Voting While I Was Away - VOTING VIA STEEMAUTO - A Small How To...

I was gone and out of service in the desert and was still able to use my steem to do some good and not just sit there wasting away at 100% voting power with no votes given out to my favorite projects and people

ANOTHER TIP IF YOU'RE GONE FOR A FEW DAYS
If you're not gonna be able to log in for a few days then do what I did. I did a TON of votes right before I lost service knowing that in 3 days it'd be back to 100% voting power anyway.

AUTOMATING VOTES - FOR THOSE YOU'RE ALWAYS UPVOTING

If there are people or projects that you're always upvoting then you may want to use steemauto to automate that. I think people think about the Steemauto ability to schedule posts but honestly I've yet to even use that. I love the "FANBASE" section.

https://steemauto.com - @steemauto

I just set this up before my trip and since coming back I've adjusted a few things and added a couple more friends and projects. I'll likely add a few more contests I like supporting as well.

REASONS TO NOT AUTO VOTE

If you're on steemit pretty consistently and you're doing plenty of votes then this may not be the best tool for you.

Some people I'm always upvoting but I hesitate putting on the list because I'm always changing my voting percentage based on:

• how much voting power I have at that moment
• how much I like the content
• how much voting I'm planning on doing in the near future.
• what vote power i'm trying to get down to
• randomness in where the slider ends up when I'm moving it arround

For example I always try to do a bunch of votes before going to bed so it recharges while I sleep. I try to never let my voting power get too close to 100% because then I feel like I'm wasting it.

Example argument against auto votes:
I can always go to a friend like @derekkind and just look through his past few days of posts and just vote on all of them at that time... and I visit usually much more often then the 7 day cut-off for rewards... then as a bonus I get to actually see the content. Plus I may want to give him 100% votes on some of my favorites.

BEST CASE SCENARIOS FOR AUTO VOTES

So if i'm gone or not on as much I'll for sure use steemauto ... but otherwise I am on here enough I'll happily do manual voting. But some people aren't on steemit as much as I am and perhaps steemauto will be an even better tool for them.

One of the best scenarios I hate to even mention but there are plenty of people who have set up accounts and maybe are like taking "a long siesta away from Steem" until perhaps it gets mainstream. Why not set up some steemauto before your "break" and support a few cool people and projects. Your constant voting and interaction may make you a few friends while you're away ... maybe some curation rewards because of your votes. If you're reading this that means you're probably not on a break... but perhaps one day you need to do a social media fast so just keep this in mind. I know it's harder to be an early adopter steemit still has under 1 million accounts and FB has almost 2 billion. Perhaps being an early adopter isn't your thing maybe you'll come back when the masses find their way. In the meantime... SteamAuto?

Some people checkin infrequently... if you're on every few days or every week. Then this is perfect. Put your vote to work in between your logins.

AUTO VOTE CONSIDERATIONS

• FAMILY - I totally want to support family that's why @sjarvie5 is on the list I know I'd always give her a 100% vote anyway. My brother invests in Crypto currencies and has gotten steem just to help support the family. So I look forward to more family members jumping in.
• PROJECTS - Obviously @photogames is on my list with my full support. But I also love @photofeed because I like how they've helped the photo community. Support your favorite contests because then they'll grow and last the test of time.
• UNIQUE ACCOUNTS - @qurator is a unique account that you kind of invest into and they support you... they support you at different levels if you're always upvoting them. So therefore I do a vote for them. Not sure what other accounts are like them.
• CURATION REWARDS - I still don't know enough about that to give much advice but I do know your votes do lead to you getting a small portion back.
• VOTE OF THANKS - Perhaps you want to thank the person who introduced you to Steemit or taught you a lot. Then there are people you just want to give token thanks for being so supportive. People like @cryptoctopus have followed me and supported me a ton and my vote is no where near his but I wanna make sure I'm saying thanks for a while with my smaller vote.

VARIED PERCENTAGES?
I feel like it was a while on steemit before I knew this ...
After 500sp you get to vary how much of your vote you get to use on Steemit from 1%-100% ... Actually you can do that through other platforms like busy.org anytime you want but steemit.com enables the feature at 500sp.

With steemauto you can do varied percentages right away.
If you're starting off your vote is barely worth 1cent so if you did 50% your vote is barely worth half a cent so often it's good to just keep it at 100% for a while until your vote is worth more.

FAVORITE TOOL FOR UNDERSTANGING % AND VOTE WORTH

On chrome look for an extension called Steemit More Info
Helpful to know if your vote is at or near 100% and to know how much to vote.
I keep in mind that each 100% vote is worth about 2% of my voting power (that's not exact but it is a nice rule of thumb to help in my voting)

I use https://steemworld.org/ probably the most of all those other sites It's a great one for figuring out your voting power. I think @aweber initially told me about it.