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Where you see this ➮ ⌨️ EDIT:, I've gone back and added something after the post was created.

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Hello fellow steemians, welcome to my blog. And if you are new to steemit then this post is especially for you. Welcome to the decentralized blogging platform that is changing many lives and the world of social media at large. Gone are the days of wasting time scrolling aimlessly through bad cellphone pics of lunch or another five minute video of kittens playing. Not that there's anything wrong with that, it's just why let some spoiled billionaire state kiss-ass continue getting rich while data mining your inner most thoughts, feelings and wishes while you go on struggling to make ends meet and only come out of your more than daily fakebook or shitter scroll with a headache and less desire to engage in meaningful relationships?

There are videos of kittens and plenty of foodie posts with vibrant pics, even shitty cellphone ones here; and what you will come to learn is they are generally associated with a post of meaningful quality content which engages its audience and solicits more than just upvotes. Of course the upvotes are important, after all, I'm certain what initially drew you here was the notion of making money utilizing social media, and that you can do. What has kept you here, or will surely, is the sense of community and connectedness in a way that has been lacking on the world wide interwebs for at least a generation now. Steemit, in many ways, has taken me back to a time of text only chats like NCSA Telnet, bulletin boards systems and Listserv. This was before it was possible to send a pic or stream anything. You had to want to read, you had to engage an individual or a group with meaning otherwise your bits were quickly lost in the upward tick of lines of text. It's very much like that here too. Remember, steemit guidelines are quite vague as far as use and abuse. There is a NSFW (not safe for work) option. It is up to you and the community to decide what is acceptable and when and where. Sure, you're free to post whatever you wish and comment how you like; however, the behavior we've seen displayed throughout the pages of social media in recent years will likely not get you far on the blockchain. If the money is what motivates you to participate, it may help to think of it in terms of value rather than currency. This train of thought should ease your impatience and thwart discouragement. Soon you will understand why.

Please refer to my previous #welcome post for some very beginner insight. I say "very beginner" because you will be able to tell by comparing it to this post how far along I've come and just how much I've learned by spending valuable time and efforts on steemit. You can also take a look at my wallet to see just how much value my account has accrued. You may be thinking "that's not a lot of money for almost three months". Consider that I've not done this day in and and day out from the start. It took time to figure it all out. It took numerous posts to create content valuable enough to garner attention and upvotes. Many upvotes in your early days here will likely come from other minnows like yourself whose votes don't count for much in the way of steem. What counts now is your participation. If you're wondering just what the heck you should blog about, trying to figure out your niche here still; just peruse, read, upvote, leave thought out meaningful comments and only if you really like the post and feel it should be seen, resteem it. Comments can be upvoted and earn value as well so get to it! Also it's not unheard of to only resteem that which is pertinent to your general scope of topics since it will display on your blog.

You can include pics, links and format your comments if you wanna start practicing. Just don't be spammy or overbearing. Keep in mind you're commenting on someone's post and that is part of someone's blog. It really should pertain to the subject matter and be somewhat short and sweet. You'll get responses and upvotes I assure you.

What I aim to do with this series is to show you what I've learned as I progress through the ranks of the steemit community and hone my skills in this trade and to refer you back to previous posts so we may tackle something different each time. However, since the previous post is sub par according to my personal standards now, I will revisit the points I brought up last time, some of which I understand and can explain better now.

Side notes will come up as I type and think of something pertinent outside the context of the current subject. I think this will help unclutter the text and allow you to stay on track while providing important information.

You will see links through the body of each post and surely want to click them. If those links take you to a steemit post, pay attention to when the post was created before upvoting if you decide to do so. I mentioned this in the previous post but was unable to explain why. What I've come to understand is two fold. The developers wrote a bit of code called reverse-auction for this site. This stops upvotes from translating into curation rewards for the first 30 minutes after the author creates it. The reason cited for this is to deter the creation of what has been termed shitposts (self explanatory) which an author or anyone with large amounts of SP can immediately upvote and gain a hefty payout. It may be annoying if you're a casual reader and do not wish to remember to go back later or don't want to have too many tabs open just to wait to upvote. This leads me to my first tip today.

