1 Month in the Steemit ocean

So here i am

Still swimming in the vast ocean of Steemit, but after a month now that i have found my fins what do i think still think about the social media platform that pays to play.

Well lets start where my first update (https://steemit.com/steemit/@father2b/my-first-2-weeks-in-steemit-ocean) finished. As you can possibly tell i'm still swimming through the ocean but only difference i now have direction. Thanks to a lot of video watching,reading hints and tips and advice from my good friend @stevenwood, i have now found my fins and can swim a little faster. At first i thought that your reputation level was the important number and looked at increasing that but then i realised that although that is an important number and you should not do anything to harm that, Steem power is what will make a difference on here. This is the number that determines your influence in the ocean and the higher that influence, the more you can give back to others and without that the ocean would just dry up.
So i changed my post rewards from default 50%/50% to power up 100%. This ensures that all the reward i get from that post/blog goes straight into making me a bigger fish in the ocean. I then learned how to exchange my SBD and steem into steem power so that all i have earned can go back in to the ocean.
See the higher the influence you have the greater percentage of followers you get and the more followers, the more likely you are to get upvotes and comments in your posts which later increase reward. It's like i suppose being back at school and trying to be the popular person, the one everyone wants to be seen with.

How do i know how popular i am?
Well by now you should of heard abbreviation's like whale, dolphin and minnow these are the names that categorise your influence in the ocean. Their like your evolution from plankton to king of the sea and the more steem power you have the higher you become in that evolution.
Here is a chart i constructed to show you what i mean.....

There are probably a lot more ranks that people talk about but these are the main ones for me and as you can see the more steem power you have to more bigger a creature you are considered to be and the more popular you then become.
This is both a good thing and bad because what i find is people upvote a post based on how popular a person is and not on their content, knowing that the post will draw in lots of vote's and there for receive a greater curation reward.
But this has a downfall as lots of good content sinks to the bottom of the ocean and does not get upvoted because either your reputation score is low or you dont carry anough influence.
Now i know at this stage you maybe saying "well thats not what i joined for".
Trust me i know your frustration! i don't sit on here creating blogs and post's for the fun of it, i want my post's to be read and voted on accordingly. That's why i decided to go to school............

steem schools

That's right you read it correctly, there is a school here in this ocean i would like to invite you to join https://discord.gg/QXxyDRV
here you can have live chat's with fellow steemians who will do there best to answer any question you may have and you can also join live classes on various subjects. There are competitions regularly and you can promote your post.
Like all people just starting out in life and trying to progress, school is a great place to start.

So that's been my first month so far and i must say i'm really enjoying the journey.
i could go on for ever with everything i have learned so far but we all have our own journeys to take so will leave some of that for you to discover.
hope to see you all along the way and if you have any questions feel free to ask them here and i will try my best to answer them.
Dont forget to upvote, resteem and follow
come on people share the love

Keep steeming