This is the second part of a three part Beginner’s Guide for Steemit, if you missed part one you can catch up here. Steemit can seem a daunting place for newcomers, particularly if you’re unsure about the whole cryptocurrency thing. This guide was written to help users new and old by keeping everything together in one place.

By now, you should be setup on the platform, and have written your first post. Let’s go over some of the more practical things you should know when browsing around Steemit. The first area I’d like to discuss is formatting your posts.

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Formatting

Formatting your posts is very important on Steemit for a number of reasons. You want your content to look polished and be easy to read, and it can also allow you to develop your own style. Different users prefer different styles, with my preference being for a clean, minimal look (hopefully you’d agree). Personally, I’m not a fan of “busy” posts, with flashing gif images and an overuse of formatting sometimes. It reminds me of the early days of the web, when geocities sites were everywhere and the Hamster Dance was the height of memes. What you go for though is up to you, so here is pretty much everything you need to know to make your content stand out.

Markdown

Markdown is a lightweight markup language that uses plain text for it’s syntax, created to enable people to write using an easy-to-use text format and that would be converted into valid HTML. If you’ve never used HTML before, you’ll probably find Markdown is the quickest way of stylising your content. There are many different variants of Markdown for different frameworks, Steemit seems to use the Github Flavoured Markdown (GFM). Here we’re going to go over the key features and syntax that you’ll need to know going forward. This is by no means an exhaustive list, so if you would like to read more, you can use this Markdown Cheatsheet.

Headers

Markdown:

# H1
## H2
### H3
#### H4
##### H5
###### H6

Alt-H1
======

Alt-H2
------

Results:

H1

H2

H3

H4

H5

H6

Alt-H1

Alt-H2

Emphasis

Markdown:

Emphasis, aka italics, with *asterisks* or _underscores_.

Strong emphasis, aka bold, with **asterisks** or __underscores__.

Combined emphasis with **asterisks and _underscores_**.

Strikethrough uses two tildes. ~~Scratch this.~~

Results:

Emphasis, aka italics, with asterisks or underscores.

Strong emphasis, aka bold, with asterisks or underscores.

Combined emphasis with asterisks and underscores.

Strikethrough uses two tildes. Scratch this.

Lists

Markdown:

* Apple
* Banana
  * Clementine
  * Dragonfruit

- Apple
- Banana
  - Clementine
  - Dragonfruit

1. Apple
2. Banana
  a. Clementine
  b. Dragonfruit

Results:

• Apple
• Banana
  • Clementine
  • Dragonfruit

• Apple
• Banana
  • Clementine
  • Dragonfruit

1. Apple
2. Banana
   a. Clementine
   b. Dragonfruit

Links

Markdown:

https://steemit.com/

[Steemit](https://steemit.com/)

@johngreenfield

Results:

https://steemit.com/

Steemit

@johngreenfield

Images

Markdown:

![Steemit Logo](https://steemit.com/images/favicons/favicon-32x32.png)

Linked Image
[![Linked Image](https://steemit.com/images/favicons/favicon-32x32.png)](https://steemit.com/)

Results:

Linked Image

Tables

Markdown:

Artist|Album|Label
-|-|-
RHCP|By The Way|Warner Bros
Pink Floyd|The Wall|Columbia

Results:

Artist	Album	Label
RHCP	By The Way	Warner Bros
Pink Floyd	The Wall	Columbia

Blockquotes

Markdown:

> Blockquotes are very handy in email to emulate reply text.
> This line is part of the same quote.

Quote break.

> This is a very long line that will still be quoted properly when it wraps. Oh boy let's keep writing to make sure this is long enough to actually wrap for everyone. Oh, you can *put* **Markdown** into a blockquote.

Results:

Blockquotes are very handy in email to emulate reply text.
This line is part of the same quote.

Quote break.

This is a very long line that will still be quoted properly when it wraps. Oh boy let's keep writing to make sure this is long enough to actually wrap for everyone. Oh, you can put Markdown into a blockquote.

Horizontal Rule

Markdown:

Three or more...

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Hyphens

***

Asterisks

___

Underscores

Results:

Three or more...

