Also a new kid on the block here (pardon the pun...) but I believe it's a combination of hard work, connections, being interesting and also - most importantly - having good external platforms to plug your Steemit posts. That is a winning recipe for success in my opinion!
I'm not so sure about the last one.
Social capital is desirable, and stakeholders upvote those who have large followings on other platforms. Also it certainly helps long term for both the platform and the author. However in terms of affecting raw payouts, I've not seen any evidence that sharing on social media has a big impact.
I would say you are correct in a sense. The direct impacts of sharing on external sites is quite probably impossible to measure accurately. My train of thought is more the longer term effects of having a good follower base of people who are genuinely interested in your subject matters and therefore more likely to make interactions, I believe that one of the paths to finding these people is to branch out across different networks and interact on a variety of levels.
The more links you put out there, the more exposure your post has and the likelihood people will see it is greater. I am still trying to figure out which social media platform is most effective at promotion for "normal authors" Twitter seemed good for a while but less so now. Posts are back to their 2 hour window where after that pretty much no more exposure.
Do you mean posts on Twitter have a 2 hour exposure? Because I have made exactly that experience on Steemit. After two hours NOTHING happens anymore in 99% of all my posts.
thanks for the info "having good external platforms to plug your Steemit posts. " you mean g+, fb, twitter, linkedin etc?
If you have a quick check of my reply to the OP below, I mean exactly that :) I think that so long as you are unafraid to link back to here on those platforms (and do it in such a way that it isn't just spam) then it is one of the founding steps toward success - I don't want to repeat my other post too much but self-promotion is a major player and shouldn't be underestimated in my opinion!
Interesting observations. Do you think regular folks can make use of external platforms to achieve success or do you just need to be famous outside of Steemit?
Being well known on other social sites will definitely be of great benefit and may explain this weeks new entry to the top 10.
I think for regular people like ourselves the same mindset of self-promotion applies. If we look at people in the craft industry for example - say you have an etsy shop. To "advertise" your products you tweet about them, set up a tumblr, make a page on facebook, link it to friends on whatsapp, use G+ and so on. At the end of the day your little etsy shop has a lot of hits by the time any secondhand clicks or shares have happened. If we think of our steemit posts as that product, so long as we are comfortable with the self-promotion on other platforms it is a decent way for an account to gain traction and ultimately helps the community and value of steemit increase in the long run!
I agree with your points here. I also believe Steemit can be the glue that holds them all together. Build your Rep here and use it on other platforms, especially for building online businesses.
Yeah, thinking of Steemit as the binding agent is a good idea actually. I am investigating setting up an online business soon too and exploring all the options in terms of promotion is definitely good preparation I think :)