Are you your ideal follower?
The Steemit platform
The Steemit platform is supposed to be all about good content. Keeping this up, turns out to be challenging. What do you do to live up to the standards of quality, how do you feel things should work?
Your Posts
To attract people to read your posts, you will have to put in some effort. What do you do?
- Do you read and reread your post to end up with an almost flawless post?
Or do you just typ whatever you feel like thinking people will understand what you mean no matter the errors you make? - Do you try to make your text as clear as possible, to the point, so people can easily grasp what it is you are saying without having to reread the beginning of long sentences?
Or do you just ramble on because you feel like long posts are rewarded better? - Do you post often, for posting sake, or do you limit yourself? Quality over quantity.
- Do you write about what you want to write, or do you write about what generates upvotes?
- Do you reread your post after publishing?
Followers
Once you have published your post, you want followers to do their job. What is that job exactly? What do you expect from your followers?
- Do you want them to read your post?
- Do you want hem to comment on your post?
- Do you want them to resteem your post?
- Do you want them to point out the errors in your text so you can correct them?
- Do you want new followers to spontaneously follow you?
Or do you just want upvotes? No matter who is voting.
Following followers
Who do you follow, not just in your list, but actually follow, read their posts, comment on them, resteem them.
- How many posts do you actually read?
- How many posts do you upvote without reading them?
- What makes that you read one post and not the other?
- Do you tell people how to improve their text?
- Do you follow people spontaneously?
Increase reputation
We all want to increase our reputation. To do that we need help from others, preferrably those with much more power than we have.
- How often have you adjusted your text to increase the chances of being found by a whale, or curationtrail?
- How often have you helped someone who you outnumber in reputation, to be their whale so to say?
Question
When you have the answers to all the questions above, do you believe you are your ideal follower? In other words, do you act upon your followers the way you want them to act upon you? Do you put in the effort, create the high quality posts, you want to read from your followers? Do you help out others the way you want whales to help you out?
My thoughts
Sometimes it feels like we are all very engaged in writing, but what is the use if no one is reading? That would mean we are just miners. Mining with words instead of a mining rig, but just as isolated.
![](https://steemitimages.com/DQmUgzZFWhUKwSVwQ2g3tbto52SiPYW5hzPh3zbvYV851CQ/afbeelding.png)
![](https://steemitimages.com/0x0/https://cdn.steemitimages.com/DQmQJKgysYpuRSiwkTx5qrhFjPfVhtrugyZYkNfPbz8vHsf/songcontest-banner.gif)
Nice post! I totally agree with the article. It coincides with the question I have been trying to answer regarding Steemit these past few weeks: what is it I am actually doing, why and who for? Just like your post it gave me some interesting questions to answer. Resteemed!
Btw. nice songcontest banner!
Thank you. It is easy to get caught up in things without losing track of the why you do it. With Steemit there is a chance of getting the FOMO feeling. I have to get online, reply, vote, otherwise I am missing something.
With a little luck you are aware of that and start counteracting, like you did.
My golden rule is, it needs to give me energy, not anxiety. That is the real reward, the post payouts are just a bonus.
Glad you like the banner. Good old Flash, is still perfect for this kind of work. Now I need to create another one for the #keepthelink photocontest :)
Obviously I'm not the ideal follower. I do try to put effort in my own blogs and also read the blogs of others that seem interesting to me, but sometimes I just upvote because I think it can give me some curation reward.
In general I do try to engage with people and learn from others on Steemit as much as possible. I'm now about 5 months in and I learned a lot so far.
Keep up the good work. I really like what you're doing here!
Thanks for your reply. In the end I think it will be very hard to keep track of everyone. Imagine all the people you follow start posting once or twice each day. Reading and replying will become a day job.
I wasn't looking for the ideal follower, just wondered if people do or are for others what they want others to do or be for them.
Very true! We should be the kind of followers we want others to be, and post in the way we would enjoy others to make content too! :)
Exactly. I try to reply to new accounts a few times per day. Doesn't always work, but I am trying :)
I agree about quality. I just joined Steemit, and have not written my first post. I'd rather read other people's posts, and learn about the platform.
I think the key to good communication is simply to care about other people, to offer them something of value that will make their lives a bit better.
By reminding me of the "golden rule," to treat others as you yourself wish to be treated, you made my life a little bit better. So thanks, and take care. :)
Hi, thanks for your reply. Well I can already say you are strarting off better than I did.
It is a good thing to just sit, watch, read, and comment. Like other people I started posting stuff I thought would be interesting to others, without realizing there are no others listening yet.
Starting on Steemit is like walking in to a giant room with thousands of people already talking in their own circle. New arrivers are kind of lost. Have to start talking to complete strangers and say something noteworthy, or nice, or... well everything better than 'great post, please upvote me'.
My advice would be, pick a topic you really like and move around in those circles. Participate in contests, that can be a big help too. Not all contests are about being great at something, many contest just require some kind of comment and after some time there is a draw.
Keep track of things you eventually want to write about, just in case you forget or experience a writer's block.
Have fun!
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