 200k and I think it jumped from 150k/160k a months or so ago, maybe 2 months ago. Issue is that there is not a Wiki or something in Steemit with all the information on what is out there, including the guilds, including Steemit.Chat including all the Discord servers with people to help promoting posts and votes. All need to be discovered through posts, and some of these are very good and informative, others not so got and may even give some not so good info. Takes a LOT of time to go through that, and I understand not so many users do actually take that time. I just hope we can make this better in the future, better UI, a library of information within Steemit UI, not outside as it is now, and quite fragmented.
And I do as well. When respecting the community, then I'm there to help them.
I don't think it's aggressive, but more invasive, desperate. Very nice post, finally someone saying it out loud! Lately I've also been getting lots and lots of these stupid private messages "Please upvote me!", "Follow and I'll follow back", LIKE I CARE! That's pretty much the reaction I get...
Upvoted and Resteemed!
It must be said out loud indeed. Some others did already, but I think mostly higher SP holder. Anyway, hopefully the users who are that aggressive will stop. Not sure if it is desperate, some of the new users do actually get some rewards already and start their tactics after 1 or 2 days on the platform, submitted maybe a couple of posts. Invasive it certainly is for use who receiving those requests all the time.
Thanks for the support!
I usually just hide all those that send me these sort of messages, don't want to see them again. It's just sad that many of them don't even realize it.
You very welcome!
I was thinking indeed to block them. Sometime I react stating that this is not the way to operate. Thanks for your suggestion and advise.
I also get the immediate reaction to block/erase these types of users. Unfortunately, we do have to take the time to let them know what they are doing is not effective on Steemit or they will only continue. I know, I know, great advice, but now to follow through...I really would just rather ignore them.
I mostly ignore them as well. Today I posted a link to my post a couple of times :)
Smart! Do you mind if I start doing that as well?
Go for it! The post is free to re-use :)
The problem is there will also be people just going for a money grab, sadly this will be an element we always deal with on some level. I just don't go on chat nearly as much now, which is sad.
True. And I have the same problem, not so often on the chat anymore :) Every time I get one of those messages, it reminds me of them beggars on the street, although even they have more pride. But hopefully once in a while, you get to meet a few Steemians that are definitely worth following and upvoting their posts, and then it's all worth it :-D
Yeah, there is a difference between helping those in need and those who are just hustling. Sadly, it's hard to weed it out.
I think its like most new platforms. Lots of people trying to make a fast buck for as little effort as possible. Internet ads and popups, email, search engines and various social media have all had similar filtering problems. It will take some time for both the community and the platform to improve filtering so that we see more quality contact than guff appearing.
Post discovery and staying visible with your posts is indeed a MAJOR issue at Steemit. For some reason Steemit INC is not addressing that; I have no clue why. That is one of the issues I have with them. I think they are a bunch of techies without any idea how to support the majority of the Steemians, namely those with low Steem Power. But they may have their good reasons not to invest in good post discovery and promotion tools, I just dont know. Lets see what the next couple of months will bring.
I'm learning these things as i go along, its a pretty tough crowd out there, but i believe there is hope! Good advice!
It is indeed though, and being here for almost 6 months and about 3500 posts and comment further, I still have to work my butt of to get some votes in. You can view my posts and their rewards. It is much higher than in the first couple of months, but still each posts with real content cost me at least 2 times on post promotion, including commenting etc etc to get some votes in. But as you can also see, some posts gets pretty ok rewards! Trick is; Like the interaction, like the discussions, like to create a good post, and the rewards will follow. Being here for the rewards, is the wrong approach, then I can assure you, you will be feeling a whole lot negative about Steemit. BTW, most of the higher rewarded post I have are given by vote trains, guild type of voters who have a lot of follow-on voters (SteemTrail and the likes). I also get sometimes dollars on a single comment, from some high power users or several smaller users. But this generally inly happens when the comment is good. What is good is left to the author of the posts and others who may read the comments, but best is to add value to the posts or comments to the post.
Yah, at first I was all about the rewards, but eventually, I realized steemit has so much more potential. To me, it's a great opportunity to reach out to the world and share my ideas in a place where it can actually make an impact.
I never was a blogger, but I started to be one when getting into Steemit. I meet and have conversation with so many different minded people, ,much easier to find them here than anywhere else. I just love that.
Agreed :) you can choose to ignore the bombardments of trends if you please.
