Minnow Support Project: Minnow 101

in #minnowsupportproject7 years ago (edited)

A minnow walks up to the minnow doctor and says "Doc, it hurts when I go like this!" Doc says to the minnow "Don't go like that!"

I'm Dr. Aggroed and I'll be your minnow instructor today

Ok, all funniness aside let's take a second to talk about our goals as a minnow, what works, and what doesn't. Then let's put a plan together to graduate you out of Minnow 101 into Dolphin 101.

So, what's our number 1 goal as a minnow? TO STOP BEING A MINNOW!!!

Answer this question for yourself and then I'll share my answer afterwards (no peaking)
What are the three most important ways to evaluate if you're still a minnow?

Here are my answers, and I'm betting you had something different.

  1. A little platform knowledge
  2. Follower Count
  3. Stem Power

Ok, so technically, the consensus defintion of a minnow is 5k Steem power or less, but that's actually the least important of those. Follower count is a much more sustainable answer because now instead of catching one random upvote you now have the potential to get a steady stream of upvotes and resteems. But in order to get those followers you have to have some platform knowledge. So, here's the plan. I'm going to impart some knowledge, you're going to use that to capture followers, and you're going to use that to break the 5kSP barrier and enter dolphin status.

What you're probably doing wrong!

"Aggroed, I'm really frustrated. I just spent 2 hours on this post. It only got 5 views. 3 upvotes. and earned $0.01 cents. This place will only pay 1 cent for my 2 cents."

I hear that a bunch. Minnows are frustrated because their posts aren't getting the attention. My answer may sound counterintuitive to some, but you know what... Don't do that. Don't spend all your time writing long posts. You need more skills than you probably have to make them great. So, it's not a waste of time, but you're not going to earn that much.

But Doc, if I'm not authoring how am I supposed to gain followers, Steem Power, and get out of Minnowdom?

Class, I'd like you to meet @sacred-agent. Come up the front of the room Sacred. Sacred is a 60 year old gent. He's done a little trading here and there. He's somewhat familiar with the crypto landscape. He's been here 2 weeks. Tell them how you're doing sacred.

"Wait, what the shit Aggroed. That 60-year old guy has been here 2 weeks, started with no steem and no followers, didn't bring over an audience and now has 200+ followers and almost $1k steem?" pause... "HOW THE HOLY FUCK DID HE DO THAT?"

First off, please watch your language in here as it's a public setting. More importantly though he followed a different strategy to start.

Rather than writing long articles no one read. He made comments, found his way on discord, chatted with people in steemit chat, and built a small community that way. Because he's commenting on articles he likes he finds people that he already shares commonality with. Because a lot of them were minnows they were happy to drop a follow because they were so happy to have someone comment on their post, and after a little bit of that when he did post he suddenly already had an audience of 200 people.

Next up, he's going to write a "How I gained 200+ followers in just two weeks" milestone post, and he'll be riding the gravy train on that!

Knlowedge piece 1. focus on comments

Yup, it may seem counter intuitive on the blogging platform, but the fastest way to gain followers is comment thoughtfully on others posts. what's a good comment look like? Let me write a quick fake one.

"Hey @aggroed. Sweet piece you just wrote on minnow 101. I'm brand new here and I found you through your post on talking about steemit like I'm 5. I really appreciate what you're doing. I also saw on your wall that you write satire. Here's some of my satire on my witness run. Maybe you'll check it out! https://steemit.com/satire/@aggroed/satirically-yours-aggroed-promises-to-be-a-better-witness-than-the-8-dead-witnesses-above-him-on-the-list"

Boom, that guy sounds intersting, thoughtful, looked at my wall, and deserves an upvote, possibly a resteem, and maybe even a follow. This guy won't.

"Nice post."

With this knowledge it's time to collect followers

Try this for a week or two. Post comments on tons of other peoples posts. Find gifs, memes, news articles to share. Think of it like you're providing a service. If you're doing it for a minnow you could catch a follow and a friend. If you're doing it for a whale you might catch an upvote. Seriously, 1 upvote from a whale for a meme could be worth up to $14 or so. That's probably 200 time more than you'll make on your posts if you start that way. So, stop writing the long thing no one reads and start working on the thing that's actually gonna help you.

Level up

Got knowledge? Check!
Got comments? Check!
Earned followers? Check!
Now post. Check!
What comes next?



Please vote for me for Witness!




You can find me hanging out on steemspeak, a discord channel that many steemers use to text and talk to each other- https://discord.gg/qjpRj7w

You can find me in Whaleshares- https://discord.gg/GykFB6S
or my new channel PALnet- https://discord.gg/HYj4yvw
I can also be found on steemchat as @aggroed. If you have a post to share give me a good sentence or two of why you think I’ll like it.

