Steemit Strategies - Communities and Focus
What Are YOU Trying to Achieve on Steemit?
Today, I'm going to discuss some Communities in Steemit that I think are helpful and also try to help you find a focus on what you want to achieve here. It seems to me that these two issues are important because we are often recruited into dozens of different communities that don't really help us and this often happens because we aren't really sure what we want from the platform.
I've been doing a series of posts on Steemit Strategies and some of the comments have me a bit bewildered at times. It seems that many people have a misunderstanding (this is way too common a word in my posts) about how the platform works, what they can achieve from the platform, and what they should actually do on the platform.
Let's start with some strategy basics because it may turn out that what I hope to provide you with is NOT what you need. I'm trying to cull the herd a bit here. This way, I have less stupid comments and instant messages tomorrow morning when I wake up such as, "I agree with everything you say, but I disagree with everything that you say because I LOVE Everyone and I don't judge people." Really? I nearly vomited in my oatmeal when I read that this morning. When did Kindergarten children get Steemit accounts?
What do YOU want to achieve from your activity on Steemit? Have you asked yourself this question?
1 - If you're goal is to make friends, network, read some cool posts, learn about faraway lands, etc., then you SHOULD keep reading and stay on Steemit.
2 - If YOU want to make more money on Steemit than you are currently making, then you SHOULD keep reading and stay on Steemit. (unless you are making much more than me in which, thanks for stopping by and PLEASE upvote, comment, follow and resteem)
3 - If YOU want to help others in their Steemit journey by sharing your knowledge (some of which is gained from me) of the platform and use YOUR money (upvotes) to do so, then you SHOULD keep reading and stay on Steemit.
4 - If YOU want to better understand some of the ways in which the platform truly operates, then you SHOULD keep reading and stay on Steemit.
5 - If YOU you want to make money on Steemit, but you don't want to put in a couple hours a day or at least 15 hours a week OR you think that copy/paste posts, plagiarism, photos of your breakfast, or reposts using Parley are good ways to do that, LEAVE my post now, don't pass GO, don't collect 200 Rupees, and Fuck off in general. I had to unfollow, mute, and unvote someone today for this. I have no patience for lazy people and don't care if you/they never visit my posts.
6 - If YOU want to help others in their Steemit journey by singing Kumbaya, badmouthing whales that pay no attention to you, bitch about "greedy" self-voters, and share your ridiculous predictions of the demise of Steemit because of Haejin, STOP reading now, quit Steemit, go see a fucking therapist and take a class on behavioral economics. You are part of the problem and not the solution (and not just on Steemit).
If you are still here, thanks for reading.
Second Question - Do you want to make money on Steemit?
If not, then why are you worrying about strategies? Go to Instagram or FB. I can't be interesting or entertaining enough to keep reading if you're not trying to build your Steemit account.
If you DO WANT to make more money on Steemit and build your account, I believe that you can do that and STILL be helpful to others, support them, guide them and be an all around good person in this community. However, it is very hard to help others if you don't have any power to do so.
In Steemit, SP RULES. If you don't have any, then you are broke and nobody takes advice from people who are broke and nobody needs your "help" because you really don't have any to give. When was the last time you asked the homeless guy for spare change?
Side note - I just realized that I'm using a lot of CAPS today. Sorry. I'm not yelling, promise.
If you want to help others, you need to be in a position to do so - This is a Life Lesson not just Steemit. My goal is to help you get there so we can multiply and take over the Earth (just kidding)
Goals for Steemit
Understanding what you want to achieve will help you determine what, if any, advice you take from me and it will also help you determine what types of behavior you have on the platform.
If you want to be a curator, then read everything you can about curation. I have posted a couple articles on the topic, but there are many more.
If you want to build a following of loyal supporters that visit your posts, then focus on strategies that will do that. I have also wrote some posts that will help in this arena.
