Steemit's 2017 Five [5] bad habits You should avoid in 2018, to save your reputation

1. Commenting on other people’s posts, then upvoting yourself!

This is the number one bad habit to avoid. The purpose of commenting on other peoples posts is for thought-sharing. If it is a story, fiction or non-fiction, the idea is to share the experience of the characters. If it is a poem, the idea is to share in its theme. If it is an educative writing, ideally you comment to offer your opinion. Why do you immediately after commenting upvote yourself?

If you are the kind who does this, it only means that.

First - and this is mostly applicable to minnows still learning the trade of steemit- you think every post/comment should be upvoted. And this is not true. The idea of upvoting is a value endorsement, which means that it has to be deserved, earned, given to those posts/comments that you find worthy! And not every post/comment is. That is in part, the reason why steemit gives you control, and allows you the freedom to decide on what value percentage your vote gives.

Secondly, you are only a target worker, looking to position yourself to share in the monetary benefits that eventually accrue for the post. Now I am not saying this is a bad motive, we all aim to earn, ultimately. But for community’s sake, let your commentary be borne of genuine interest.

The first thing that comes to my mind when a person comments on my posts and then immediately upvotes his/her own comment, is that the person, irrespective of how thoughtful his/her comment is, is only commenting as a matter of duty to earn rather than as a result of the genuine desire to share in the issues I have raised in my article. That feeling of insincerity immediately means that you miss my genuine gratitude.

And if I am a ‘whale’ with all the steem power to upvote your comment and give you with one vote, value far greater than your previous five, may be even ten posts have in total gathered, I will just ignore you, on a good day. Another day, I will flag you, and nose dive your reputation towards and below the 25! And that is not good for your progress here on steemit.

2. Writing on a given subject, then tagging it in an unrelated category

So you go to the ‘view more tags’ drop down, and you find the detail of all tags and their potential audience in numbers. You decide the subject you have written about falls in a tag category with few posts., and by inference, a small audience.

That won’t give your article the exposure it deserves, you conclude. So you tag the post under a category it has nothing to do with, because it has the largest audience…There your chances are helped, you think.

You cannot be more wrong!

Number one, it is like taking tomatoes to sell in a car bond. I mean, whoever comes to a car bond, come looking for which car to buy, not tomatoes! And so irrespective of how many people will actually see your tomatoes, none will buy. Yes, it doesn’t matter how many people who visit the introduceyourself category that see your article about crypto currency, none will read it, much less upvote it.

So, overall, it doesn’t matter how good your article is, if it is about foods and groceries, and you tag it under introduceyourself, you abuse the etiquette of tagging on steemit. It is likely you will be flagged, and that can, and will, again nose dive your reputation even to negatives.

3. SBD for a vote

I had two nasty experiences when I first joined Steemit Chat. The first person to message me, despite starting off well with a hello, and bringing me to conversation mood, went ahead to ask for the only SBD I had in my account then, apparently in exchange for his/her vote. Here is our conversation trail.

When I looked up the fellow’s account, I found many revealing things, namely, a low reputation of 25; he has never blogged, has really high steem power (I wont quote the amount, respectfully), much steem dollars (again I will not say the amount) and a high estimated account value, which again I shall not reveal..
How on earth? The minnow in me asked.

The point is that, the person seems to have specifically joined stemit on a business errand! in which case, he/she chose to buy as much steem power as possible, and then start to sell his vote in exchange for SBD,

I don’t know how that serves the person business wise, but I know how it serves him/her reputation-wise, and the 25 reputation score just about says it all, having joined the platform early 2017.

Overall, his kind are actually many. And keep spamiing with comments announcing their benevolence.

If you are this type, make 2018 a different year, and aim for reputation, for true community, otherwise, it wont be long before you are out, and on your own accord. Trust me, you can only stay here if you are really interested in more than money. Steemit’s “Come for the rewards. Stay for the community.” Slogan says it far more than I can manage.

What it doesn’t however say, is that to say, you will have to develop a genuine interest, and to put in a genuine effort to blog and comment, and chat, constructively!

4. Upvote for upvote

As if that was not enough, a second conversation came flying.

Hello. Upvote for upvote?
Just you upvote me and I upvote you. There is nothing else

I ignored this one, but not without contemplating between anger and anger! Reading the “There is nothing else!”

How can somebody even say that. I mean, chat is about knowing others. Who are they? What do they like? What are their hopes, their fears? How can we make community? And then you are telling me ” Just you upvote me and I upvote you. There is nothing else”!!

What for Steemit’s sake does this sort of person deserve if not being flagged? I mean, the idea of Steemit is an idea of a community in which such nonsense cannot, and should not belong.

Funny enough, I looked up the person’s link, and surprise, surprise! Against my less than 100 followers, the fellow actually had about 9 times that. How on earth? I wondered. But a look at the status of his posts only made clear one thing: he had dormant followers, apparent in the fact that only a handful upvoted his posts, and even these commanded very little vote power as his post earnings largely languished in two-decimal place figures mostly! I ignored him.

But he left me a vital impression. The question of followers, I have here referred to as dormant. What are they? This question brings me to my 5th point

5. Dormant followers

Are you a dormant follower? Who is a dormant follower? As in the upvote for upvote incidence above, the easiest way to put it is this:

a) You follow me, but whenever I write/post anything, you at best only upvote me, mindlessly I might add, since you are convinced every post/comment has to be upvoted. I have already indicated this is not the case in my first point up.

b) You don’t comment on my writings/posts. At best, you again mindlessly write “nice post” “nice story” “nice poem’ “thanks for sharing” “That is correct”, “resteemed”….spam comments, thoughtless, unrevealing, and that that add no value to conversations on posts.

In the upvote for upvote incidence above, it is obvious if you are that kind of person, you will end up with a similar kind of followers, and these will add very little value to your reputation and earning on steemit.

Yes, you need, in this 2018, to aim for serious members of the steemit community who will, should they follow you, care enough to open their feeds and read your posts, and comment thoughtfully, correct, guide… and you never know, upvote you.

Like I have already said, one upvote of this kind is easily an equivalent of months of all the monetary value you accumulate, if anything, from those mindless upvoters and spam commenters.

And you can only make the acquaintance of such serious Steemit members, if you yourself are a good follower, not this mindless type!

There is an article that says and explains this question of being a good follower far better and more detailed than I here do. Here is the link: https://steemit.com/introduceyourself/@okusarobert/is-your-reputation-still-at-25-or-thereabout-do-you-have-only-few-followers-this-post-will-help-them-grow

And another related, here: https://steemit.com/steemit/@miti/a-complete-guide-for-newcomers-and-minnows-to-avoid-a-possible-spam-and-to-write-good-comments.

My best wishes to all, to the minnows/beginners, to all the Steemit members working hard to make this a most powerful and organic platform.

HAPPY NEW 2018

@ebitularmbert