Making Curation more Rewarding + Compelling Reasons Why You Should Be Doing It Regularly + Ways to Avoid Passive Following Habits

This post will discuss manual curation. I certainly appreciate those of you who have placed my posts on auto-upvote so let me clarify that. Manual curation is different in that it is exactly what it sounds like. This is when you are manually going through and upvoting/commenting posts. It takes a lot more time & can be tedious. First lets talk about why you should be engaged in regular and planned curation. You need to be making use of your valuable voting power (also known as STEEM power.)

How to know if your SP/VP is being used adequately? There are many tools out there that allow you to check your current voting percentage. Everyone will give you varying parameters at which to have your VP. I personally don't like letting it run below 68%. As I type this post, I am at 76.43% VP which means I definitely have been sharing the love! Go to steem.cool/@ yourusername to check your VP. If you are 99%, probably a great indicator you aren't getting out and about enough.

Real talk - there's only so much time in the day and as afore mentioned, curation can be time consuming and tedious. I will share my method. I am certainly NOT claiming that this is the best or only method. To me my current method is the most fair however to ensure I am sharing the love with all those that I follow. I currently am following 155 people. Steemit has such a nice way of organizing this list alphabetically!! That gives me 4 pages of people to keep up with. The 4th page only has a few people on it given that I'm following 155 doesn't give a complete fourth page. I literally do one page a day, generally speaking. Since it alphabetized it makes it easy for my OCD brain to keep track of who I've curated - since I think it's important to spread the love evenly! I do them in random order so it's not monotonous page 1, 2, 3. I might start on page 2 for instance.

Using my method which does have your curating daily, you will ensure that you know exactly who you are following and what they are up to. Unfortunately, I think many people who have adopted the "follow for follow" mentality really have no clue who they are following. This is passive following & does you (or those you follow) no good. Simply visiting the trending page and thinking you are fulfilling your curation dues by curating there does not cut it. Don't be a passive follower. Stay engaged with your fellow steemians, especially the ones you are FOLLOWING! We are all, for the most part, in the same boat here & we need to be supporting one another.

If you use my method of doing your curation in batches, you will find it's more rewarding & hopefully less overwhelming. Also, sometimes doing a whole page a day is too much for me. Therefore you can break it down. For example - today I will do all users I follow starting with an "s." Whatever method works for you that you are able to capture your entire follow list on a regular basis. Batching makes it more simple. My method has you revisiting the same people every few days and this really allows you to get a good sense for who you are following and what they are up to.

This method is a bit OCD, but it works for me. It also allows me to know conveniently exactly where on my list a few select steemians are if I need to go and catch up with a certain individual for example (i.e. end of page 1.) There will always be deviations and you won't always be following a set pattern. However, making a habit out of becoming intimately familiar with your followers will be rewarding not only in curation REWARDS but you can build friendships & that is perhaps the most rewarding of all.

I challenge you to get the most out of your Steemit experience. Become more acquainted with your follow list. Figure a way that in a weeks time you can visit everyone. You may find that you have become a passive follower and that you are following a whole host of people who are perhaps inactive or not posting the quality you find worthy of curation. This will help you to tailor your list and get the most out of your interactions on Steemit.

Lastly, I will touch on the voting slider. If you have >500 SP, you will have a voting slider. You will not be able to upvote everyone at 100%! LOL. To keep from exhausting your VP and potentially bringing on our beloved "transaction broadcast errors", I have found keeping the slider between 5-15% is the best.

I hope that this post is helpful. As I've mentioned, this isn't the only way to go about manually curating but it's the best way to capture my whole list and maintain fair voting habits. Please feel free to drop a line or two (or five..) on your methodology! Thanks for visiting my blog.

(my header image is courtesy of pixabay)