If you want to do both, awesome! However, you better be ready to work because it takes time to post high quality, original content AND visit other people's posts to decide if they are quality content and then interact with them. This route is easily a full-time job as @thedarkhorse, @lynnecoyle1, @wolfhart, and I have begun to learn through the #payitforward contest. It is taking a bunch of time. Do we love it, absolutely and for me, it is the best part of my day on Steemit. However, don't fool yourself. You will need to work and hard.
Not everyone can commit to this level of dedication, so be honest with yourself and your time constraints. I won't be angry if you tell me that you can't post everyday. Just don't be angry when your account takes more time to grow. It's a trade off and it isn't guaranteed, which is why many people give up.
Communities - How Can They Help?
If you've decided to stay this long, here are my tips on choosing the right communities to become involved in. There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of options available to you. I'm going to suggest how to decide where you should spend your time, but you have to make the decision.
I will do this by showing you how I went through the process of selecting and eliminating the communities I wanted to join/participate in. My choices may not be the right choices for you.
I wanted to be in communities that would help me achieve the following:
- Teach me how to navigate the Steemit platform by explaining it in terms that I understood.
- Help me get more upvotes and build my account.
- Help me make friends that would help me get more upvotes and grow my account.
- Would help me promote my content (so I could get more upvotes and make more friends - see the pattern here)
I was also interested in communities that would/could do these things:
- Would grow with me as my account became larger (and wouldn't start telling me what to do with my account when it became larger)
- Judged me by my content and communication and NOT by the size of my Steemit wallet.
I didn't want these things in particular:
- Continue to beg me for more money every week or month.
- Required me to join/participate in their 10 Step program or whatever they were selling.
- Would charge me a lot of money for their services.
- Would require large amounts of my time to participate in their community (including reading their 200 page manifesto on how to make the world equitable)
My List of Communities That I Think are Worth Looking Into or Joining
- Qurator - I wrote an entire article devoted to why I think they are the best organization for newbies that write quality content consistently. Are they for everyone? No. In fact, some of you, no offense, won't get past the doorman because your content isn't good enough. For those of you that can, it is a great investment. Cool contests, lots of support and even a member's bot. Read my post on it if you have questions - the link is below.
- Asaper's - Nice folks there. They put out a good publication, feature good authors, some decent conversations in their chat rooms. They have a good post promotion system. Don't ask me for money.
- PayitForward - New name for a Discord channel that @wolfhart put together. No nonsense help for people. Still young, but will grow with your account.
- Dynamic Steemians - Very active group with a huge amount of sub-channels to participate in. It is worth checking out because chances are they have something of value for you there. Lots of programs.
- SteemGreetersGuild (SGG) - I'm going on reputation here because many of my good friends are active in the community. To be honest, I'm not, but it isn't because of them. I only have so much time.
- Kryptonia - This is not a Discord community, but their is a community of sorts for those that participate in the program with Superior Coin and @sydesjokes. This includes a "daily faucet" post where you can share jokes and get a share of the daily SBD payout on the post. I think it is kind of fun and definitely less "heavy" than some communities that are a bit TOO SERIOUS.
Honorable Mention - Jumbot - Like a miniature Qurator. They are much smaller, but have a similar structure. Not expensive and a guaranteed return on membership like qurator. I'm relatively new here, but I like it. Unfortunately, they have to invite you.
Concluding Thoughts
Remember that no community has magic SP bullets. Find communities that align with both your interests and your goals. For instance, I am very big on high quality, original content and no crap posts and I want to increase my account balance. Therefore, Qurator was a natural fit for me.
Your goals and your community's goals may not always align and that is okay, but the moment they start telling you that you must "behave" a certain way or spend your money (upvotes) a certain way that you don't agree with, leave.
Take the advice I throw out here on my posts and use it how you will. I won't be angry if you choose to do things differently, and I certainly won't tell you how to spend YOUR money. I just like to provide some insights into how I spend MY money in a way that makes my account grow (which it continues to do every week and better than the average Steemian).
Encourage the people around you to produce good, interesting posts and to work hard at it. One of the reasons that I think I have found such an affection for the Homesteaders Groups on Steemit is because we share the same work ethic and ideals about self-reliance.
