Two Months In... Noob's advice to Noobs
My first two months on this forum have been an interesting ride. Unless you are an experienced blogger with a following or dump a ton of money on to build your account, the first couple months can be difficult. I thought I would sit down and write down some of the simple lessons that I have learned over the past two months that can help new users or even struggling users get a little traction. A lot of this stuff can be found other places as I had to learn this from other users.
- Reply to Good Content: Make responses to good content. Don't leave responses that say "Great Information" or "Good Post". Leave responses that ask questions about the content or for advice that provokes conversation or thought. This will invite people to follow you.
- Reply to People that Reply to You: If someone takes the time to reply in anyway to on of your posts or comments, take the time to respond back. It is important to foster those relationships with other members. If you respond back to them, they are more likely to view and respond to your content in the future.
- Create Good Content: Good content for the forum is essential for the success of the forum and the success of your feed. Ultimately, we are all on here to create value for the each other and posting good content is important to creating that value. Also, create original content. Don't copy and paste information from other sites unless you have properly sited the author or site.
- Don't Machine Gun: Don't just rapid fire out content. Your followers will start to become numb to your content if there is to much of it being shot on to their feeds. They might just start to ignore what you have to say.
- Resteem Good Content: Resteem content that will bring value to your feed or will connect your followers to content producers that they might not normally come into contact with. Don't just Resteem every article that you read or find interesting. It is important again that you bring value through this process, so it is important to Resteem valuable and original content so that your following can grow their knowledge base.
- Find a Mentor: Might be the hardest thing to do, but for me has been the most important. Find someone that will help you navigate the process. There are a lot of people out there that are willing to help and give you time and advice to help you grow. This goes back to all the previous points, by doing the previous steps, people will take notice that you are trying to bring value and will reach out to provide tips.
I am not the best at this, far from it. I have met many great people that have helped me a bunch. For all the new and struggling minnows, help is out there and it does get a easier as you progress through the process.
So, resteem the things that are worthwhile, and point out what you like? I think I'll start with this post!
Everything in here is spot on. It's really easy to throw all your posts out rapid fire-like, but that really doesn't help you in the long run. Go for a more steady trickle of content, and people will want to check in more often.
And the engagement thing is spot on. Starting a conversation goes a long way. I actually wrote about this on another social media site at one point in time, because we usually do social media completely wrong. Outreach and conversation are incredibly important, and more than just a simple "thanks!" in a comment. It's something I'm guilty of, too.
All in all, you hit the nail on the head. Good going!
The conversation aspect is probably really the most important of all. Finding people that are interested in similar topics can help the author write content that will trigger certain followers to read and comment which can further enhance the user experience.
I don't want to take away from the free think and write what you feel aspect of the forum, but being able to get others to read and respond to your work is am important or more than the financial aspect of this community. Content creations is not very fun in my opinion, but talking about what I have created or what someone else has created is probably the most "valuable" part of Steemit, even if it is not rewarded as such.
Very, very true. Content Creation should only be a small part of the overall equation. You can make content until you're blue in the face, but if nobody reacts to the content, it's all for naught. You need follower who engage you on your content to really have a semblance of success.
Sure it is nice to be rewarded with a little bit of money, but I feel better about what I do if there are people responding to me and each other. My biggest hope is that I, in one way or another bring some value to someone else on this forum.