Steemit: Advisable Methods of Leadership

Success on Steemit can be measured in many ways, though all tend to be positively correlated.

1. Earnings
2. Active followers (shown active through views and comments)
3. Rate of additional followers (per day, per week, or per post)

The above measurements of success only look at what you are receiving, not what you are giving to the community. You could argue that your posts add value so you are giving to the community, but balance is vital for Steemit to prosper.

Giving back to the Steemit community:

Are you more likely to upvote someone who already has $100 payout pending or the guy who is sitting at 3 views and $0.05? In my eyes, the lazy choice is to upvote the one with the high payout already. The question is, how does this help the community? It is certainly a lot more work to look for quality posts among brand new users. Think of it this way... Is your upvote of the level 70 going to make a difference? Higher level, higher payout users are very likely to stick around whether you upvote them or not. Also their posts already have good exposure. Ideally, good posts should always get higher payouts than bad ones, however, when people act like sheep and simply pile onto the popular posts, I see this as a poor usage of voting power.

Until new users are up to 40 or 50 reputation score, most people don't bother reading their posts. Part of this is natural as they haven't been around long enough to amass many followers. The other part is that the community judges them somewhat by this number. I think such judgement serves a purpose, but sadly it is an extra disadvantage new users have. A lot of new users don't realize that their first posts probably won't catch many flies.

My point is that while it takes a little extra work, giving a good amount of your upvoting power toward quality posts by new users will have a much more powerful effect on them and our community.

Be a leader. If a post is truly deserving of your upvote, don't hold back..but do consider what impact your upvote will have on that specific user. Thinking for yourself and encouraging others to do so will result in a more vibrant community. A lot of the people I follow are newer users and I want to steer them more toward becoming permanent members. Comments are also extremely valuable, especially to new users as they sometimes wonder if anyone is noticing their hard work. We get to chose through our comments and upvotes who will be more likely to stick around and permanently join the Steemit community.

I also recommend not encouraging the "I followed you, so please follow me" comments. However, I have seen some instances where high quality bloggers who are also new will leave comments like this. They may not realize that asking you to follow them without really providing a valuable comment on your post initially isn't an honorable thing.

Keep in mind that Steemit can be complicated at first. Volunteer information to help new users. No one benefits from a new user's frustration. I challenge anyone reading this (myself included) to try to comment on 5 or 10 new members posts per day. It's like sifting for gold, and we have that power. Let's continue to aim for a stronger, more vibrant community. Steem on!