Lily Da Vine's 7 Tips for Steemit Success
In the last several months I have had so many people contact me asking for advice on Steemit, both friends and strangers. Those who have followed us since the beginning (like @lensessions and many others) know that our hike to where we are on the Steemit mountain has been a long one to say the least. As I spent two days compiling my entire history of posts on Steemit, I was left with 34 pages and a dumbfounded feeling; I hadn’t realized I produced that much.
So I’ll admit I’ve been kind of cold to some on the topic of this stuff...partially just cause I’m getting a bit weary(and more than a bit awkward). As I become more well known I find it sincerely interesting how I respond to these sorts of requests. It’s almost always the way it’s worded that determines my reply, if there is one. I’ll admit I feel guilty for not being more forthcoming, but I’m often not sure how to respond to even the sincere requests for help with Steemit success.
But frankly most of these requests are not sincere, they are borderline spam at times. Upvote for upvote. Hey, please follow me I followed you. So many comments that have nothing to do with the post and other things of that nature.
But this isn’t to complain, my point is to give a general...crash course in the basic stuff you need to be basically a blogger of value in general but especially here on Steemit, where you have the potential to be paid for your content like I have for about a year now. This whole thing has been a learning experience for me on how to go about providing the most value for both me and others. I’ve got a bit of a list my 7 major tips for Steemit success and happiness.
- Do basic research into Steemit and the community as it stands today. By that I mean get an understanding of what it is and somewhat how it works so you know how best to interact with the growing ecosystem that is Steemit.com. You don’t have to read the whitepaper but understand that it’s a stake based system and what that means, among other basic concepts that will make your experience here a lot smoother.
2)Understand it’s not just about pumping out posts and promoting the shit out of them wherever you can. Consider what it is you’re trying to communicate to the world as that is the end result of this thing at the end of the day. I generally only share to related channels to make it so I have an easier time finding my audience. The magic in this place is that these posts are saved on the Steem blockchain. I’ve shared just about all the parts of my life for this past year and now I realize I have a blockchain verified account of not just my life, but all of our pursuits since getting here including my glassblowing career. Write about and share what you live, in one way or another, and you’ll have success here.
Upvote for upvote in any form is not an adequate means to get upvotes from the people that matter, that is, those who can make your dollar total creep up on your posts. I personally am disappointed every time people ask for upvotes or follows without some other sort of engagement than maybe a “i like this and followed you please follow and upvote me”. Now, I’ve had plenty of (clever) people comment and really engage me (even with a linkdrop, often relevant!) to the point where they received a follow and often continued support. I have NO issue with that. I don’t however like it when people I don’t know make comments irrelevant to the post to get attention. That’s not what we want here, I want to know what you actually think of the post, my photos or me in the comments!
Learn formatting. This is something I have struggled with. This is my Steemit demon to put it lightly. I am known for crappy formatting although no one has ever come out and said it directly. I have had people gently prod me though with it and I see their point. So to a Steemit newbie, try mastering good content as well as pretty format because it will make people want to stay on your post more. I have had whales comment on my posts telling me that they would upvote me with more weight if I formatted my posts better in the pasts. It’s a good idea: don’t put it off like I did.
Find your niche. What makes you unique? What do you like to do? The way to gain traction is to have something to offer that people don’t currently have. Or do it slightly differently. Just create and innovate and share it and there’ll probably be someone out there with interest, as I’ve found. I started with posting just our story, which was to say the least extremely tough and heavy although very entertaining. In an effort to lighten the mood we started sharing about our lives here in Mexico, gardening and food. Turns out you all like those things just as much, so I get to share everything! If you’re a Jill of all trades like me, start sharing!
Get involved in the most meaningful way possible. Upvote posts that you find most valuable, even limit the power of upvotes. How you vote determines what content is posted on this website. Everytime you upvote my cloud posts, you encourage us to take more of those photos. Everytime one of my recipes does well, I go all out for another post. This is how we encourage growth but we must be selective because your voting power is limited, especially as a new person. Also comments, especially the long ones where you share your experiences are what writers live for. I love hearing about 13 year old chickens and mom’s dosing their kids with kombucha. Comments from those interested in coming here are my favorite a lot of the time as they can be some of the most HEARTFELT responses I have received.
