Why is it important to follow and upvote small accounts? - The key to a healthy community growth.
Who doesn´t want a bunch of whales upvoting their post and making $1,500 SBD in a day? We all do.
That´s a fact.
Insomnia and steem-stalking made me realize a lot of my followers and in general a lot of accounts on steemit follow, upvote and comment on whales posts in order to get visibility and try to make them follow them back, myself included, and I think there´s is nothing wrong in that. I mean, we all want those valuable upvotes that could decide if the post succeeds or fails.
The thing is, a good percentage of those accounts I stalked have a considerable amount of followers but themselves follow just a small group of important or big accounts.
I noticed that in order to make the Steemit community grow and keep it a healthy one, a lot of whales have stopped posting everyday and a lot of them rather curate good content and try to give visibility to certain posts, they also take time to reward smaller accounts that have good ideas or a hidden talent but most of all:
They care about the community as a whole and they are way past the I want to gain followers which will give me a lot of upvotes.
A lot of whales could just post everyday and make a lot of money just by liking their own posts and having all their followers like them but they don´t do it. They put the community growth before their own interests because they know that if the community grows in a healthy and steady way and small accounts become medium, eventually their own accounts will get bigger and more powerful.
I am not a mining nor a crypto currency expert but I´ve read in steem chat and in some blog entries of some of you that the percentage of accounts that sign up and then stop coming back is huge. In the last days the steem coin value went down a little and a lot of new accounts and temporary users left the community.
If we, as minnows and dolphins, spend more time curating good content and engaging with new or small accounts as the big whales do, we will be contributing in a more meaningful way to keep this community growing. If the community grows, we all grow with it.
My advice is: Engage, comment and upvote the little guy. Give your vote a meaningful purpose:
Make them come back, make them feel part of steemit, encourage them to keep posting, comment people´s posts in the introduceyourself tag.
Get involved.
They might follow you, they may not. Their vote won´t mean 5 SBD but as the community grows they will gain Steem power and the fact that you supported them when they were new will pay up in the future. But do not do it because of that, do it for the community, this is just something that will happen for a fact if you put the community before yourself.
If we all do this, before you realize it, the community will be ten times bigger and we will all get bigger rewards and get more quality content.
Let´s make Steemit the best version it can be.
1. The social game source
2. Whale curating small fishes source
2. Help each other source
3. We all grow source
4. Thank you source
The more people involved with the community as a whole, the better all of it will be, for everyone here. Nice post @anomadsoul!
Thank you! it really kept me up at night, was awake from like 3 to 6 hehe
I truly think is this message sticks and at least changes the mind of some people (like it did to me) we are one step closer to make Steemit the community we all want it to be!
Your welcome dude!. If we approach this place the way we want to be approached, everything will flourish from there. The positivity in so many of the discussions and posts here is incredible, and as the smaller accounts build up Steem, it will truly benefit everyone.
You did a great job writing this.
p.s. you should remove the tag of introduceyourself since that would be considered spamming a popular tag that doesn't apply to this post ... don't want to see someone flag you.
Thanks for the tip! Already did it. I thought it would be good so new users would read it but you are right, it does not apply to this post :)
Im glad you liked it, actually the curating work you are doing was part of the inspiration for the post :)
Thanks, yes I saw your comment to ausbitbank mentioning me, and that's why I came over here.
I started out brand new with no steem like most of you, and I've stuck with it here through thick and thin, and now I've been delegated some big voting power. So I do want to give back to the community and encourage quality authors/creators that haven't been recognized that much yet.
Oh nice! I didn´t know you could get notifications from mentions but great!
And that is crucial, to stay no matter what, to be in the platform through the shortages in order to see it flourish again. I guess it must have been pretty hard when steem got down to 0.04 huh? Im glad you stayed :) Read you around my friend.
I looked at posting at low Steem value as an investment. I was still earning just as many Steem, even though the dollar value decreased a lot.
follow me and upvote my posts , i will do the same
Cool, following you.
