The 10 Most Worthless Bits of Advice For Minnows On Steemit

I was one of the early adopters of Skype back in 2004. In those early days, it was treated a bit like a chat room where people would randomly contact other Skype users to say hello. Social media hadn't really taken off in a very big way, so people had to work hard to get their dopamine hit.

Some of the wanderers who contacted me were young business people from Asia, especially China. They sometimes had jobs where they were doing business with Westerners, so I mentored them on how to do that. One woman wanted to sell plastic boxes to someone in the US, but the customer said that he would only pay _after_ he'd received the shipment. She was pretty upset and thought that she was going to lose the sale, so I wrote an e-mail template for her which said that she and her boss wanted to comply, but that the finance manager (who only understands numbers and not relationships) wouldn't allow it. The customer caved in immediately, so she made the sale and, I imagine, had a big smile on her face.

Mentoring

The point is that I like developing others. Making a difference is one of my top three values, so it all fits in nicely. Other people on Steemit seem to have a hankering for that, too, but their advice is bad. It's like they've eaten a can of alphabetti spaghetti and crapped out the things they say.

Here's my list of the most useless advice I've seen for people starting out on Steemit...

Be a great writer

Well, gee! Why not just tell me to become rich, while you're at it? I haven't been given any real clues about what makes one a good writer, but some do offer up gems like "write in your own voice." I was trained as an engineer - when I speak, people look for their Spiderman pillow and blanket!

Write all the time

The reason this one's on my list is because there's a bit missing. It needs to be "write all the time... but not all in one single post." I come from Ireland, which is a land of great writers. Joyce, Yeats, Swift, etc. It's not a land of great readers!

Come up with the kind of title that guarantees clicks

In other words, become as good as a professional magazine editor. Clickbait like "@penston made this pile of sick - you won't believe what happened next!" may be guaranteed to have people reading your blog, but it doesn't mean they'll upvote, resteem or follow you.

Find something to write about

This is what passes for advice in 2018, people! What do they think is going to happen if people don't heed this advice? Kitten videos? Oh wait, I think I understand this advice now...

Be a self promotion expert

If I could do that, I'd be the prime minister of 3 countries. I'm arguably the most entertaining writer on the Steemit platform, but I don't know where to begin with promoting myself. Maybe I'll just have to rely on the growing legion of followers who love my posts and live to read them every day to do the promotion for me?

Don't just be a blogger - be something better

There's a fine line between being inspirational and eating more alphabetti spaghetti. I can't go on with this any longer. I made it to number 6 out of 10 - you'll just have to continue this list yourselves in the comments.