Be consistent. Consider that for me personally Steemit is and basically has been a full time job for a long time. Much of my day is consumed with taking photos (granted of my daily life, that I share here, which is pretty cool) and organizing and preparing them for posts to share with all of you. To do this correctly takes time and daily consistency. I notice drops in payouts after even one day of not posting, although not by much. Find out what people want from you and start providing it. I use it as motivation to keep up on my projects, as I know for a fact there are many real people following my story out there.
I’ve said before I both love and hate the responses I get online and that rings true, but it doesn’t have to be this way! I understand the desire for success and attention, I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t doing all of this for attention. I will say that I don’t think the best route is begging for such attention, but I care enough to say something because I want you to experience success too! Chances are you’re already interesting enough, just engage people! Tell them your thoughts and experiences and you will have a lot of fun here.
I’d like to see a rise in valuable content from regular people living their lives and doing interesting stuff. I’d like to see more engaging comments that leave me excited, typing several paragraphs in response. I’ve gotten pretty excited when even minnows have posted posts in response to me or something I’ve posted, that’s the kind of linkdrop I like to see too! I will always respond to those that engage me, so do so if you want that follow or upvote!
To those who have been following me and engaging me already, THANK YOU. You’re the people that keep me posting. Keep it up!
Steem on!
Check out some of my other recent posts!
Adventures Around Acapulco: Beach in the Middle of the Bay 2
Adventures Around Acapulco: Beach in the Middle of the Bay 1
Lily's Kombucha Upgrades: Shelf and a few Giant Jars
I have followed you from your first posts. You put yourself out there for people to see. And we have seen. We have seen a brave, adventurous person put their life on the line and living in hiding. Hiding from the monster that is the US government and its masters.
Also, I don't care about your formatting. I look past that (probably because I suck at it) and format it in my head. To me, your posts are beautiful.
Good luck in everything. Hope to keep reading your posts for a long while.
Hey, you are indeed one of those longtime followers I was thinking about, so thanks for chiming in here! The idea here is to just put yourself out there. Many people (myself included for a long time) have no idea how special they already are as they are until they start to put themselves out there. I've shared my life and I totally didn't even see it as that until I went through all my posts last week.
And thanks for not poking fun at the formatting. Of all of the formatting mistakes I've made... it's not even the worst XD
I've considered fixing it but I think I'll leave it for dramatic effect.
This is very nice i've always tought about this some recent times and how or the kind of contents to post here but throughout those days i never thinked of how it'll work here
But today i think i've learnt a very huge something out of this your experience. Thanks for sharing, i'll look out to start a new way.
Yeah, just remember it is a social media site. And there are a lot of different people on it so chances are you will find some great friends through this platform. Here's a short list of just a few of the great friends I've gained through this platform:
@modprobe
@lensessions
@cardsanarchy
And there are a lot more flooding to mind but I'll straight up admit I'm to lazy to go make sure their username is what I think it is..\
But the point is I've found the best way to make money is be you and be engaging, people will respond :)
I love the way u stress out the commenting section , not let it be a way to seek attention rather truly comment ur thoughts on the authors post so that it can keep him/her inspired . Thank u for providing these wonderful tips to newbies, many can and will benefit from it , especially because these 7 are what u implemented urself on ur road to success! I should lessen on the upvotes though I'm sure will be loosing power :-( I just click on so many posts and read it and upvote, there's so much great content on this platform that keeps it hard to lessen.
I've found it's best to vary the strength of your upvote. If its a seriously awesome post, throw full strength. If it's something interesting you enjoyed, give them some percentage. It shows you still care but that you understand how the platform works. I've never gotten upset at a whale for only partially upvoting me, it's just smart to do!
Aww thank u for the kind advice .
I am very new here - 8 weeks and appreciate your post very much. I am a content creator in several niches and on multiple platforms for about 6 years now. I came to steemit solely for the Alexa ranking and then got a bit excited for the payouts!
