On the 16th December, I will have been a member of Steemit for exactly six months. Now this is a complete babe in the woods in the grand scheme of things and I do not by any stretch consider myself a know it all – but I most certainly have learnt a fair amount during this time and continue to learn more each and every day, so today – I wanted to share a little bit of what I have learnt specifically with my community of Steemit Bloggers on Discord, but also with everyone else reading this.

Before I get to that part and to fill those in that are a little bit in the dark – a few months ago I launched a discord server called The Steemit Bloggers. We are an extremely diverse but very close knit community of individuals who are committed to the growth and improvement of one another on the Steemit platform. Our primary prerequisite as a community, being that the people who are a part of our team take pride in what they produce for the platform and are also willing to go the extra mile for one another. We have an incredibly simple, but exceptionally effective support method and are all dedicated to keeping that rolling smoothly, so that each and every individual in the team benefits and begins to feel the benefits of community support.

As a community, we recently announced our collaboration with @appreciator which is proving to be fantastically successful in motivating people to “up their game” in terms of content quality and effort. Every day, three REALLY outstanding posts are generously upvoted by @appreciator. If you would like to know more about this, you can read about it in any one of the @appreciator “Daily Quality Content Rewards” posts on the @appreciator page.

Having to select posts on a daily basis has also opened my eyes to some of the details of post creation which I think need addressing… So my intention of posting the following is to try and assist the members of our community (and other Steemit users) to improve the overall appearance of their posts, thus improving the response of the readers.

Ok, enough waffling… let me get to it. And let it just be said that the advice and info that I am offering here is my opinion only, gained through my own experience on Steemit.

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POST COMPILATION & CONTENT

• SELECTING YOUR CONTENT:

Choosing your post content is a pivotal part of the process and in my opinion should have a relative amount of consistency or similarity in topic choice. I am not saying that you HAVE to write about the same thing day in and day out, but I am saying that there should be a “general thread” or “feel” when people visit your blog.

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• THE VISUAL BLOGS:

For those that are into the more visual style blogs, be it photography, illustration or design etc. I think it is REALLY important that you add a little bit of “meat” to your posts every now and again. To my mind, a feed where every single post consists of nothing more than an image and the details of the camera it was taken with or the pencil used are not at all exciting, enticing or conducive to building consistently enthusiastic followers. Perhaps add a little bit of info about what inspired the visual in the first place, the background and/history. Perhaps display the before and after edits or share the process… essentially what I am saying is you need to give people something to appreciate, other than the visual itself.

This advice is also relevant to those of you that frequently enter the visual challenges, such as the daily color challenge. Tell people a little bit about why you selected the photo that you did – this ultimately makes the post about more than just the visual itself.

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• THE HEADING & THUMBNAIL:

The title of your post and the thumbnail image are what smacks people in the face first. Make sure you select a visual for the thumbnail that is visually appealing to the eye. The first image that is inserted into your post will become the header and thumbnail image that appears on the feed. Effective use of colour in this respect plays a HUGE role in impact – so be sure to choose images that are vivid and enticing to the readers eye.

As far as the heading goes, I am NOT a lover of blog posts that have headings longer than my arm. I am bored before I have even finished reading them… Keep your heading short, punchy and attention grabbing. Put a little bit of thought into how you can capture the attention of someone scrolling through the feed when you decide on a heading. That small little change can make the world of difference in the levels of attention your post gets.

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• THE ENDING:

Don’t end your post like you just jumped off a cliff never to be seen again… wind it down. Wish people well and invite them to take a look at some of your other content or to follow you.

• POST SUBSTANCE:

Like I mentioned earlier in reference to the more visually driven blogs, if you generally write pretty short posts, then learn to beef them up. There are many ways to do this. Adding more images, quotes and gifs are one exceptionally effective way of making a very short post appear a little more substantial.

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• FOLLOW THE RULES:

As most of you will already know, plagiarism is VERY much frowned upon on the Steemit platform – but I mean over and above that… it is just WRONG ok, so do not do it! If you are going to take content matter from another source and use it verbatim then for heaven’s sake, reference the source!!!! In fact, even if you have re-worded the content into your own style, I STILL think the original source of information should be credited. The same goes for images… and this one I see WAY too much of. It does not matter WHERE you took the images from or how irrelevant you consider the source… it is not and you simply MUST credit the source. If all your images come from one source such as Pixabay, then you can simple say one line at the end of your entire post – something along the lines of “Images courtesy of Pixabay.com”.

However, if your images are from multiple sources the you can credit them each individually underneath each picture simply by adding the following:

[Image Source](paste image URL here)

It REALLY is as simple as that and if you want your blog to be taken seriously, you absolutely MUST start doing it!

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• THE IMPORTANCE OF FORMATTING:

Having been in the field of graphic design for the last 17 years, I can tell you one thing for certain – the difference between an average design and a great design is in the attention to detail. It is ALL about the detail!!! So pay attention to this when compiling your blog posts!

Check, check and check again!! You will be amazed how many times you can check something and STILL overlook an error - ESPECIALLY if you have been staring at it for any length of time. So check your spelling, check your grammar – check EVERYTHING!

When you write a paragraph and eventually get to the end of it and add your fullstop, much like this.
It is WRONG to start on the next line like I just have, without adding a space. Not only does it make you look like an amateur but it is MESSY!

This is how it SHOULD look…

When you write a paragraph and eventually get to the end of it and add your full stop, much like this.

It is WRONG to start on the next line like I just have, without adding a space. Not only does it make you look like an amateur but it is MESSY!

If the visuals you are adding are small, or smaller than what fits the entire width of the space available, then rather center them. It looks a LOT better seeing this in between your text…

Than seeing this…

with more of this right underneath it...

For those of you that would like to discover formatting techniques - take a gander at Markdown Styling Guide

There are also some very useful tips to be found in @cryptofiend's post Steemit Markdown Basics for Beginners

There really is an endless list of things I could suggest here, but sitting at 1400+ words now, I think I shall put my pen down ;) I think this is enough for all of you to start with. Familiarise yourself with all these suggestions first – get your posts looking neat, tidy and visually appealing and then we can look at other aspects.

If this post assists just one person to create better quality or better formatted content, I will be VERY happy ;)

Until next time...

Much Love from Cape Town, South Africa xxx

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