Newbies - a few tips (again)
Help and advice for newbies arriving on Steemit and don't know what to do next
My kids joined Steemit!
They not only joined, but they started posting too!
And then they brought others to post.
There are a number of newbies knocking around on Steemit because of me and therefore, I feel it’s my responsibility to get them moving and not pissing-off anyone while they’re here.
If you’re here because of me, then listen up!
Make your first post a GOOD ONE! and post it with the FIRST tag of introduceyourself
Steemit is ‘decentralised’ – which means there are ‘no rules’ – but, there are guidelines and if you don’t follow at least some of these guidelines, you’re going to wind-up pissing-off some people - and while you do not want to piss-off anyone on Steemit, you really REALLY do not want to piss-off me… (because I’ll clip your earole in real life!)
True story
Your circle of friends has the potential to get MUCH bigger, VERY fast but be careful. Don’t follow for follow – this isn’t Twitter. Follow people you like the ‘look’ of – their blogs and videos are interesting to you. There’s a reason for that – your feed will get way too cluttered if you follow everyone and you’ll miss blogs that you want to read.
The same goes for resteems – if you resteem everyone’s post, your page will become cluttered and no one will be able to find YOUR posts.
Yes, it’s nice to show support, but try supporting people by dropping a link into your blog – see the bottom of this post for an example.
Follow each other – this is your ‘tribe’ and their accounts will grow at a similar rate to yours and one day you’ll look back on this time and think ‘Wow! Haven’t we ALL come a long way?’
UPVOTE if you like something you’ve read, but don’t just upvote because you want an upvote back.
An upvote is not like a Facebook ‘Like’ – it’s more than that. There’s actual money riding on this. Use it wisely.
No, it doesn’t cost you anything more than a piece of your voting power and bandwidth, but you do have a limited amount of them so support your friends, of course, but if you like a blog enough to post a comment on it, make sure you have some voting power left to allow you to upvote the blog too. There’s nothing so disrespectful (in my opinion) than commenting on someone’s blog post and expecting them to upvote your comment when you’ve not even bothered to upvote their post.
An upvote is a ‘Like’ on steroids. It means something. It means: I read your post and I liked it. Thank you for taking the time to post that.
Once you’ve upvoted, if you have something constructive to say, comment. Personally, I like to read comments, but NOT comments which have no value or substance – ‘good/nice/great post/blog/writing’ is NOT a comment I will ever upvote, so save yourself the time and effort.
Write something that will catch the eye of the person you’re making the comment to. Say why you liked what they’d written or disagree with them if necessary, but be polite.
ALWAYS BE RESPECTFUL! There’s really no need to be rude, even if the other guy is rude to you. Remember, this is ALL open – EVERYONE can see what you’re doing!
TAGS - research your tags. Use tags that are relevant to your post. Don’t just plonk your blog in the tags that are making most money because your blog will be ignored. If necessary, make your own group tag. Get together with your friends and make a tag that links ALL of you and use it every time you post a blog – use it at the end, though because the first tag is the important one and you can’t edit that one.
One final thing - DO NOT ASK FOR UPVOTES, FOLLOWS, RESTEEMS it’s never acceptable and it could get you flagged – if only because you’re the ninety-fifth person that asked in the last fifteen minutes.
MOST IMPORTANT!
Your rep – the number at the side – starts at 25. If you work reasonably hard and make good content, that number will rise. If you’re a dick and piss-off people, that number will plummet to the depths and once it passes below 25, people start avoiding you and your comments/blogs so save yourself some hassle, don’t be a dick.
Your Rep is important! It shows that other people think you do good work and that is one more thing that gets you noticed – it’s a good thing. Don’t think you can buck the system, you can be the bad-boy with the minus rep and still get by (like you did at school). It doesn’t work that way here. It would be better to dump that account and start afresh than try to recover lost rep – believe me, I’ve seen it.
Before I go, one last thing.
Listen to advice from people that have been here longer than you – a LOT longer than you.
There are so many mistakes you can make, there’s not time enough to make them ALL yourself.
To end this off, these are some of the people that have recently joined (or started posting) that I’m trying to encourage.
@danielles
@storminatcup
@greg-shackleford
@race-redmedia
@praada
@stefglazby
Edited to add @frank1in and @b00m
If there are any more of your friends joined up, let me know and I’ll add them to this.
Oh yes… before I forget.
DON’T TRY TO GAME THE SYSTEM – IT’S NOT WORTH IT!
Cite your sources - like this Pictures from Google Free to use search - add pictures and space out your paragraphs
Got it all? Are you sure?
Any questions, drop a comment in.
Hey Michelle, thanks so much for this advice! I'm new here as well, and have been reading all I can about how to contribute to this platform. The info in the "Welcome" section of the website was very helpful and coming across posts from seasoned users such as yourself is even more helpful.