Read This and learn Steemit etiquette.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@thecryptofiend/the-steemit-etiquette-guide-illustrated-by-klye
You are going to get flagged by some people if you keep going around asking for votes this way.
Well said. Ultimately, you are speaking to the maturation of this community, which requires time and conscious effort. You've given me the nudge to think through what content of value I might be able to bring to the community.
Thank you!
Im glad I got you thinking! That same thought kept me awake yesterday.
It is exactly as you say, it is about the maturation of this community and we, as the early users have the responsability to make it grow in the best possible way we can.
A few days ago I put on the balance whether to make 4 or 5 posts daily about my travels to make a little more money or compile them in a well written story. It´s not going to be as profitable as 5 posts but at least every post I make I want it to be the best quality I can achieve. I mean, we are all running away from other social media because of all the garbage getting published every day right?
Have a good day @lances !
Spot on!
Thanks for this post. I am brand new to Steemit and am still trying to learn the ins and the out of the platform. What you are saying makes perfect sense to me. Sure, we all want to make big money. But at the same time, I am here purely to write and blog and comment as a hobby . . and the community is what binds steemit together.
We are all here, partly for the money. I like to have a travel blog and if I can make some money in the meantime well, that´s great! If we see Steemit as a long term community we will grow stronger. Welcome to the platform @shawnfishbit I hope it is everything you expect and more!
I get what you are saying, i mean, literally all i had to do was stop using facebook and start using steemit so there´s not a big change of habit here hehe it is a nice hobby to have.
I've noticed that there are a lot of "dolphin" and "orca" accounts giving "follow for follows" and "upvote for upvotes", basically helping each other to grow, providing close to equal support, both ways.
This is an intelligent way to both help oneself (cuz, let's face it, we mostly act out of self-interest) and to lift the heart of the community -- the lower and middle class.
I tend to seek out authors who post similar content to what I post, or plan to post in the future, to try to develop this type of "relationship", if you will. I feel this type of "internal circle of support" is really the backbone of a strong and sustainable community.
The "you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours" is a key mentality for the lower and middle class of Steemit, if we really want to build ourselves up without having to depend on whales to do it.
Exactly! I mean, I think we all do this, myself included. I think It is something it develops through time and with the people i do it it is like an unspoken agreement as long as both accounts keep posting wuality content.
I like how you think. The thing is, if we engage in that same "realtionship" with other accounts no matter if they are similar in steem power or followers and we focus on the sole content maybe it will help some smaller accounts to become bigger. It might not sound like a "fair trade" if we do this with a really small account but also I think we (I include myself) should see the upvote as a tradeable coin in which where you upvote me I will to you.
And yes, I consider myself lower middle class hehe and that kind of thought trully is what makes us not so dependable of whales, let´s just share the love with the new and smaller accounts :)
I agree that helping build up small accounts is an important thing to focus on as well (for the higher SP accounts), because it's the minnow accounts that make up the highest percentage of Steemit users, BY FAR.
It's important to keep them interested in using Steemit, because they make up the majority of people who will advertise for and on-board new users to the platform.
That's why I make a special effort to find quality content by new users and upvote it at 100% (even though I usually upvote people that I follow at 50% to extend my voting power to include more content). But I can't do it too much or I wouldn't have any voting power left to support the middleclass followers who support me.
So, there's a balance that we need to meet, if we both want to grow our own accounts and help to grow Steemit.
I have to play devil's advocate a little here, I feel like there is some detriment to "follow for follow" style networking.
There are many examples of accounts, especially outside of steem, where "follow for follow" leads to thousands of followers, etc, but in a very spammy way. Soundcloud, a popular independent music streaming site, has a big problem with this.
I'd argue that it is better to curate and engage with great content WITHOUT asking for follows and upvotes in return. Be generous and give, give, give. In my personal experience, this has worked wonderfully and forces me to create great content to earn attention and income.
I agree with you for the most part.
Just to be clear, I've never asked for a follow-back and have only announced that I've followed someone maybe four or five times out of the 120+ accounts that I follow. As @anomadsoul said in reply to my comment to him, what I'm implying is: "it is like an unspoken agreement as long as both accounts keep posting quality content."