I started by shooting for 3-4 posts a day and as you can imagine - all fell dead. I later found out that no post here gets the alexa ranking until it reaches a $10 payout, so I stopped posting so much and started focusing on commenting and learning. This has helped a lot.
I am "big" on Twitter and coach it, so I take advantage of the ability to tweet my posts from here. This led to tweeting the posts I upvote as well. Then I started a steemit list on Twitter and so far have 55 steemers on it in just a couple of weeks.
Steemit posts come through beautifully on Twitter and I am getting excellent results with ReTweets and interaction on them.
Now I will be making steemit posts on how to use twitter to best advantage for steemit. Many of my new steemer twitter friends need a bit of help so I am revising some of my Twitter coaching help and will do a couple of posts a week on this topic. I hope this will create a lot of synergy between the two platforms.
This is so unexpected! My main niche is health and weight loss, so that is what I thought I would be doing here. Instead I now have great hopes for my little project and feel like it is a hole I can fill. My Twitter project is my way to get involved and use my current skills. I feel really happy to have stumbled upon it even though it is completely off track from my original intention.
I have seen some of your posts before and love your views of your area. I'm a nomadic wanderer and I love nothing more than to see glimpses of where other people are and you do that well.
I'm in SE Asia now for over a year and have tried to make connections on all of my other platforms - not very successfully. Once I joined steemit - boom! - I have all kinds of SE Asian connections now with interesting views of things and places I have never heard of before.
Maybe I will get back to my weight loss posts, but not right now.
I bookmarked this post, resteemed, and I'm tweeting. I have no power for upvoting today since my voting finger went out of control last night :) Thank you again and I hope other people will learn from your ideas too.
Absolutely amazing.
Hey, thanks for this comment!
All of these things were learned in a natural progression of being involved and it sounds like you had your own progression to get to where you are. At the end of the day we have to respond to what people want and that's pretty cool. Thanks for this comment and the support, I really appreciate it!
You're welcome. Glad to :)
Well I must admit, I'm more likely to upvote this kind of post over a cloud or recipe ;) I much prefer to read people's take on Steemit, especially those with a track record.
The F4F scheme will work in attracting 'weak' followers, and I'm surprised folks haven't cottoned on to that yet.
The niche and engagement with other users in your chosen areas is much more fruitful. It is easier said than done though, and will take time to earn respect in the community.
(Cue link drop) Recently I wrote my take on Steemit being like a gift economy based collaborative community, in which I hoped people would find useful when scoping out their place here.
Thanks for sharing your ideas!
Hey, so I totally recognize there's a certain section of my followers that don't even bother with the other stuff, they're there for the content. Or they're just there for the kombucha, or whatever. I offer something for everyone :)
I agree in the F2F scheme. It doesn't matter if you've got a bunch of followers if all they do is say upvote for upvote and give you no value for your work. When my posts do well, it's because specific people found it valuable enough to spend a good amount of voting power on me, and I'm always thankful for that.
Clever link drop there by the way.
Something for everyone is a good path to take, as you have proven
I felt the link was sort of on topic, just :)
Getting started here on Steemit has always been tough; however, establishing a niche makes life easier. Getting recognized as an authority in any niche takes patience and hard work. Thanks for sharing your experience, have learned a lot.
You're on the right track.
Regarding formating, how is it there are 3 points numbered 1. ? ? :D
/OCD :D
That was covered under point 2. Not point 2) but point 2. Just accept that it's charming.
:D HAHA. I straight up admitted it's my weak point. :D
I have tried several blog tools and sites. I have always gone 100 %into it and my wish is to create something that at least have a small value for someone. The point you mention that I lately have found the hardest is sticking to a niche.
I have been into photography since 2012 but also have lot of other things that I like to write about. Since I came to Steemit I have been trying a few different niches:-)
Great ideas and tips in this post, I must say that I kind of work on it most of the time. Have also spent many hours "Steemitrelated". I hope I will find my niche:-)
Have a great day!
Consider the fact that if you're having trouble picking one, you're not supposed to. Just write about the things that fire you up and chances are someone else will resonate with them. I can't think of a single topic that I've seriously wanted to cover from photography to food that I haven't gotten encouraged by Steemit on in some form or another.
