I've been on Steemit for a little over a week now. I've learned a lot and even made a few mistakes. I hope this will be a helpful but concise list of the most important things that I learned in my short time here.

Start Contributing

Steemit is not for lurkers. You need to start contributing ASAP. Fortunately it is really easy to contribute. You can start with reading posts and upvoting. You can resteem the content that you really like. You can start following people that you find interesting (they may even follow you back). And most importantly is to start posting content.

Introduce Yourself

I firmly believe that one of the first posts of every newbie should be an introduction post using the #introduceyourself tag. It should include a picture, some of your interests, how you plan to use Steemit, and whatever else you think might be relevant. These posts tend to get a lot of views. You will get some of your first upvotes and followers and it will likely result in your highest reward amount in your early days on Steemit.

Make your posts look nice

The readability of a post is important. The fastest way to make me move on from a post without reading it, is by having a wall of text. When you click on "Submit a Story", there is a link right above the preview area called "Markdown Styling Guide". Use it. Make proper use of links, headers, bold, and italics. Include at least one picture with your post. Readers are more likely to click a post with a picture next to it, and a picture is a great way to break up some text.

Learn the Lingo of Steemit

There is a lot of jargon floating around here. It is important to know most of it. This could include many many things but some is more important than others. Learn what minnows and whales and dolphins are. Learn what Steem, Steem Dollars, and Steem Power are. Learn about powering up and powering down. Learn how to use the internal market. Most new users may already have this, but it may be useful to have some knowledge about blockchain and other cryptocurrencies as well.

I could go on and on with this list, as there are certainly many more things that are important to learn about Steemit. But I feel like these were the most important to me. And this would make for a good jumping off place for a new user.

What was the most important thing you learned when you were new to Steemit?