Nothing comes easy here on Steemit unless you already have a ton of money. Don't focus your attention on those that have it easier than you, focus your attention on reaching the goals that YOU have here on Steemit. I hope that in some way I am assisting you in reaching them.
I wish you continued success. Here is a list of my previous posts that might be of particular interest to you.
Steemit Strategies
Curation Rewards
Comment Strategies
4 Month Recap
Steemit Essentials - Tools/Resources
Kryptonia
Steemworld
SteemSupply
Qurator Community
Steemauto
GinaBot
Discord
Like this article? Please resteem, upvote and comment.
Don't like it? Comment and tell me why. Let's discuss it.
All intelligent comments get an upvote for effort (even if I disagree).
Send me a copy of one of your posts and I will try to read it quickly.
All images are mine or downloaded from Pixabay.com
Posted using: busy
https://busy.org/i/@energyaddict22
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Special thanks for support from @qurator @jumbot @dynamicsteemians @newbieresteem @resteemit @asapers #payitforward - @thedarkhose, @lynnecoyle1, @wolfhart #kryptonia #superiorcoin @sydesjokes
This is a fantastic post and not just because you mentioned our curation project the @asapers. I loved point 5 & 6, they both made me crack up. Some great information for all steemians. I learnt some new stuff too but that never surprises me as if we aren't learning we arent growing.
Thanks so much for stopping by and commenting. I do like @asapers and try to stop by the Discord when I can. I don't usually say much, but I read and listen. The daily is one of the few I read regularly and, of course, I autovote it. I hope we can get even more of these folks into the #payitforward contest.
All the best to you and your hardworking group over there.
True words. If you want to make money, you will need to put work into it. I think the most of us newbies don't know how much time is needed to build up an reputation and a following, how much work needs to flow into posts and how important interaction between steemians really is.
Somebody with money might have the chance to take a shortcut and save a lot of time. Whether he buys his visibility or he just keeps his account passive by delegation.
Copy/Paste will always be an issue. It is really hard to create content.
LMAO. Yours is the first comment I have read this morning and it might be comment of the day. Yummy.
You're welcome ! :D
I want to ask a favor, as you really have been dissecting this down hard. You have an analytical mind, and I am afraid you will come to the conclusion I have.
I have been putting off the PayitForward post (will get to it sometime tomorrow). But I can see quickly this is going to get to large for a person to keep up with, and let me explain why.
When I first got here, I was featured by not one, but two different people using the same philosophy. One of them, I never heard back from again, the other has given me a couple of upvotes, but probably because out of my gratitude I upvoted much of his posts as well as sending him small crumbs when he did more of these features. I am going to deal with perception here so you can understand a little more.
I felt kind of abandoned when I never heard back from these people that said I was someone to watch. Then when you don't get anymore attention from them in the way of upvotes and comments, you question the sincerity of the whole thing. So based on this, I feel somewhat responsible for the people I featured last week, as well as any future people I would feature.
The rub for all of this is we only get so many upvotes per day. Mine run out quicker than some I realize because I won't use a third party to access a slider bar, but no way am I handing out my passwords (the recent account hijack on Binance from those using bots is a great example why I wont do this). Even with this slider though my mind (which is math friendly) says that the voting would still become the problem I am having, just a little further (maybe only weeks) down the road.
I already run out of votes so quick, and tomorrow I am about to adopt 3 more accounts. I refuse to be a hypocrite and recommend others to people that I wont be upvoting myself.
So how does one find a balance with this (I already had this balance issue weeks ago and find it growing larger by the week) and still be able to participate on an ongoing basis? One partial solution I thought of was at the bottom of each weeks post to have a growing list of past accounts featured, but that too would quickly grow to large and still not solve my problem with dispersing my own votes.
I don't know if this has been discussed in the discord channels you participate in, but maybe you or you brainstorming with the others can think of a way to make this more manageable. Because surely the only way I can see one doing this for any length of time is to begin ignoring past featured accounts.
