Minnows Are Stronger If They Swim Together

How many Facebook Friends do you have?
What about LinkedIn connections, or followers on Instagram?

I am sure we have all seen, or have experienced, the challenge to users of the various Social Media sites to build as many friends, followers or connections as they can. This building up of a community, or family, is part of the social side of social media.

Some statistics: These are estimated Unique Monthly Visitors for some of the top Social Media platforms.

Facebook (friends) 1.1bn
Youtube (followers) 1.0bn
Instagram (followers) 100m
Tumbler (followers) 110m
LinkedIn (connections) 255m
Twitter (followers) 310m
Steemit (followers) 80k

As you can see, the major social media sites are structured, and have developed, around the concept of building a network of friends, connections or followers.

And so it is with Steemit – but while Steemit is still a new concept, with a small, but rapidly growing community of keen bloggers, I believe we can all reach more people to read (and hopefully upvote our posts if they like the content) if we all can build a decent number of followers right up front.

So here is my idea, that came to me at 3 am a few mornings ago.

As those of you who diligently follow the wide variety of Steemit posts will have read, there have been a number of posts about the relative weighting, power and roles of the whales (those clever, in fact brilliant, future-thinking, progressive, action oriented and rather wealthy people who thought up, invested in and developed Steem, Steemit (and other Steem derivatives) as compared to the rest of us, the minnows.

A minnow, who is rather confident and competent.

Check out this one, posted by azaan for instance:

And how about this one, posted recently by rok-sivante.

And then there are some minnows who feel less confident and not quite as competent at this stage.

This debate about the relative weighting of the Whales versus the Minnows did get me thinking... and this is where my thoughts took me:

We all know that Fish are safer and more secure from predatory Whales and Sharks when they swim in large shoals, or schools. In the same way, we minnows can create for ourselves greater weighting and in so doing, take some of the voting power, security and safety back - by forming Shoals of Minnows (SoMs). I really believe that we mere minnows (mMs) will feel a little more secure and a lot more powerful, in our own SoM. I hope no mM and hopefully no Whale, will see this as anarchy by us minnows.

This is definitely a situation of safety in numbers. So rise up, I say, and let all of us mMs take active steps to form our own SoMs with other mMs who have similar interests to ours. In fact, you can even consider your SoM as your family.

Wouldn't even the tiniest of us minnows feel much safer, with a greater degree of bravado and security, when surrounded by many other minnows (MoM).

To ensure that a system like this works fairly, and is simple to follow, I have suggested a few rules.

A Few Rules:

I thought we might set up a few rules at the beginning, to make sure that each SoM operates fairly and smoothly for each member (or mere) minnow (mM). There will be no policing of the rules, except by members of each SoM, so we will all just rely on the integrity of all mMs.

The idea is to create SoMs of about 50 mMs, at least initially. That is to say, each SoM would have up to 50 mMs who all follow other mMs in that SoM. Not all mMs will necessarily follow all posts of other mMs in their SoM, however, but the rules cover that situation. (By the way: if these acronyms are starting to irritate you, I fully understand, but please bear with me.)

These are my suggested rules, but I would be more than happy, in fact delighted, to receive suggestions in comments to this post. In a democracy, all mMs have an equal say, I say, so say your piece.

1. If you follow someone, then they MUST follow you back for at least 2 months. If they find that your posts are not “floating their boat”, then they may unfollow you.
2. You should not follow more than 5 other mMs per day. The reason for this, I believe, is that before you follow another mM, you should at least read some of their posts, upvote a couple that you find interesting and well written and comment on some of the posts. That then makes the ‘follow’ a genuine one and not just doing the numbers.
3. A mM in a SoM MUST do their very best to read all the posts of other MoM members. This will be essential for rule 1 to be followed properly. It is for this reason that I suggest a maximum SoM size of 50. However once any SoM includes 50 mMs, they may decide to increase the size themselves.

How I suggest each mM can get started to form their SoM quickly and easily:

• Contact those who have upvoted any of your previous posts with the heading follow-4-follow and link your comment to this post. That will help them know what is happening, in case they have missed my post.
• Contact those who have commented on any of your previous posts and do the same as above.
• Contact people on Steemit who you know personally and whose content appeals to you and suggest a follow-4-follow, again with a link to this post.
• Contact those whose posts you have commented on and follow the same approach.

As an avid social media marketer, I believe that building a tribe of like-minded people in your close network can not only benefit you, but will also help you focus your writing efforts and improve them, when receiving comments and feedback from your network, i.e. your SoM.

I am posting this proposal for us minnows to swim together in the hope that it will grab the interest of enough of us to make it worthwhile. I am also more than happy to debate these proposed rules and the suggested operational approach.

Forward and Upward, I say. Strength comes when us Mere Minnows form Shoals of Minnows.

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