Minnow Uprising: Final Stats and Lessons Learned

Well, here we are. We made it to the end of the #MinnowUprising and #UpvotePlankton initiatives happening in the month of July. I did stay involved the entire month, even though I did not post as often as I should have. We were supposed to post at least 2-3 times a day, but many days I was thankful to get one post done.

I wanted to share my final stats with you, along with some lessons learned during this challenge.

Item Tracked|7/2/2018|8/1/2018|Percent Change

-|-|-|-

Reputation|41.148|44.495|8.13%

Vests|0.005 MVests|0.011 MVests|120%

SP|15|115.07|667.38%

Age|266|295|10.90%

Total Posts & Comments|591|861|46%

Followers|311|334|7.4%

I actually think these numbers are really good. At least for me, I am happy with the results I got from these initiatives.

The lessons I gained from the initiative were as follows:

• Consistency, consistency, consistency. You have to be here regularly, sharing your thoughts, things you have learned, and even off-the-Wall topics with others. You cannot just post once a week and hope for the best. You have to show up for yourself if you want to be rewarded.
• Make meaningful comments. I tried to make a point of commenting on other #minnowuprising and #upvoteplankton posts at least 2-3 times each week. And the comments I left were not just “Good” or “Nice work”. I told people what I thought about their posts. I shared what I liked most about their photos. I found the silly or the sweet or the significant and pointed it out in my comment. And there were a few times that I helped with a couple of corrections and tag suggestions. 
• Reply to what others say. Sometimes it took me a few days, but I always made sure I would reply to whatever is commented on my posts. I want people to know that I hear them and I appreciate that they took time out of their day to talk back.
• The Dapps are wonderful. During this initiative, I was introduced to dlike (the decentralized form of Pinterest). It is a neat tool that helped make posting easy. I also used DTube for my videos. I tried many, many times to do a dlive, but was completely unsuccessful in doing one. Like I said, This thing will NOT beat me! There were other applications I didn’t have a chance to use, but I will definitely look into them.
• You can never run out of ideas. When I felt the urge to not make a post...I went and found a contest to write for (it is how I won 100SP delegation to use for a week), or I did the Freewrite of the day, or I wrote thoughts about quotes that have come up in my world, or I did a motivational video. And when nothing else worked...I took a photo and let it speak for itself. 
• The right tags will get you seen. I did notice on a lot of the posts I read from our two hashtags that the first tag was kind of cryptic, and so their posts were probably not being seen.The tag should be relevant for the topic and should make sense for those coming to read the post.

And of course, meeting cool new people is a fabulous by-product of participating in this.

If you were part of the #minnowuprising and #upvoteplankton initiatives, what did you learn? What were your results? I would love to know.