Sorry I wrote you a little book here, lol.
Wow! This is a great question. I am going into a meeting now, but I am going to think on this for a couple hours and get back to you. One person that might be of help is @lynnecoyle1.
Talk to you soon.
Thank you
Wait! You mean I can quit feeling guilty about those groups I joined and then left when I realized they did not fit for me at all? Whew! That's a relief! I learn a lot from you, while at the same time I am totally entertained!
I'm extremely happy that I can do both for you. Thanks for the compliment and return humor.
When I read your post. I have to screenshot almost the whole articles, as if I don't want to miss out anything though I can bookmark it. I have a question, how important is it to join on discord channel? Is it alright if I put something like *"don't vote if you don't like my post, just leave your comment so I can do better in the future and I will vote yours if I like it, unless you have 500 SP and generous heart, thanks" *
Comment and post wouldn't waste the voting power, right? I read your strategies and I have to face the reality that I have to change my goal and habits in Steemit. Thank you.
Okay. Lots to cover here. First, thanks for the detailed comment, compliment and thoughtful questions.
Discord. Yes, you would be well advised to be somewhat active in Discord. There is a new Steem Messenger program that I will be reviewing this week and I will share my thoughts on it once I have some.
Your statement for your posts. I, personally have no problem with this statement and perhaps it will increase your engagement on your posts. Let me know how you think it is working.
The most important thing about your posts is that they have a target audience and that audience finds some value in them. That value might be advice, shared activities, research, etc. Then you want to get that post in front of people that you think are in your audience. Hopefully, they will comment, share it, and upvote it. One great way to do that is to feature these types of people in the #payitforward contest. Build relationships with them and THEIR followers. After all, you have shared interests.
Be thoughtful on how you use your vp so that you get some benefits. Example. Your small upvotes on my posts and comments get you you a better return than your investment. Find others like me that do the same.
So glad that you keep stopping by and posting comments. Wish you continued success.
you told me to do so through your post and I think I'm taking the right track to see how it's work. you are one in a hundred steemians I knew who answer my question, clearly (though it's hard for me to understand everything in a day). even someone that I knew in the real life and have a good chat with, never shows me the strategy like you do in your post, they don't even respond to my comments in 24 hours and they are too busy promoting steemit anyway.
I have to try to get a reaction, but I really knew my loyal viewers and upvoters... they will stay away from me forever hahahaha, while I haven't create any good post, yet. but I like to try, I will start by re-write your post in Bahasa Indonesia, not all of it for sure (I can't give advise for anyone while my SP only 1 digit). I can produce one handbook for minnow after reading your posts. I haven't make any positioning on who is my target audience. I shared my post on facebook, and you know what... they write a long threads comment there, but not here. maybe they are too busy to create good content rather than discuss anything about their own posts. I know this kind of Instagram and facebook posters because I've been one of them for 3 months.
I join Kryptonia to follow your trails! don't worry.. I am a nice stalker, won't bother you except for your votes and answer to my questions, lol. I will keep submit my entry in the PIF contest, that's one of my reason to keep on learn and write in english too, not to be a bounty hunter at all. I am about to try anything I can just to be a better content creator.
Definitely friend @energyaddict22, I identify with you. I have read a multitude of publications in both English and Spanish, and let me tell you that I consider yours as the most sincere until now.
Many of my followers consider me "Don Quixote", because I am always on the defensive, fighting for my values and in search of a fairer platform for all. I've got really trash post, just as you define it; and that junk content has taken a lot of money, while others, with good quality content and original, barely reaches 1 SBD, despite having obtained 250 votes or more.
Unfortunately, you are right, here many want to become rich without effort, they believe that by publishing a stupid photo they already made the profits of the day; they believe that by continuing to lick the fins of certain whales, they will get extra income.
I emphasize one of his publications with his preliminary comments at home. It's direct; I would say to him like the Hispanic saying "without hairs in the language"; and that really pleases me.
For being like you, I have been awarded Flags, touches of 1%, which initially threw my reputation in steemit to 18, but here I am, constant, attentive, collaborating, contributing daily my bit.
