Any advice on how this site works?
I've go several chapters of a novel up on this site now, and I'd like to promote them. After all, my whole reason for publishing my work here is to build an audience. Honestly, though, I find the FAQ more confusing than enlightening in terms of how to share posts with other users.
Any tips from experienced users would be appreciated.
The best way to promote your content is to create more content. Blog about anything and everything you can think of, and link them back to your stories. Insert linkbacks to previous chapters with every new chapter. Participate in discussions on other posts that excite you. Look for the most popular tags and use them whenever you can.
As for your novel, it is technically excellent -- but too few people here will want to read it. Steemians are used to posts that run from 500 to 1500 words and boast colourful images. The long chapters you're posting on Steemit will be quickly skipped over.
Steemit favours serial fiction with short chapters. It's probably going to be hard to break up your existing work if it doesn't fit this format. But at the least, Steemians will be more inclined to enjoy the story if you break up the text walls with images.
Inserting images on Steemit is easy. Copy an image, paste it in the text, editor and Steemit will take care of the rest. But this is something I discovered through trial and error.
Steemit doesn't offer a native way to schedule posts. You'll need a third-party platform like Steemauto to do it.
There used to be notifications for comments. It's been removed now. Unfortunately, you'll have to monitor comments and replies manually.
The dirty little secret about Steemit is that it is successful in spite of its UX and UI shortcomings. Success here requires working around its flaws...and bugging the devs to improve the platform.
Thank you, that helps. Personally, I tend to stop reading a post at the second inline picture or the first animated gif. I'm thinking Steemit is probably not the platform for me.
I grew up with early 90s Internet. Gaudy backgrounds and walls of text. When I see a picture or a gif my first instinct is to skip it over unless it's somehow relevant to the article.
But this market has its peculiar demands, and to make money from it, I need to adapt to the market's tastes.
"In my day, video games were called 'books'."
Obviously you would like to contact people who are interested in the kind of stories you write. That is fairly easy to achieve.
For instance, if you categorise your novel as being a fantasy story, then right click on the tag 'fantasy' and click on 'open in new tag'. Voila! you now have a page (or many pages) of posts made that used that category. Look through the authors and find a few whose writing you like.
In each one, make an interesting comment about the story, adding into it by insinuation that you also write similar kinds of stories. If you tell them you write, often they will ignore you. But if, for instance, you say, "the way you handled the meeting of Delilah with that alien Sampson, was brilliant; if I had written of that meeting, it would not have occurred to me that I should have him throw up all over her because of tasting a date, and thus having her fall in love with him because of some weird alien chemical in his green vomit." Okay, that was fun to write, but I hope it illustrates what I am trying to suggest? Make them feel curious so that they check out your blog (home page). Also, resteem a few good posts from them, so that they resteem some of yours.
If you have chosen authors with a decent following, their readers will also become curious and check your posts - hey, it is how I ended up here.
Please keep in mind that you could have 20,000 followers and have no readers. Most who follow, do so in the hope you will follow them, not because they ever intend visiting your posts. It is better to have a few hundred real followers. Also, I might be wrong, but if I see someone has 500 followers, but only follows 30, I skip following them. It is a fairly good indication that they will not be interested in reciprocating...
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Just so that I am clear about what I am hoping for: I do not want you, or anyone else to read my posts. I am not posting them for anyone to read (this applies to my stories, posts about videos, music, my 'Enjoy & Learn' series, my rare poems, I do not mind anyone reading. My stories are here only for me and the future).
e&oe
Thank you, I appreciate you taking the time to write that out. Sounds like a plan to me.
There are a lot of good "Top 5" type articles on tips for new steem users. I'd start out with those (I don't have any particular ones to recommend). Also, I'd recommend posting regularly and commenting (thoughtfully) regularly to build up a brand around your account. The following will come from you bringing value to the Steem ecosystem. This sort of behavior will raise your reputation score and rewards. The more rewards you have in Steem Power, the more you will earn from community upvoting of your content. Is that a helpful start?
Yes, thank you. I've been looking for more people to follow.
Thanks, this is my issue also. I'm finding it tough to find interesting stuff do to the site organization.
I still haven't managed to upload any images, and I really don't like the text editor. There doesn't seem to be any way to schedule posts, and the site doesn't offer notifications when someone makes a comment.
It's pretty shitty. If they don't add half of the basic shit that reddit offers I don't see myself using it very long.