I don't simply go around upvoting and following everyone that uses those keywords and then ask them to return the favor. Rather, I find the authors who produce quality content for those keywords and try to develop the type of relationship with them in which we can essentially build off of each other's contributions and/or compliment/ reinforce them with our own style/ input. In other words, the type of relationship which is mutually beneficial, in which both parties grow.
So, while I will comment, upvote and follow certain individuals with the agenda in mind to help my own following (account) grow (acting in self-interest), it's not without real intention to also help that person's account, and the community itself, to grow. I want the keyword to grow and everybody who focuses their blog on it.
I agree for the most part. Whales have the most Steem Power but minnows give Steem value. What I mean by that is, minnows are the bulk of Steemit's population and we represent how widely accepted Steem is. If we stopped using Steem en masse (not what I'm suggesting), the site would suffer and even 1,000,000 SP probably wouldn't be worth anything. I don't think we should upvote people just because they're minnows but it really is important to seek out the best content from newcomers and reward it so they'll be encouraged to stay. It's good for everyone in the long run.
I heartily agree with you. The lifeblood of a system like this is spreading your influence around and providing visibility and feedback to posts that you want to see more of. I know building an audience takes time. I've been blogging for 15 years on and off. But, many don't and everyone needs the positive encouragement to continue, improve and grow.
This is my first time blogging seriously or being this interactive online. I feel the discouragement but I'm so convinced that Steemit will succeed that I'm willing to keep going. Not everyone is convinced yet and it's hard to spend hours writing quality posts with no certainty they'll be read. Even if we can't upvote them into the trending section, a well thought out comment can be encouraging.
And don't forget more lucrative. My last comment made me more money than all of my posts yesterday... and that is disheartening. But, keep going, and participate. Steemit is a social network that rewards quality over quantity, unlike twitter which is truly just the old shout-style advertising model because the engagement is so low.
To succeed you need tens of thousands to drive traffic to a monetary decision point. Here, all you have to do is write something good and your following is incentivized to promote it. Too many people here don't see that difference yet... but it's because of habit.
But, it'll come the more we change our habits and thinking... the changes to the reward system that is upcoming in Hard Fork 19 will help a lot as well.
Yes! This 10 ten times!
We all like Steemit because it gives us "a way out" or regular-shouting-meme-spamming social media. Quality here is well rewarded. Well, not everytime, and that is what this post is about, rewarding good quality without thinking of who wrote it but thinking about "this is a great post, ill upvote it".
We, as early users of this platform, have to draw the line where we want it. If we upvote spammy articles or quantity over quality then that is what we are going to get and in no time we will be like facebook (which I dont want) or Twitter, platforms that reward quantity over quality.
I put some of my initial thoughts on this subject in a post a few days ago that you may like.
https://steemit.com/steemit/@goldgoatsnguns/what-i-love-best-about-steem
I opened in another tab so I don´t forget, I for sure will read it today! Thanks
Do you know when Hard fork 19 is going to happen? The last one caught me off guard.
I don't. It was announced on the 23rd of May. No word that I've seen. The sooner the better for a minnow like me. :)
Indeed :)
i couldn´t have said it more accurately. It is not about upvoting minnows just for the sake of being minnows but to recognize hard work and quality where it is. It doesn´t matter if the content comes from a whale or a minnow, we should give credit where credit is due.
In the past I saw some very good posts getting 0.08 SBD and I have to accept I though "mmm I´ll upvote it but it is not worth writing a comment since i don´t care if this minnow follows me or not, let´s fish for the big whales". This thought I had it regularly on my first days of Steemit because let´s face it, when we start we are all out there fishing for Moby dick when in reality, we should be thinking bout carrying smaller fished on our back. There´s where the true community lies.
I know how that feels. Knowing you can get more rewards from curating whale's posts can make it hard to consider minnows and I've seen some great posts get ignored (particularly art). I've even tried resteeming a few but I'm not powerful enough for that to make much of a difference. When I submit a minnow's post to curie and it gets accepted I feel good knowing they at least they got rewarded for that work but there should be a more consistent relationship between quality and rewards (for minnows, dolphins, orcas and whales alike).