That's awesome that your kids and their friends are now on steemit too, so cool. I like your attitude about wanting to make sure they use the platform constructively, rather than adding more of the crap that's so often found on twitter and facebook.
I look forward to reading more of your posts, and hopefully becoming a useful contributor on this site, see ya around ☺
Perfect! Thank you!
And Good Luck!
Good advice for everyone to remember, @michelle.gent! It's great that your kids are now on Steemit. I am following both...
Thank you!
Hi @michelle.gent
Excellent advice, recently, many newcomers join the program, so the educational program for them is extremely important.
It is especially important to fight with spammers, that they would realize their mistakes and leave constructive comments :)
Oh, I did not know that you encourage so many beginners, but can I also make this list ?, as a constant fan ... ahah :)
Good job
Haha! Thank you!
it was not a joke :)
OK... take a look ;)
@michelle.gent Thank you so much for such a wonderful and informative post. It really motivate us and help us how to make position at Steemit. In this community the people like you such a blessing for us.
Please Keep sharing
Thanks
I wish I have read this when I just joined! Thank you! Actually, I think that people make these mistakes not because they don’t know it’s not worth doing this, but more out of desperation. You post, you don’t get upvotes and then you start trying everything possible here.
You want to know how much my first posts achieved?
A grand total of NOTHING.
I didn't stop, I didn't 'get desperate enough to try anything' and I kept on posting.
Good advice - good enough to resteem. ;-)
Thank you! 😍
Well, there ya go: soon, you'll be resteemed all over the place. :-)
Haha! I can only hope! ;)
Thank you very much @michelle.gent for this post, it will go along way in helping new bies and people like me that are fighting there way up is really nice.
I am supporting all of what said by you a ove.
But 2 things i shall ask you
Firstly
Why you did not say spammers. Spam. In your post... I think we should teach new comers that not to spam and when their reputation is strong enough they should help spammers not to spam
Secondly
Most of the newcomers here are from the third world and i can guess from 700,000 members at least 500,000 members are from third world who they are simply just poor or young students whom we must support and add them to our circle to stop most of them from what.... from spamming
Love you and thank you
True no doubt, those third world countries are all over steemit and I'm one of them.
I get really proud of some Nigerians here on Steemit that are doing a good job on Steemit and promoting steemit and steem with their little earnings.
An average Nigerian earn around $85 to $100 a month from white collar jobs and most of them that are here are happy that they've found a good alternative.
It's good that we are taking advantage of this decentralized systems and using it to change lives in our society. Just take a look at what people like @ejemai @tojukaka and myself are doing in Nigeria.
We would have taken our little earnings and get a new house or new car, but we are using it to talk to the Youths, opening steem accelerator hubs with free WiFi and electricity. These is something that the government of Nigeria cannot do for their people.
Currently im in way to enugu to talk to the Youths there about Steemit and I'll use the opportunity to talk them out of taking money from selfish politicians who go around giving youths chicken change so they can cause election violence.
I'm using steem to change lives in my world
Well done, but again, a little advice. Don't get people to join Steemit.com by telling them they can earn money - because when they're not millionaires by next week, they start getting impatient and spamming, asking for help/upvotes/resteems etc and that is what annoys people that have been here working hard for months.
I would rather three people joined that add value to the platform and work hard to build up their account than 300 people who are here for what they can get and will hop off to the 'next big thing' as soon as they cash out.
Yes, that's exactly what I do, I'm almost a year on Steemit and I understand what it means to tell newbies "Steemit pays you for your work". If you pass the wrong information, their expectations will be too high.
Thanks, this meetup that I'm going for is for those who are already doing well on Steemit
Thank you for supporting the newbies.
I think it's time to pick your battles wisely. Rather than trying to support everyone you must decide on the few you wish to support and support those few well, rather than trying to support many and doing it badly.
I have a limited amount of time and I decided that spammers were not a priority for this blog. If you want to write about them, feel free, it's your blog :)
I disagree. I'm choosing who to support because if I support a few and they do well, and they support a few, and they do well, and they support a few and THEY do well, eventually, we'll get around to everyone.
That is just the way forward. You can't just help all at once
Thats wonderful sir. Im following asap. I stay in Jos. Is there a platform for steemians here.
I am a newbie on steemit and was wondering how I can get started. At first, I had difficulty in Knowing what to to and what not to do. at a point I got so confused as to how to even start, not until I came across this post. Of the truth this post has been of immense benefit to me, with your advice and kind suggestions I thing I now have an insight on how steemit works. Persona;;y, i want to contribute greatly to the success of this community and I hope I will get there sooner than later. Thanks a lot for this post.
the main thing is find what you can be useful to the community. Choose your path and follow it. In the beginning, few get successful. But thanks to the team you will achieve it. Good luck
Saludos, muy importante todas tus observaciones y recomendaciones, 100% de acuerdo, cuidemos y conservemos nuestra plataforma para poder crecer en ella.