My niche is that I do so much and share it all. It's also that I'm on the run and in southern Mexico, but at this point a lot of my followers know next to nothing about that story, they see the clouds and pictures of Acapulco.
I have touched this idea and guess it's just to try. I will notice if there is no interest at all. Thank you for this answer:-)
Interesting story you seems to have but I sure understand that you don't want to share it fully. Photos are great and many people love to see views from around the world.
These are simple but true and effective ways of going about the Steemit platform. Like you've said everyone is likely already interesting. You just need to see it and find the right way to carry the message across. As for your crux in life, formatting, well I'm still trying to figure out whether it's points 1-7 or 1, 2, 1, 2, 3, 1, 2 :):) Lol, just yanking your chain :) The content was the most important to me personally and I was able to comfortably read it :) Gg
Yeah, at the end of the day the content is key as I proved here, but even that isn't an example of my worst formatting. Go check out my very first post and get back to me :P
https://steemit.com/fugitives/@lily-da-vine/the-border-crossing
Lol, you guys are nuts!! In a good way though :):) I enjoyed the story albeit a little hard to read at certain points :) I was thinking (just a random idea) that perhaps you should consider throwing it out there for the peeps to edit the story a bit? You know, almost like an edited version that will be easier to read as kind of like a competition or something... Idk. The other thing that springs to mind is to do a video where I read your story. This could be a great example to show people that it's not about being perfect but telling your story in a unique way. Hmmm? Let me know what you think. If you think the edit proposal is a good idea then perhaps I can do a read on that version too :)
I've had a friend here offer to edit my stories in the past but it never seemed feasable because I don't want to have to wait for someone to edit to post. This however could be a good idea. I get it was hard to read, much of the story was written highly emotional as I remembered it all haha
Yeah, cool. I'm sure you guys were under tremendous pressure at that point so I completely understand!! I'm still gna check out some of your other stories as well :) With regards to throwing out an edited version I think, if nothing else, it could be an interesting experiment :). I'm really starting to like the concept of taking a good story and reading them back to back. One with grammatical errors and the other not. It will kind of be like an audio visual display of what happens when you're busy reading. As you read you can get stuck on points if you're struggling with the grammar. As for the story, well, idk. I think it should probably be a slightly shorter story. Then again, I've never tried anything like that before so I could be wrong. What are your thoughts and would you like it if I did so with one of your stories i.e. the first one? :):) Thanks for the upvotes on my comments :)
Honestly, I'm not sure what my thoughts are but I'm open minded to all ways of sharing my story. I'm short on time, so if you're interested in experimenting I'd be interesting in checking it out
Sure thing :) I'll let you know once I've compiled something. Idk, best to reply here again... I must admit, I'm kind of looking forward to it :):) Thank you!!
Sounds good!
This was a really amazing and useful post which i hope MANY read!! There is so much rubbish floating around and the whole upvote for upvote concept is just ridiculous. I could not agree with you more. Operating like that is never going to build sustainable engagement between you and your followers.
I see no sense in being followed by hundreds of people who have no interest or even idea in what i am writing about. I have only been here for a couple of months but learnt very quickly how to best operate in this sphere and my focus is on helping people, inspiring and motivating them as well as having fun while doing it.
Steemit is a great community of people if you build your circle right. I suppose there will always be a certain degree of rubbish but i do my best to excercise pretty much everything which you have outlined in your post.
It is absolutely worth the read... especially for beginners. Very valuable input. Hats off to you!! And thank you.
Xxx
Hey thanks! It sounds like you're steeming right so you'll probably have a lot of fun here. This one was born partially in annoyance. I used to get excited for comments, now more often than not I roll my eyes. I will say though, after posting this, the majority of my comments this morning have been more like this and less like that. We shall see how long it lasts. Maybe I'll just start sharing this post to everyone who comments like that. Could be a good way to handle it... :)
Absolutely! Although.... having said that... for the most part - people DON'T read!!!! (seems a little ironic really in a space like this. lol) But you don't know if you don't try :)
I am of the opinion that we should take with us what we will and leave the rest... I suppose the same principle can be applied when it comes to the comments received :)