Totally true, that is why if we al get to the same train of thought of this post, quality will get rewarded sonner or later. I know, It needs more than just a few users to make a change, but If we manage to get more people involved in this idea then we are up to bigger things!
What I'd like to do (but don't have the technical skills to accomplish yet) is create another curation guild like curie. Steemit is growing quickly enough that it wouldn't be a competitor, it would just be another group with a similar purpose. The more functional curation guilds we have the fewer high quality posts would slip through the cracks.
There is a lot of curation guilds that do kind of what curie does. For example, in Spanish we have the curator @cervates and @spanish-trail they both dedicate fully to curate quality content in spanish. Maybe you could create your own country´s trail, where are you from?
I'm Trinidadian but there aren't enough of us on Steemit for that to make sense yet. I've seen some of the other guilds but I'm less sure of how they operate. I'll do some more research and see where best i fit in or if I really should start a new one.
I agree, helping out the new users is the best way to grow the community and therefore our own accounts. I know one of the best things that could have happened to me when I first posted was having several people welcome me to Steemit and then continue to read my second and third post. It made me want to stick around and be a part of the community.
I know right? I got to a very good start, a lot of people liked my introduction post because two of my friends ( @luzcypher and @lizanomadsoul ) were already on Steemit and helped me introduce myself but not a lot of people get to have the opportunity I had.
It is a matter of taking care and welcoming those new users so they feel the way you felt and in no time they will keep coming back and welcoming more people and so on.
It is a great community to be part of, it really makes you feel like you belong, even if it is just behind a computer :D
Completely agree :D and in the spirit of this post I'll give you a follow as well!
Thank you my friend, already following you as well.
So much agree. Great post, sure deserve my UP & re-steemed.
I know, just a 0.02 (most likely), but is this so important?
The important think is - to do that.
Yesss. Exactly that. It doesn´t matter if your upvote means 5 SBD or 0.01 as long as we are curating good content, and it doesn´t matter if you are curating a whale´s content or a plancton or minnow content! Thanks for the upvote and resteem my friend, I hope this messsage gets to a lot of people and we start adopting this way of seeing and browsing Steemit.
Thanks, this helps me understand better what steemit is about. I am new and still learning. Hoping to submit my first post soon. I can't figure out how to submit it under a subject, like Introduce Yourself...and how does that differ from Introduce Myself?
Welcome to steemit! Make sure that when you post your introduction put the link answering this comment so I can see it.
First of all, try to take a picture of you holding a piece of paper with "Steemit and the date" written. In that post you can write about yourself, what you like to do, why are you on steemit etc.
For the tags, they are one of the most important part of the post because if you do it right, the post can get a lot of visibility but if you do it wrong you might even get the post flagged and it will be buried and no one will be able to see it.
On the home page you will see a lot of tags on the right part of the screen, those are the most used tags. I will recomend using the tag (all in smal letter, with no # ): introduceyourself
After that, if your blog is going to be about let´s say, cooking and staying healthy then you should use the tags food and health. People sometimes browses Steemit using the tags of their interest, that is how you will get the proper audience to read your posts! I you have any more questions shoot.
Thank you for your response. If I am understanding you correctly the tags are what puts you in a category. The labels are tags. Ok, I thought you clicked the tags to post in that category so this clears that up. I am a slow starter but a nonstopper...lol. Perseverance is key in life, of course. So the reason that there is a introduceyourself and introducemyself is because someone tagged it that way. There is so much to learn. Thank you again. I really love steemit and the people here. What a great community!!! I am sure I will have more questions. Thanks.
Thank you! I'm learning and discovering after just a couple of days on Steem. I didn't ask anyone for a follow and I already got 27 which is awesome.
Wow! That is just amazing! Im glad you are getting a fast start on steemit! Yes, it is not nice when people ask for followers. Lets just care about making good content and upvoting the posts that have quality and the followers will eventually come by!
True. You got a decent following yourself, and great travel posts!