Do's and Dont's for a Steemit Minnow [Part 1] -- My observations so far with tried and true methods
Preface: this will be a 2 part post to make it an easier read, my hope is that is post can be used as a reference to future minnows wanting to kick-start their Steem career here.
Hey Steemians!
I am happy with the rising trend of newcomers signing up to Steemit and the growth of userbase in Steem's many other great platform shortly after I've joined in back in April. Perhaps I'm also one of those included in the trend. Nevertheless i feel that it's a good thing. Goes to show that as a whole, the ecosystem is just in it's infancy with massive growth potential.
I can say confidently that as it stands now, almost all us the 200k people who signs up (lets just ignore bots' existence for now) are people coming in here to make some sort of income for improve our lives in some way or another. The fact that you're reading this post now (thank you for that) is a testament of your personality to hustle and putting in hard work to position yourselves as an early adopter of what we all believe will be the best social media platform there is in the foreseeable future.
Unfortunately. however, I have observed some behavior of people on here that are not only unproductive, but is detrimental and will ultimately lead to the demise of their career here in Steemit as a content producer.
This applies especially for someone who is what we refer as a minnow. Minnows by Steem community's definition is a colloquial term for people like you and me, who are;
- new here
- yet to have meaningful Steem Power (below 5000)
- yet to have significant following (below 500)
I do not know it all. But i feel that i can offer some pointers based on my couple months of observation and experience as a Minnow to fellow minnows who may be newer than me or are simply looking for a refresher. So here goes.
1. Don't ever post about crypto advice
Go ahead and search using Steemit's search function for posts titled "What is Bitcoin/Blockchain/Cryptocurrency". Or better yet, use AskSteem. You see hundreds of post? other than a few posted a long time ago, did you notice that all other posts made in recent times have little to zero payout? If you're any good you should know by now what my point is.
Put yourself in my shoes, I've been "crypto-ing" since 2014, the first Bitcoin ATH bubble. Every single day i've been aware of the going-on of the cryptosphere for 3 years straight. Do you think I want to read about "What is Bitcoin/Blockchain/Cryptocurrency"? Now, put yourself in the shoes of a big time Steemian, a Whale. Who's been at it twice as long as i do. Compared to them, I know NOTHING about crypto. What makes THEM want to read your post?
I totally understand. Upon signing up, you may feel that you are quite the expert. which is technically true. Statistically, you ARE the expert of Bitcoin among your social and geographic circle. Just the number of Bitcoin wallets in existence is less than 0.02% of the world population. We all know the number of real users are much less than the wallets. Bitcoin is a growing innovation "niche" that not many know about. You're perfectly fine posting "What is Bitcoin/Blockchain/Cryptocurrency" in Facebook because it makes sense.
Steemit however, is a congregation of the the most prolific and technically advanced crypto enthusiast among other people, whom ALL already know about your "advise". It just doesn't make sense. What makes you think anyone on here will read your advise? of course, it DEPENDS on who you are and what's your expertise. If Andreas Antonopoulos comes in as a short-term minnow and post something, I'M ALL EARS (EYES). But my advise is to you, dear minnows. For now, you're better off posting other stuff.
Because in the words of Steem OG Mr. @fyrstikken himself;
2. Dont Shitpost
By my definition, if I reach the bottom of your post in less than 20 seconds, and feel that familiar feeling of being pissed for having my time wasted, Your post is a shitpost. No exception. You can TRY making a career as a serial Steemit shitposter, but please let know if you survive the inevitable Steemit's Autoimmune System of systematically purging low quality shit to oblivion. So the next time you think about doing well on Steemit by posting captionless images without giving context, Think again, or read this post by yours truly.
Remember the hypothetical situation where i found a shitpost? Because my next course of action is checking if you're a serial shitposter and if you are. Im flagging you. All because any self-respecting reader will do the same thing. I'm sorry, it's nothing personal. I'm only doing my part to keep Steemit a place of good quality content.
3. Don't beg for vote/follow
If i saw a "nice post, follow/vote me" comment on my post when i have a toothache, you're getting flagged. Let me explain.
First off. It pisses me off that i have spent at LEAST 2 hours Brainstorming, Researching, Editing, Fact-checking, Re-editing, Beautifying, and then Proof-reading my post, only to have someone mindlessly and effortlessly parked a "nice post, follow/vote me" comment without (I'll assume) reading a single word of my content.
It would piss you off too if you have any ounce of self-respect and thirst for perfection as an author like i do.
Secondly. Sure, i mentioned "effortless". But in truth i just don't think that "strategy" is sustainable. Think about it. If you have been guilty of doing it all these while, do a self-audit. How many of your "nice post, follow/vote me" comments have ACTUALLY garnered a vote or a follow? how many comments have you needed to "effortlessly" parked to reach 100 followers? how many more comments do you need to get the next 100/200/1000 followers?
Votes and Follow should follow an organic growth in relation to the time and effort you've spent in tandem to the quality of your posts and your person as a general.
4. Dont Drop,Plop and Hop (and expect good results)
Sadly, this advice will never reach those who actually needed it. which is very sad from how i see it. Regardless of the value in your post, YOU WILL NOT GET GOOD RESULTS if all you do is post, post, post and not do anything else. For one thing, no one will know who you are, with a few exceptions, RARE exception. It is why its so important get your name out there.
No, not by spamming your links all over the internet as well. If you do so @battleaxe would like to have a word with you.
I will show you in Part 2 of this 2-part post. In essence, just dont post and run please. You'll not get payouts as much as the "typical post" and after a time, you'll only burn out and give up, calling Steemit "a scam" through all fault of your own.
