In the attention economy, anyone trying to connect with an audience must treat the user's time as the ultimate resource. - Jakob Nielsen

Who would've thought that our time spent in social media networks would be considered a real investment once.

What would Steemit.com be without all those people who dedicate their valuable time to create, curate, comment and share content every single day?

According to the sweat equity principle that is described in the Steem Whitepaper, for the Steem ecosystem time investment is as valuable as financial investment:

All forms of capital are equally valuable. This means that those who contribute their scarce time and attention toward producing and curating content for others are just as valuable as those who contribute their scarce cash. This is the sweat equity principle and is a concept that prior cryptocurrencies have often had trouble providing to more than a few dozen individuals. - Steem Whitepaper page #5

Now considering Steemit.com's advertising claim Your voice is worth something, one might realize that the true value of our voices is not only measured by financial reward.

The fact that this network provides us with an uncensored and decentralized stage where we can be heard and seen on a worldwide level, is priceless.

The possible financial outcome is just a nice-to-have topping on the influence you're able to acquire. Every single blog post you submit to the Steem blochckain will be eternalized and contribute to the growth of your own account and the whole ecosystem.

Building a followership, engaging with your audience, exchanging opinions and ideas with others is what creates real value on the Steem blockchain.

Steemit.com is a decentralized, blockchain based and tokenized social media network that empowers people who add value to the system.

Your voice is worth a lot more than you actually thought!

How Steemit.com's homepage looks like to new users

How value creation on Steemit.com works

As long as we tend to measure our own success only by the payout of our blog posts, we'll never fully understand the potential of Steemit.com.

The fact that we consider an article being financially undervalued, doesn't mean it is of no value.

Just think about people who're keeping a diary. These secret stories will supposedly never be seen or read by anyone else than the author. Does that mean they are of no value?

By investing your time in order to design a unique piece of content nobody else has ever submitted to the Steem blockchain before, you're already creating value. The uniqueness of that piece of content is unchallengeable.

Your voice is worth something, because it's unique! There's no accounting for tastes.

Don't get distracted by the packaging!

To be fair, currently the content on Steemit.com is so organized that the users are constantly being given to understand that payout is everything that matters.

That's wrong, especially if we considered that most of the top trending stories are promoted, which means that no real evaluation of the community is taking place.

In fact only 0.8% of the daily votes are allocated by paid bots. Yet, even though they're not many, their high Voting Power has a considerable influence on the daily distribution of the rewards pool.

Here are some tips how you can grow your Steemit account without spending a single dollar on bots:

1. Create content that might be interesting for those you'd like to see supporting your doings. Write for them.
2. Engage with the top influencers in the network, learn from them, ask for their feedback and like that direct their attention to your account.
3. Participate in the relevant communities of your favourite dApps. If you use fundition.io, then join the fundition server on discord and interact with like-minded crowdfunders. If you're a DLiver go make friends with other vloggers.

Last but not least, wanting to succeed always includes taking a risk.

The average is looking for someone to tell them what to do, or to simply just try to "fit in" with everyone else. I think to be successful the individual has to risk standing out. - @fyrstikken at SteemSpeaks (discord)

Standing out implies taking risks. Are you ready to take them?

Go find your tribe!

The diversity of the Steem community is its real asset.

Ultimately the financial value of our content is in the eye of the beholder who upvotes or downvotes our submissions. So if we want to foster a positive impact on our stake, then - besides investing money and powering up - what we need to do is: build influence.

You can't force anybody to like or dislike your thoughts. But you can build a social network around you that supports and estimates your doings.

It's exactly as in real life: we surround ourselves by those who appreciate what we do.

Nobody is elected President without a strong community of supporters behind them. Before everything else, make sure that your voice is worth something in your own sub-community.

Go out and interact with people of the same field of interest, make friends with like-minded users and constantly grow your reach.

Few have become successful over night. Define your vision and then go celebrate the milestones on the way.

One of the wonderful characteristics of Steemit.com is that we're able to reward someone else without giving away anything of what we have

Bear in mind that the network rewards those who add value to the system, which means that you can't take away anything without giving something back.

A stable and healthy ecosystem requires constant input to flow.

Generating a positive financial return is a nice plus, but it's neither guaranteed nor should it be your main purpose on Steemit.com.

Think about people who have changed the world in the past. They were driven by the vision, not by the money.

Remember: Your voice is worth much more than you actually thought...:-)

Much love,
Marly -
Steem Ambassador
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PS: Please consider supporting my charity project @dreamsoftheocean.

This blog was created in July 2016, aiming to provide thought-provoking content for open-minded people who go on adventure, step out of comfort zones and embrace the new.
Thanks for being part of the journey!

PS: This blog post was edited and submitted via eSteem Surfer 1.0.8 - my favorite Steem desktop client that was developed by @good-karma's @esteemapp team. Check out their account for more information.

Original content. Quotes found on quotefancy.com 1, 2 and pinterest.com