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Hyphens

---

Asterisks

---

Underscores

YouTube Videos

Markdown:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8XiqrERZo_8

Results:

HTML

Some basic inline HTML is also accepted on Steemit. This is my personal preferred method, just because I already know how to use it fluently, so it’s easier than having to try to memorise Markdown as well. In many ways, HTML can give you more control over formatting, although most of these things can also be achieved with some advanced Markdown. One thing to remember though, is that it’s best not to use both HTML and Markdown, as the latter tends to break when combined with HTML. Here are a few examples of some HTML;

HTML:

<a href="https://www.steemit.com">Steemit</a>

<h1>Header 1</h1>
<h2>Header 2</h2>

<br />

<table>
<tr>
<th>Header</th>
<th>Header</th>
</tr>
<tr>
<td>Stuff</td>
<td>More Stuff</td>
</tr>
</table>

<center>Centered Text</center>

<hr />

Results:

Steemit

Header 1

Header 2

Header	Header
Stuff	More Stuff

Centered Text

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Curation

Curation is the way that all users of Steemit can earn, even just by voting. By voting on a post which later becomes successful you can earn what’s known as Curation Rewards. Currently, 25% of the earnings from a post go towards the curators who upvote it, with the remaining 75% going to the post author. Generally speaking, the majority of Curation Rewards go to the first five people who vote for a post, and within a certain time frame. For example, ideally you want to be the first person voting on a post at exactly 30 minutes after posting. The reason for the time frame is that Steemit utilises a “reverse-auction” mechanism, where a portion of the Curation Rewards goes to the post author for the first 1800 second after publication.

Your reward is based upon the number of people who have voted before you, and at what time you’ve upvoted the post, as well as your Voting Power and Steem Power. Your voting power reduces by roughly 2% every time you vote, and regenerates exactly 20% of your used voting power per day. Since Steem Power is similar to holding stock in Steemit, the more Steem Power you have, the greater influence your vote has.

If you are here purely to make money, one tactic would be prowl the new posts page to find posts you think will become popular and upvote them before other users do. Even with low amounts of Steem Power, you can earn money by spotting hidden gems early and upvoting them.

Commenting

Your comments on Steemit count just as much as your posts, as they are all stored on the blockchain, memorialised for all to see. If you find a post you like, and feel like adding to the conversation, just hit the Reply button at the bottom of a post and send your response. Be genuine in your comment, and try to be constructive. Generic comments are frowned-upon at best by the community, things such as “Good post” “Thanks” and so on, as they do not add anything. Begging for upvotes or follows is a big no-no, and can often result in you being flagged, but we’ll get into that shortly. Spam in any form is not tolerated by the Steemit community, and there are growing groups and bots dedicated to tackling spam and scams on this platform.

Flagging Content

If you find content that is abusive, plagiarising, spam or misleading then you should flag it. The flag button is located at the top of each post or comment. When enough people flag a post or comment, it reduces that users Reputation Score and can stop them from earning on that post. Be warned, abusers of this system are not looked upon well by the community at large, so don’t go flagging posts just because you don’t agree with them. Keep an eye open for scams and schemes on here, as this is still very much the Wild West days of Steemit. There are many pushing Multi-Level Marketing, Phishing and Ponzi schemes, so be careful. Flag this trash content wherever you see it.

Resteeming

If you enjoyed a post and think your followers may enjoy it, you can resteem it. This is the same as a retweet on twitter, and that post will then appear on your Blog. Don’t resteem too much, as this can eat into your bandwidth.

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Following

When you click on the Follow button on someone’s page, it means their posts will now automatically appear in your Home Feed. It’s a similar mechanism to other sites, whether it’s Twitter’s followers or Facebook’s friends. Who you follow is up to you, but it’s generally a good idea to follow creators of content that you enjoy. If you follow too many people, your home feed will become cluttered and you’ll struggle to find the content you enjoy.

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Voting

Voting can be surprisingly complicated on Steemit, or it can be pretty simple. The amount of influence your vote has is determined by your Steem Power, with every time you vote, your Voting Power is reduced by 2%. When you get over 500 Steem Power, you can also set how much of that 2% you wish to give with each vote, but that’s a topic for a different post.

Some people will freely upvote content that they enjoy, or some will use their votes tactfully to maximise their earnings. Some people upvote in order to draw attention to them and their content, and some prefer not to upvote anything at all (which is really just a waste of a vote).

As with most things on this platform, your best way of learning is to observe other users. See how and when they vote, and come up with your own way of doing things here. There is no right way of doing things here, but there are certainly some wrong ways!

This was originally only going to be a two part guide, but as this section grew and grew, I figured it would be best to split it further. In the next installment, we'll be going over the many ways to promote yourself and your content, along with some more general tips and tricks, other Steem platforms and some etiquette advice.

So, what do you think of this guide? Has it helped you? Are there any glaring mistakes that I've made? Make sure to let me know down in the comments section, and if you guys either enjoyed this or feel that others would, I'd really appreciate you resteeming it to get it out there. If you're new to the platform, welcome! Drop me a line in the comments section, I really enjoy chatting with you all. As always, make sure to follow me for the latest Cryptocurrency, Internet and Pop Culture updates, and until next time, Peace!

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