These are the basic "Dont's" that you must must must avoid. These mistakes can kill your career the worst way, slowly. Fret not, in the next part I will show you what you should do. So stay tuned!
I'm @awesomianist
Stay Awesome.
Nice post, lol. Yup, it seems to be a problem for many people to realize what's shitposting and why is it so dangerous. Most of us are new to blogging and especially new to the blockchain concept. It's a revolution of social media, you can't expect fron everyone to be a perfect content creator. And of course, there is a language barrier, Steemit is pretty much english exclusive and other language crews are mostly spanish, german, korean and indonesian. It will take some time for this thing to get sorted out.
I'm guilty. It all makes perfect sense, thanks for pointing out the do's and dont's.
I would disagree with first point.
Recently @varunsangwan posted two articles related to Bitcoin and blockchain with combined payout of nearly 1100$.
Suppressing someone's thoughts, even shit thoughts is depressing. I imagine great contributions have come from people who did not understand and contributed based on a different view :)
Owh.. that's where thing's arent black and white. I've read @varunsangwan's post on the history of Bitcoin and I tell you that is an ABSOLUTELY DAMN GOOD POST!
it's not an advise, but an actual good breakdown of complicated history which I believe takes DAYS to compile. He deserves every dollar he gets and I'll now expect him to make equally good posts in the future.
Great advice and I too have fallen into some of these tendencies and found that they do not pay off and in fact, likr you stated, end up hurting me and the posts that I made where I did put a lot of time and effort in. The worst part is trying to post quality often, try to get more followers by being supoortive of others, and trying to get some name recognition. For a minnow 5,000SP is a huge way to go especially if you did not start out sith a lot of "skin in the game" and are sinpky posting your way up like I am trying to do. But I have definitely made some of the midtakes if not all of them while posting on STEEMIT. I just wsnt to be accepted by dolphins wahhh! Hahaha. Its hard out here for a Minnow who joined last September, has over 500 posts, bought into SD with BTC when STEEMIT was unknown and has oh so close to 200 followers and does not collect any money from the platform. If you see it all goes right into my SP. Thank you for this post I think it will help a lot of people, including myself. (Would this be a bad time to ask you to Follow Me and Resteem all my content? Hahaha just kidding). Take care and have a good day.
Hello wwamd, many good points in your reply. As a minnow, I am trying to gain friends and colleagues with my posts. It can be frustrating to post a good, informed article (original too), and not see much of a reward or replies. I do think this platform as great promise, but we have to work together at it.
For sure.
Great post, as a minnow I love to see a lot of posts trying to guide and help us, I think we are building an awesome community here. keep it up and thanks for the tips.
This is just a culmination of what I've discovered through trial and error (and maybe a little common sense) over my relatively short time here.
I'm more than glad to share what I know because after all we are helping each other.
I admit that there is still much to learn and there are more experienced users who will have more comprehensive know-hows than me.
Here's to learning and growing together as community!
Excellent advice and info Thank you :)
Thank you for your compliment! It's just something I've observed, tried, and applies to me. So I'm speaking from experience and all these "advise" they are originate from very close to my heart.
Good post and thanks for the advice.
On a somewhat ironic note, I have written a few super basic introductions to using CryptoCurrency, but for me Steemit also seems like a good place to practice and maybe be able to fail every now and then.
On top of that, I show my posts to folk I know in a way to show them what is possible with both Steemit and CryptoCurrency.
They cannot even vote for the posts, since they won't be members, but my main goal is more to partly practice and partly spread awareness to the mainstream.
I think it's important to have every point of view here, to make total newcommers feel like they can follow, what's going on (except 100x shitposters of course :D ).
On a different note, the community has been nothing but welcoming, and I haven't met anyone flagging or writing and angry comment out of spite, which is way better than other media out there.
Anyway, sorry for rambling, and thanks for the post.
Owh don't worry i appreciate the sharing of your experience and opinion. I'm so happy you are showing Steemit to your family! and wish you all the best and success in getting them in here!
I guess it's not wrong to tailor your post for people who are totally green to Bitcoin. You ARE afterall one of, if not the most knowledgeable of Bitcoin and cryptocurrency within a 5km radius around you. Same for me, and maybe everyone here as well.
If you're coming from the desire to practicing your writing while at the same time showing off Steem to people around you ("Hey see i made a dollar on a good post on Steemit, how much you made for posting good post on anywhere else?") It should be totally fine by me. I'm taking a slightly different approach but we are heading towards the same goal.
On another note, I dont see Steemit as "a better Reddit/Facebook". What Steemit is, will make current model of Social Media obsolete.
Thank you for finding my post useful. Part 2 will be up soon. Which will touch on things you SHOULD DO.
:D
Yeah I think we are indeed working towards the same goal, which is great. I don't know if Steemit can really takeover Facebook, but it's definitely an interesting contender to Reddit for sure. I guess we'll ahve to wait and see, when Steemit pushes into the mainstream :D.
I'll be on the lookout for part 2 for sure.
I can't stand people begging for follows. Especially when they ask in a generic way. I just assume they are bots and treat them as such.
Totally understand why you'd feel that. I can also kinda understand tho their desperation especially when seeing that low follower count and a post payout that is not ideal.
But there are better ways than a copy-pasta.. which is what I'm hoping to share in the next part of the post.
Thanks for the good advise!
It's just something I've observed, tried, and applies to me. I really hope that newcomers can take from me so that they don't need to go through what I went through.
And to those who have done the above, its not the end of the world. Its a simple as changing the approach to come at things at a much more productive manner.
Glad you liked it!
Hello awesomianist, thank for the posting: looking forward to part II.
Did you like it? If you do I'm glad you did!
Part 2 will up very soon! very excited that you are looking forward to it!