So how? It is probably one of the most asked questions of newbies like me here on Steemit.

Steemit is a social networking platform which means anyone who is in it has to have a connection. Just like any other social networking platform, the more connections you have on Steemit, the better. And for me, the foundation of having people follow you is to gain their trust and confidence on your posts. Again, how?

Let me talk about my own experiences as to how I think I gained followers since I joined Steemit. I hope these will help other newbies too, especially those who are really very new here. I will start from the very first time I logged in to Steemit.

Post a catching self-introduction

Imagine yourself entering a hall full of people and you do not know anyone. All others are talking to each other because they have been there for quite some time that they already know each other while you are the lone player. What will you do? Introduce yourself. And make that self-introduction catchy. How do you define catchy? For me, it is something out of the box. Try to avoid the scripted “This is my self-introduction” or of the same type of article title. Also, select catchy thumbnail because that will be the first thing that other users will usually notice. For me, my photo carrying a very big snake that can swallow me if it wants to did its charm. I think a very first post that got $3.14 payout is good enough on social media wherein you do not know anyone.

Here is a reduce sized of that photo I was referring to. 😊

Engage

Now that you have introduced yourself, what’s next? Those who have seen your introductory post know your existence on the platform. But how about the others who happened to be not on the same page where your introduction is? Those who are on the other end of the earth, sleeping or working on other time zones? There are still so many users on Steemit who will not be able to see your introduction so you have to let them know that you are there. How? Look for quality posts using any tags that interests you. Read through those posts, leave a comprehensive comment and upvote as much as possible. What is a comprehensive comment? It is something that tells the author that you really read the article, you understood it and you are able to relate to it. A very good guide to a comprehensive comment is answering the basic questions.

• What is good about the post or what did you like about it? Appreciate the article.
• What can be improved on the article? Give suggestion.
• How can you relate to the article? Share your part of the story like what it was like if you have experienced it or how will you react if it happens to you.

There are also discord servers for different communities (I will discuss about this in the later part) where you can engage with others on Steemit. It is like a messenger wherein you can communicate directly to a person or to a group. I received a few invitations to different discord servers but I do not use this much at the moment due to lack of time engaging through chat. I have peeked through these servers and I can see that the engagement is really good. Those who can find the time to join discord channels, do so.

Post high quality articles

How do you say that an article is of high quality? For me, it is of a high quality if:

• It is your original composition, both the text and photo contents.
• All sources are clearly stated on your post if you are using royalty free images or quoting excerpts from other articles.
• Properly formatted. If your text content is a bit long, try to split that in sections with sub-headers. You can also use photos in between paragraphs. This is to avoid straining the eyes of your readers and not cause them to just leave your post.

If you are doing a review of someone else’s article, state so. Do not sound as if you own the idea. Do not also speak on a third party perspective because that can denote that you did not experience first hand or do not really know what you are talking about and that can cause suspicion from your readers. If you are not a financial adviser but has experienced something good in the world of finance that you want to share, make that clear on your post.

Join communities

There are many communities on Steemit. Each of which has different agenda so you can pick what interests you. What I suggest is that you join communities that have the giving back mindset. These are the communities that help in their own ways either through boosting newbies (e.g. @pifc) or helping less privileged through funding educational scholarship (e.g. @scholarsph). I would like to magnify @pifc here as an example.

@pifc means pay it forward curation contest. Yes, it is a contest with the mindset of giving back. The contest is about looking for authors (number of authors is usually two per week but it can change) with high quality posts and featuring them into a single post. That will help direct other readers to the featured posts to support it, either through upvoting or posting comment.

Reach out and help

Aside from joining communities to help others, I suggest that you should also look for high quality posts from other tags and upvote or comment on those posts to make the author feel that his or her work is appreciated. One tag that I recommend for you to check from time to time is #introduceyourself. This is where the very first post of newbies usually fall into. Remember yourself being upvoted and welcomed by the time you enter the hall. Do the same to others who come in after you.

For the upvoting while you are still a plankton, you need not have to be very conscious about the amount of your upvotes because it will be 0.00 everytime. That is unless you have Steem Power delegation. Even if you have that zero value of upvote, it doesn't mean it is useless. It still gives the sense of appreciation to the author of the article. Just watch out for your voting power though. For as much as possible, keep it at 80% level everyday at the very least. Exhausting it to lower than that would take longer time to have your voting power replenished.

If there are posts that are worth resteeming, do so. It is free anyway. Posts that I recommend for resteem are upfund posts for charitable cause, contests that aim to boost others (like the @pifc) and posts that recognizes great achievements.

If your wallet can afford, send funds to upfund projects or charitable causes.

Follow

Find authors who write high quality articles that interests you and follow them. When I say interest, I mean something that you already know which you may share your ideas with other authors as well as something that you do not yet know but you want to learn. Seeing their posts on your feed will usually trigger your eagerness to engage.

Following will also filter your interests to be automatically on your feed instead of you searching through tags.

Build your reputation level

This will be the result of all the items I mentioned above. Reputation level reflects the quality of posts or comments that you have contributed to the whole Steemit community. It comes from the upvotes that you receive for all of your posts, either your main article or comments you made on articles. The higher your reputation level means the more upvotes that you have received.

I myself is still building my followers list but again, I hope these tips will somehow help newbies like me. If there are any other suggestions out there, I will be very glad if you too would share them.

Cheers!

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