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I feel your frustration. Steemit can feel like YouTube in the way you can spend considerable time crafting a short film or documentary, only to find it totally eclipsed in terms of likes, audience figures and Google ad payments by some person's clip of their dog falling off a sofa that took no talent at all to upload.

I do not have much advice about being successful. If I were you I would just concentrate on stuff that is meaningful to you and worth spending time on.

That's it, that's the key. :) Just do what you love, it's very likely you will find an audience. You have just made a few posts @thepoet, you have to be more persistent.

Don't try to gain popularity.
(Don't diss it either, obviously.)
Just use it like you would facebook.
Unless you find facebook to be more functional.