⌨️ EDIT: (I've been using the 30 minute wait period to marinate on the post and proofread. As you can see I can go back and edit too. Don't think I'll do this after day 2 though.)

First let me tell you exactly how us steemians go about interacting and engaging members of the community without there being a messenger or fully functioning notifications tab. There is this great chat client called Discord which integrates nicely with the platform. It was initially designed for gaming and allows you to communicate via text, voice, video or all three simultaneously. It is free and can be used via web browser or a free app for smartphones, tablets and PC's. I'd never heard of it until I got on steemit although I've used all of the most popular chat and messaging apps over the years and I find Discord to be very intuitive and stable. It's also attractive and streamlined. There are obviously more than a few groups already chock full of steemians all over Discord. I suggest taking the time to read through their rules and introductions to see which ones suit you. If you intend to be productive on steemit, keep it to a minimum for now. I briefly explored about 10 groups before settling on a few. Until just today I was only active in one PAL-MSP. I'll write more in detail about it in another post; I'll just tell you they have been tremendously helpful in getting many minnows swimming in the right direction. Minnows are newcomers with little value YET.

So, Discord is where you will want to spend your spare time chatting it up, bouncing ideas around, making friends and networking garnering followers and upvotes; even listen to music and talk shows, many of which provide advice about steemit as well. No need to solicit upvotes and run as this is generally frowned upon. Most of us are here with purpose and want to build meaningful relationships with real people, not just clickety-click. And most of the groups have a place to promote your posts for the sake of upvotes. I can attest to the fact that you will be noticed if you bring something of value to the conversation and it will surely make a difference in how rapidly you grow here.

Bots. 🤖

If you've been using social media for some time now, you've probably gotten accustomed to getting notifications letting you know how many people have liked, commented or shared your posts. Until now it's just been something to look forward to and feed our egos a little maybe, perhaps boost self esteem. For me it started to become slightly obsessive. This isn't something steemit is very good at just yet. Some complain, I think it's with good reason. It seems to be designed more like a blogging platform to be used as a pastime or professionally. I would like to see a slight improvement to this function soon. Maybe I'll add a suggestions section to these posts when things like this come up.

I'm digressing. Back to upvoting after 30 minutes. There are a number of services provided by steemians and developers outside of steemit. There are actually way more than I would care to ever know about and list.

One that I've found very helpful almost from day one is @steemauto. This is more a service than a bot. By registering for their website you can use it to follow the steemit blogs you really like and have it automatically upvote their posts. The best part is you can set it to do this at the 30 minutes mark so you won't have to worry about remembering and keeping it open or bookmarked. That could get really cumbersome. Thank you steem witness, @mahdiyari, for this great service (I'll explain what a witness is in a future post when I understand it a little better. Maybe @aggroed can add a short explanation in the comments).

Another bot I find helpful is @ginabot. You have to use this bot through Discord. This will give you control over automating and customizing notifications to work much like you've been accustomed to. You can tell Gina which blogs you want to keep track of and whether you want to know if they posted, upvoted, resteemed, commented or all of the above. Between this and @steemauto I've been able to keep plugging away at my blog and podcasts as well as participate in Dsocord servers without skipping a beat. The only issue I've had is the lack of time to just peruse my feed and enjoy some reading and commenting. Maybe when there is a good solid mobile app for steemit this will change.

Below is a list of several steemit accounts that will resteem and upvote your posts. People will say this is frowned upon, although some have been developed by steemit execs and witnesses. I will only list the ones I know to be safe and mostly accepted by the community. A few of them cost a little steem or SBD to use. I find the prices to be quite fair even at my level.

