The 3 good bots of Steemit

I like good bots and I cannot lie.

9 months since I first used Steemit, and almost 30 days since I started being active in this platform, and I've yet to totally understand how the Steem ecosystem works. I know I'm in this to blog, and secondary to that is my need to increase my visibility online as a blogger. The income is definitely a major plus, I won't deny that. Because of how Steemit is shaped as being a combination of a blogging and social media platform, the way to achieve visibility (short of buying Steem) is via quality content and interaction.

Along with this, I've been doing a lot of reading on bots in Steemit, the latest one being an article about bid bots by a soon-to-be-former plankton. I myself have been using a few bots as I blogged along (no bid bots, though, because I haven't made sense of those). Most of the bots are used to upvote and resteem content, and many bots do so indiscriminately regardless of content quality. Still, as much as it is frowned upon, there's no denying that many Steemians use bots to promote their content to the Trending page, thus getting more upvotes and more visibility, and more importantly higher payout. Even if people think this is unethical, Steemit itself allows it in a way by having options within the post to allow the user to Promote or Boost. So you can't say people are playing the system wrong when the system somehow allows itself to be played that way.

So back to my concern -- as with other well-meaning bloggers who think their posts are of any value -- on how I can bring more readership into my blog, and not sacrifice my content by being grouped with others that are deemed not at par with the quality that the community is looking for.

After much reading and a little bit of trying here and there, here's my top 3 selection of the bots that has benefited me so far.

@MinnowSupport

This bot upvotes and resteems your posts, as well as allowing you to delegate your Steem power to boost others that use the bot. You need to use Discord chat app, and anyone can join. I think this is by far the biggest community in Steemit, and has one of the nicest group of people around.

@TeamMalaysia

This half-human, half-bot account is country-specific, and you need to use Discord to get its bot to upvote you. I like the community here because we take care of each others' content quality by giving advice or even reprimand low quality posts.

@SmartSteem

Alright, I admit I've never used this bot before, but their fight against spammers and upvoting whitelisters only sounds very attractive. I would like to try them out only if my application to be whitelisted is approved.

I tried a couple other bots like @Ubot and @ReSteemable to get my posts resteemed, but I didn't like that my posts were listed along with questionable content. It's darn easy to use these bots, though, and that's what made me kept using it.

The bidding system kind of clicks in my head, but not really. Anything that sounds like a gamble intimidates me. Until then, I'm going to keep on blogging because I'm finally doing it again after 4 years of being dormant, and because I want to earn those adorable @SteemitBoard badges!

LIKE WHAT YOU READ? Then check out my previous post: https://steemit.com/web/@webgrrrl/convenient-custom-form-without-programming