Correct, and I mostly do :)
I think you should note that there are no official rules on Steemit.. On the platform stake holders can flag posts/comments - unfortunately that doesnt extend to private messages or chat..
Correct, there are no rules on Steemit other than those implemented by Technology. But I can tell you, NO community works when not respecting each other. I just hope this is getting clear to those who are just here for their own personal (money) gain.
I think there is a big difference between shameless promotion and promotion to raise money for (whatever).. I have no problem with people shamelessly promoting quality content.. Onboard more users - get more scammers - the problem is this site is filled with people who are willing to direct blockchain reward to what looks sketchy - just in case it isnt. Steemit should reward quality content -unfortunately we cant control the way people vote. Glad you brought this up - its a frustrating problem that I think will diminish with scale (unless we attract more people willing to feed the bears).
Thank you for sharing your views. I agree with you! I'm still positive. Today I help one who used the too aggressive post promo tactics as well and I think that user will turn to more appropriate tactics. Counts for me as a good day! :)
I think HF19 will fix a lot of the problems we had. Curie was something that kept me going for a while.. The frustrating thing is you have about 2 hours to get your post to a visible spot - if you dont its toast. Im hoping to see some changes in rewards with HF19 - which will hopefully lead to less aggressive campaigning.. Always something new at Steemit :)
Curie is very helpful indeed, they helped me good as well. But at some point they stop, based on reputation. Then you fall into the 1ct per post values again. It is like getting hot as a band or DJ, that year completely booked out, everyone want to have you, but next year it is low low... Then it costs about 2 to 3 years to get really picked up. At Steemit it is quite similar. I'll tell you, most of the days I spend at least 4 hours on Steemit and that already for about 6 months. And I'm still struggling to get my posts noticed. Indeed, HF19 rewards changes may change things to the positive side of the small SP holders.
Ya curie changed their rules to the point where it was like a short term lottery.. I was put on the Steem Guild for a while which seemed to fix my reward at a particular level. This experiment is going to be interesting - but just as it gives us all more power - whales have less incentive to vote and the trails are far more powerful (I think). This could very well create as many problems as it solves - but its certainly exciting to watch/participate in.
Lets see indeed how this changes will play out.
I know whales who always vote, some of them go through the NEW channel and vote a series of articles which they dont read. Others take time to read the posts. I also know quite a few whales using bots and voting for other whales and dolphins. I just hope the whales and dolphins will also look a little bit more down the pyramid and as a collective support the minnows more. But, having said that, my hard work I still put in and doing that already for 6mnth seems sometimes to pay of. SteemTrail supports anybody on good posts BTW. I also have some loyal followers, some of them with bots (although I d not like bot voting) but at least it gives me some votes in on posts I make. I'm about to launch a new project and I know I will have a hard time with it since it is about music; A topic undervalued at Steemit. I like to believe I can make a difference; But that is a whole other topic.... (but wanted to mention it anyway :))
You're right! It's a bit annoying, but sometimes people send you quite nice content you wouldn't have found. But it's a big minority, I agree. Nice post by the way.
Thank you! it is not so much about good or bad posts, but when getting quite a few of these requests in, it is getting annoying. There are so many ways of promoting, and best is to write comment, relevant to the post, add value with that. You can find recent posts with the same topic you wrote about, and comment on those posts and give your link (as a clickable word, like "maybe you are interested in the posts I wrote about this topic here), and make the word here clickable with the link to your post. Copying URL into the comment may not be appreciated by some of the authors as well, I know for sure some of the Whales hate that, so always respect others, dont advertise, but add value and when a post of yours is relevant to your comment, you may mention it. To more value you add, the more you will get noticed. Also take the time to post your articles in the post promotion channels at Steemit.Chat and Discord AND also read other posts that are promoted in those channels, when you like it, comment on it and upvote it and mentioned that in the specific channel mentioned the authors name in the comment so he/she gets a notification. Avoid mentioned anything like, also please upvote my post. That is to much begging and I know quite a few Steemians who will not do it because of that.
Success with finding your ways here on Steemit. And thank you for your comments and upvote.
Joking, I will take your advices, you have the right words. ;)
Sorry for the spam, but how do you make a word clickable? Thank you!
In comments like this [word] directly followed by (URL), ie no space in between
You should maybe be interested in this post talking about Post Promotions. Great thank you for the advice!
you have to set the ( and ) around your URL. Here an post (here) explaining the basics of Markdown including a link to the markdown editor of Steemit.
Super! You've got it!
Thanks a lot for your time offered!
You are welcome!