Hey there Steemians!

I just wanted to make a little post to help folks who have just landed on Steemit to have an easier time on the platform.

Steemit and the Steem blockchain are a many-layered experience. It takes some time to learn how to get around this environment. And for people who are used to The Zuckerberg Of Doom doing all of the work for them it can feel overwhelming.

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The folks who have been here on Steemit for a while will be looking at this post for maybe a minute or two then carrying on to whichever niche they care to relate to on this blockchain.

For many of the folks who are here they’re crypto-heads, always looking for ICOs, and chasing the coins and tokens. Those folks already know more about Steemit than I do because they are used to this whole environment. They know about hashing blocks, nodes, and how important it is to have a solid witness hosting the content they are creating and storing.

For folks like me, we are just beginning to understand some of these techie terms like HODL and back-end development. We are more accustomed to being able to easily drag and drop images or point and click links. We are used to sharing other people’s content without source links. We are used to copy & paste publishing posts on Twitter, Facebook and other platforms.

It’s different on Steemit. Here, people want to know where the pictures came from, did you take it yourself? People want to see creativity in posts, making your own thing. If you are straight up stealing other people’s content through plagiarism, folks will notice.

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When I am creating a post for Steemit I use Google docs. By using Google docs I can share a link with folks who are willing to proofread my blogs before I post them. Using this process allows me to post better content and increases the overall worth of the platform. I do recommend using proofreader.

Once the folks over at the Steemit Creators’ Guild have looked over my post, I put it into StackEdit. StackEdit is a website which allows me to work with images, links and the Markdown system. By using StackEdit I can get a sense of how my post will look once I post it.

One group which has been very helpful to me in my time here on Steemit is the Minnow Support Project. They are a large group of people who are working to make certain that new people get a sense of how to use the platform. They also help people to gain exposure for their posts through their curators and voting bot. When I first started out on Steemit my posts would get maybe .001 SBD, or nothing. Once I began engaging in the PALnet community I found people who liked the work that I was doing. They now upvote my posts and resteem them. The support which @minnowsupport provides helps a lot of new people to find their niche.

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One aspect of Steemit which new people like myself often overlook is the importance of commenting.

I still need to do more to be meaningfully engaged in the comments section of this scene. Taking the time to read through people’s posts and making a meaningful comment is one of the things which makes Steemit dramatically different from other social media sites. For the past couple of days since I joined @abh12345’s engagement league, I have been making a dedicated effort to leave more comments. At this point, since I have been reaching out to new folks using the Introduce Yourself tag, my comments haven’t been gaining me much in the way of SBDs. Which is fine with me, the real point of joining the engagement league was to declare my intention to make more meaningful connections on the blockchain. By connecting with new folks I hope to encourage them to stay engaged. I also role-model community-building by reaching out to folks who are new.

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There are some sites which I use daily.

These sites help me to keep track of my voting power, my bandwidth, and the value of SBDs compared to Steem.

I use Steemd to see who has been upvoting my content, I use it to see how much voting power and bandwidth I have. I also use Steemd to see which sites I have given a portion of my voting power, and to see my witness votes.

I use Steem.supply to see who has been resteeming, and who has upvoted my content. This site also tracks the value of SBDs compared to Steem. The value comparison is useful if you want to power up your SBDs for a better return instead of a loss.

There are quite a few useful sites for public domain photography. I use Pixabay. Pixabay is pretty popular among folks on Steemit which can lead to the same image being used in many posts across the platform. This is why using original photography is preferred. However, it can be difficult to take quality photos. And these images are put into the public domain precisely so they can be used by all.

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There are quite a few different ways to post to the Steem blockchain.

It’s important to remember that Steemit is just one of the apps built to post onto this blockchain. One of the other apps which is both popular and user-friendly is Busy.org. Busy.org has many functions which Steemit doesn’t. It offers a vote slider to effect how much of your voting power you are putting towards any given vote. It also has a notification button. After being on the Zuckerberg Of Doom for so long many of us are conditioned into using the notification button. I don’t use Busy often, but I am very glad it’s there when I do use it.

Another useful site built on the Steem blockchain is Steepshot. It’s similar to Instagram, in that you can only use it as an app on your smartphone to post pictures. I like to take a lot of pictures with my smartphone as a result I end up using Steepshot quite a bit.

Dlive, DTube, DSound, and dMania are all apps built onto the Steemit blockchain. So when you post to these sites they pay out in SBD and Steem. These sites do take a percentage of the value from your posts to help them maintain their services. DTube doesn’t keep your video forever, so when you post to their site be sure to backup your video either on your computer or another site where it won’t be deleted after a week or so. I didn’t realize this at first and I was saddened to find my videos had vanished.

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One site which I know I could invest more time in, and which has been very helpful to me in my time on Steemit is SteemTools. SteemTools is a place where websites and apps which are relevant to the Steem blockchain are collected. There you can find all kinds of tools to track the value of your vote, find people with similar interests, and to learn about apps which have been developed to work around the Steem blockchain.

One last thing to mention before I move onto more activist-based writing.

That is the #MinnowSupportProject. The folks in this community are working on all sorts of projects, whether it’s a free voting bot, a curators group, or one of the many radio shows which broadcast through their discord channel and their website, the folks at Minnow Support Project are putting in tons of work to make Steemit approachable and help the folks who have just found their way here to feel welcome and a part of this experiment in mutual aid.

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I hope that this post helped a few of you to better understand what is going on here on the Steem blockchain.

If you are stuck, or lost, or just want someone who will be responsive to you then please make a comment. Also If you liked this post you may like some of the other blogs I have written.

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Thanks for taking the time to read this far! Please consider an upvote and resteem if this post could help someone on your feed.

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One last thing for the brand new people, please head over to the witness section.

Learn about witness engagement and do some witness voting. The people who are witnesses are the ones who keep the Steem blockchain moving. It’s thanks to them that we have any bandwidth. And if you are a new person you will be wanting more bandwidth soon enough.

Have a great day out there!

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I am a member of these Discord channels, I encourage you to check them out and see if you like the community you find there.
Steemit Creators’ Guild
PALnet
SteemUSA
Steem Star Network

Written with StackEdit.