• @hottopic
• @resteembot
• @resteemable

Phishing alert. 🎏 🚨

This is very very important. Recently, crypto and platforms like steemit have gained momentum in the mainstream media. This has made steemit very attractive. Not only to honest hardworking people, also to sheisty conniving hackers who'd love nothing more than to deplete you of your steem. One crucial practice to make a habit of is always checking the URL when using your passwords to log into any steemit related site. You should never need your master password other than to log into steemit.com. Whether you use steemconnect or manually enter login info, you should never need the master key, usually only the active or posting key. Some will advise you not to let your browser store these keys as well. I've toyed around with that and not had an issue. 🔑

👷 🚧 ✏️ 🖊 🖌 🎨 ✂️ 🚧 🔧 🔨 🚧 🔨 🔧 🚧 ✂️ 🎨 🖌 🖊 ✏️ 🚧 👷

This section will contain helpful HTML and Markdown hints as well as links to the many developer tools and grab bags of goodies posted all over steemit and the interwebs. If you're already proficient with graphics and/or web design then by all means skip this and get to pimpin' your blog. Other wise stick around and see a few cool things.

I do use Adobe Photoshop to create/edit much of my images, dividers and banners, although there are many good free and open source apps out there. Here are just a few:

• GIMP - GNU Image Manipulation Program. Free & open source alternative to Photoshop.
• Gravit - Free web based vector designer.
• Pixlr - Free web based photo editor.
• Canva - Free web based graphic design app.

I've also discovered that there are many web and graphic designers on steemit as well as visual artists. Most of them are very passionate about steemit and are all about engaging the community in meaningful ways. There are artists here willing to collaborate with you to create more visually appealing blogs as well as do the work for you and get paid in crypto, upvotes and resteems and vice versa. This is something that I've done to earn a little steem on the side as well and am available to do it for you too. Below is a list of steemians whom I found by looking for free designs and tools to help pimp my own blog. As you peruse their posts you'll see what I mean. 😉

• @scuzzy - Weekly Blog Design Resource Giveaways [#4] | FREE
• @odrau - 📌 Free Page Dividers 📏 for your post! ˁ˚ᴥ˚ˀ
• @kristyglas - Free Page Dividers For All! (Decorate Your Posts)
• @rituparnaghosh - 4 animated steemit dividers for download

Below are 2 resources I and many other steemians have found to be invaluable for making your posts really stand out:

• For all you emoji needs - Get emoji 😃 😊 😎 🙂 🤗 🤔 😑 😏 😴 😌 😛
• To host images outside of steemit so that your posts load time is faster - ImgBB

Well, that about does it for now. I've been at this quite literally all day. Matter of fact, since last night. I've left out a few things I wanted to touch on this time. That's OK, there will be plenty more posts to follow. And if you're reading this you're probably like I was two months ago just trying to wrap my head around this new kind of platform. There's certainly a learning curve. It's not rocket science, it's an art, a skill , a trade. A useful and valuable one when approached diligently. Take your time. Let me leave you with a couple of last bits of advice.

If you're really lost or uncomfortable using steemit's interface, you can log into Busy.org with your steemit info. Here you will find a more familiar interface as well as a notification tab at the top right of the page.

Lastly, If you're looking to diversify your activity on decentralized platforms like steemit and earn crypto utilizing websites like shitter or instasham, you might wanna take a look at Sola. It's simple and fun. And it will save you from using up steemit bandwidth and voting power posting and upvoting short blurbs and pics while you're a very limited little minnow.

I hope to see you around on Discord sometime. If this post has helped you somehow, please comment and let me know. If you have any ideas, tips of your own or catch my typos, let me know. ✌️

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Prior welcome post #1.

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👍🏼If you enjoy the music I curate and content I create, please visit & follow on these platforms:

Patreon

Sola

🙏 Thank you for your continued support ✊.

💵 Your contributions help keep the #EHO homestead afloat as well as fund my personal fight against the War on "Drugs".