Sort:  

Helpful article. You have my vote.

Hello @aggroed

Even though it was the points you listed here that helped get up to 3000+k Steem Power, i tend to forget sometimes and slip back towards writing long posts.

That is why i stopped writing posts all the time and met up with other steemains and Interacted with them.

With that I was able to interview Reputable steemians like @papa-pepper and @kingscrown on my Blog Interview series called The Rainmakers, my guest for next week is @good-karma.

Looking from a distance as a minnow you may feel that people won't have time for you, but when you come close you will find out that they are more friendlier than you think.

Thanks for this @aggroed, I have 27 Witness votes left and I just gave you one.

@ogochukwu

Thanks a ton! Hope this helps and looking forward to working with you soon!

Hey @aggroed. Sweet piece you just wrote on minnow 101. I'm brand new here and I found you through your post on talking about steemit like I'm 5. I really appreciate what you're doing. I also saw on your wall that you write satire. Here's some of my satire. Maybe you'll check it out!
https://steemit.com/funny/@rymlen/7xq6pj-funniest-meme-of-the-day

@rymlen Haha - I thought of writing this for a laugh but figured someone else must have already. Love that @aggroed gives such great tips and take the time to explain things in such a humourous way.

@aggroed Thank You so much not only for highlighting me in this post but also REALLY helping me in the discord chat room with questions I felt were insurmountable & I just couldn't figure out !!

Sorry it's taken me awhile ( in my early 60's remember ) to write this response here but some readers may want to look at my earlier responses to You on my latest post below...
(( still need to learn how to embed web links ))

I REALLY heaped a lot of praise on You & Your friends @ausbitbank & @teamsteem in the comment section of my post...

https://steemit.com/photography/@sacred-agent/color-challenge-saturday-indigo-original-photography

AGAIN... Thank You so MUCH... I was really getting VERY frustrated & then You helped me...

Have a Great Weekend... ALL=ways...

EZPZ. You're great and this is a great story!

In a way, it kind of good that it takes some time (and work) to build up steem power. No instant gratification here, thus will keep around those with a little were with all and grit. My kind of people :-)

Nice post. It resembles my very short existence so far here on steemit. I, rather than post, really just like meeting others and commenting here and there. It is a daily habit of mine to do this and so far I'm stoked with the results. You make some great points with building a following through commenting and being engaged with the community. It's nice to have some reinforce my mind set and what I enjoy thus far here. I do however feel that blogging and posting should be a part of everyone's time here and often wonder if one would lose followers based on "not" providing content at some point? Any thoughts? Enjoyed. up voted.

do them all, but one of the fastest ways to succes is minnows comment, dolphins author, and whales curate

Hi Aggroed. This is off topic, hopefully you can answer my question. In my wallet the is a sum of SP in brackets below the SP with dropdown menu. Can you please tell me what that is? I dont see others with 2 SP values - one in brackets. Thanking you in advance.
@susieisms

Delegated SP. Steemit inc I think is still giving you a little support. Thats my guess without digging in.

Well, I suppose I'm on the right track and for me it feels right. It's also enjoyable. I'm just a lolely' ole' minnow trudging my way along but I don't really look at it like this. I see myself as someone lucky enough to have stumbled across this community and to have become a part of it. It's interesting to me all the talk about becoming rich over night. I guess it's built into our society with the lightning fast I want it now mentality. I think people should just kick back and enjoy it for what it is and make some like minded new friends. Just believe and enjoy.

I want to thank you for all your great post,articles!
I am struggling with this social network thing, I am anti social,and as you know trying hard to learn this stuff!
I love this platform, It is encouraging me to be a better person and be more socially involved. you are a great mentor, and I hope that one of these days I can be as productive and contribute as much as you have to the personal growth of the community! .. I appreciate all your hard work and your insight,even if I struggle to adapt to this new environment,and force myself to change and challenge my limits! It is people like you that are going to make it worth while!
Namaste!

Thanks Jesse. Glad to have you in the PALnet discord room!

just a cactus trying to find room to grow...don't mean to prick anyone ... :-)

a great lesson for me ...thank you

Ya dude! Thanks for checkin' it out!

First off, please watch your language in here as it's a public setting. More importantly though he followed a different strategy to start.

LOL'd

Hey it's my brother steemitqa!!! I'm not surprised you liked that. Thanks for reading!

You do a remarkable job with your minnow support project. Really appreciated that. Thank you for your nice comments for my article from the previous post @aggroed This time I want to offer two of my posts The Mozart of Chess: Magnus Carlsen and The Sims 1: Don`t you miss it?

Great. I'll make a new post on Monday and you can put in the comments there!

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