After working online for a number of years, I have grown my total following to over 40,000 people. How have I done this? Well I have produced content, I write a blog, I make videos and I am ‘Social’ on Social media. I moderate a community of followers that I treat as peers.

And why do I do this, well? I create and sell online course, my following is my customer base. So taking from my experience the First Steemit Growth Hack that I want to share to is: 

      Form a community

 In this article I will show you how to tackle this on Steemit 

How not to do it

What I have seen here on Steemit is that newbies (or minnows) randomly follow people. There is no real long term plan and long term strategy here. Yea at the start you need to make a few connections this was, but in the end, you will either mute them or unfollow them. 

Why? because they will fill up your feed with irrelevant content. At 8K posts a day, you will never find anything…… 

What is a Community?

A community can be defined as a group of people that share interests. These interests can range from location based to interest based and it’s not a new phenomenon. Communities have been around since the beginning of time. You are a community member of Steemit. Now you need to form your own sub communities.  

How to do it

Use existing sub communities – there are a vast amount of hashtags on Steemit. These hashtags are based on topics and Interests. 

Look for influencers to follow

Start with 2-3 hashtags. First Look for hashtags that relate to the topic you will post on.

For Example I teach Excel and intend on sharing my Excel Video tutorials here on Steemit. So I searched for Excel Video and Tutorials and tags for each of these exist. (if they don’t exist make one…..I will cover that in a later post). 

 Next look at the trending posts, new posts and hot posts. Is there someone here that posts often? Someone that’s has a good reputation score? Influencers in this topic - Follow them! They might be minnows because they are new, don’t rule these out because one day they will be whales. 

Once you follow them their posts will populate your Steemit Feed. If you have connected to a thousand random people, these posts will be lost in the feed and you might miss them. You don’t want to miss these posts. Why, well because you need to comment, vote and resteem. 

Try strike up conversation on the posts when you comment. Ask questions, give an opposing opinion, something that will gain the attention of the influencer. After a while this influencer will follow you back (although you might have to ask them in the end…..) but till then, you can enjoy the curation reward’s (which I will cover in a different post) attached to interaction on posts. 

What are you doing here? You are building a relationships. You are building trust. You might even be making a friend. 

Build your Steemit Follower Community

As you have followed others, people will also follow you. Some will be random follow that have no real worth to you. Some will be super fans.  How you treat your follower community is of utmost importance. 

Your community have followed you for a reason. Your reputation. Your Content. Your ability to help them. You need to nurture and care for this community. 

When then comment on your posts, you need to reply. Try making conversations. Get personal with your followers. Turn as many as possible to super fans. Use their names. Up vote their comments. This will make them loyal. More likely to open your posts. More likely to resteem and up vote. And keep producing content for them. 

Spread your Votes with your Community

 Your votes are worth money to others, but if you over vote your power runs low and your votes don’t count for as much. I have read that you make 10 votes a day at full power. 

You have two communities to serve with your votes. The influencers and the followers. Rewarding your followers should be on top of your list.  

When you start out on Steemit, you are unable to manually change the voting weight of your votes. You can reduce your voting rate so that you can vote more. 

The strategy I will be following is 

• 5 votes on full power to my followers on their comments as a reward for engaging with me 
• 2 Votes on 50% power also to my followers 
• The balance at 50% to my influencers. 

Do this and not only will your following grow, your reach will also grow, your reputation will grow, your earning will grow, I just hope that your head doesn’t grow too….   

If you like this article I hope that you will re-steem, that you will vote up, that you will comment below, and hay, if you like my content, then follow me…. @paulag

In a later article I will cover how to maintain your community for maximum efficiency. Steemit can take up a lot of time…..it’s easy to lose hours……