I have made comments, which have generated an immediate response from their alleged authors and followers; hahaha, people do not like criticism, they are not prepared for that. People want to hear only nice phrases like "good post", "I like your post very much", and so on, but when they are questioned, they jump fiercely. They want to receive many votes-maybe it's the culture they bring from Facebook. This has happened very frequently in Hispanic communities. In English-speaking communities, I have found the "vote by vote" culture, which I consider to be sick, meaningless.
I characterize myself for having a vocabulary, very different from the ordinary, my expressions never carry some course content, that pretend to offend others; hence, I like his direct frankness in addressing his readers. I have to learn a bit from that, the problem is that the Hispanic communities here in Latin America are offended very quickly when you question them, and when you use a more classical, scientific, technical vocabulary ... they get bored and feel offended; worse when you correct them.
Sorry, if I opened a bit of the subject, but these are important issues to consider, to whom they are addressed, because in recent months, the steemit community has grown dramatically, and a bulk of these new users, "bring the ranch in the head ", do not wake up so that they open their eyes and recognize that steemit in a world, multicultural, dynamic and capitalist community ...
Wow! Very detailed comment with lots of thoughts. Thanks for sharing. Here is what I would suggest. Don't waste your time curating/commenting on posts that you don't like or disagree with. Those people aren't likely going to change their habits or point of view.
Instead, find people that like the same things you do so that you can enjoy what you're reading, share your thoughts, support some like-minded people and grow your group of friends. This way you will avoid the "flagging" issue and make some positive relationships on Steemit. If you continue to produce interesting, quality content, these things will take care of themselves and you'll continue to grow your account.
Thanks again for following and for the compliments on my posts. I sincerely appreciate it.
I don't think there are any clearer words for me than these! In previous publications I had many doubts about the help I give to others, because I just got rid of it, it's time to take control of my account and dedicate myself to grow ( it's something like first me, then me and then me... I help), then after liberated I will take the time to get to know the communities mentioned, maybe there are the ideal ones for my objective! I appreciate you sharing your strategies with me, it's great to read good data to grow.
Thanks for continuing to visit my posts. I sincerely appreciate your kind words. I hope you can find a good community or several that help you reach your goals. Once you hit many of these goals, you can use YOUR knowledge and SP to help others. In the meantime, give support and encouragement to those on a similar journey here.
Also, it should have said spare "change" not "parts". I need to proofread better.
despite not speaking the language, the translator allowed me to understand his messages, this trip becomes more pleasant every day because of all the readings and the good people you get here! This platform is becoming more and more a part of me, my days are happy.
being part of a community is an important part of any new Steemian . The growth is important and usually the only way to get your posts viewed . but most important of all it introduces you to posts of people who give good advice .
The list of communities is a good starting point , along with , Don't commit unless you have the time to perform what is required.
Great points as always. Thanks for your effort and support.
Very insightful post and straight to point without fear of being like or dislike. I see steemit as my tool for financial breakthrough, I see it as a medium to broaden my blockfolio.
Steemit to me will be here long term and I strongly will be staying around. Lets say I am addicted to the platform now, I just want that slightest of chance to be here. And with steemians like you around which I can draw motivation from I see a brighter tomorrow.
At what level do one attain the dolphin rank? because that is where I am heading now !
Thanks for the honest advice @energyaddict22
Thanks for the positive feedback. I am happy you're finding my posts useful. I certainly agree about the long term benefits of Steemit. As far as these ranking things go, ask @elsiekjay. She posted an article about these levels. My goals probably fall in line with some if the titles but I don't know all the criteria. Wish you all the best in your Steemit journey.
Thanks for your response @energyaddict22, I will check out @elsiekay and see what I can learn from her.
One thing I love and appreciate about steemit is it's willingness to share ideas and transparency.
Which is just a definition of the blockchain to me!
Enjoy the rest of your day from Johannesburg, South Africa
excellent and "on the same page"...! thanks
I knew you would be.