This week for my abstract art friday I decided to do part abstract and part minnow art, why? Because I have decided to immerse myself in the PAL/Minnowsupport community over at discord and I am so glad I did! I would like to offer some tips and advice to other minnows like me about a big resource you may be missing out on! See the art above? Thats a school of tiny minnows swimming around for scraps, alone we can't do much, but as a group we have power, power in numbers! And you can be part of it!

It's a group called PAL which stands for Peace Abundance and Liberty and the main hangout is over on discord, they have their own channel. It's a great community dedicated to helping out all the little minnows and a place to make friends with others on Steemit. You can access it with this invite, I've set the link not to expire but if it does just leave a comment here and I will get you another one: https://discord.gg/p5tYmdW

Now before you join I would like to offer you some advice. This week I have seen a lot of newbies coming through and making some faux pas. You want to make the best impression possible when you arrive so here are a few tips:

1. When you first arrive you should visit the room called #starthere. There are lots of useful guides in there that will tell you what you need to do. Read up! Lots of people are willing to help but we are not your mommies either so do a little research please ;)

2. Another advice is DO NOT spam the chat with posts, the general chat is not the place for your new and amazing post, use promotional channels for that, if you do you'll get flamed and someone will spank you, you have been warned!

3. You can register and have access to the upvote bots! You need to go to the #registration room and type $register yoursteemitusername (use your actual steemit username here) and the two bots (minnowsupport and banjo) will give you instructions on how to register. Follow all the instructions, don't forget the memos and then go back and type the same prompt. It will confirm that you are registered! Yay! If you are having trouble come into the general room and ask for help (if I am there I will help you), also if you are very new and don't have the SBD someone will most likely give it to you.

4. You should also register with steemvoter.com and autoupvote minnowsupport and same with streemian.com (called becoming a fan).
   @rhondak has created a very useful video showing all the steps, how easy is that?
   https://steemit.com/minnowsupport/@rhondak/tutorial-for-palnet-registration

5. You can send screenshots of these last two steps to @aggroed or @gmuxx in discord and you will become a full member :)

There are other things you can do within the community like having access to other bots and delegating power which gives back to the community. I know it sounds like a lot, you don't have to do it all at once but the best part about the community is the friends and connections you'll make there! I've already joined multiple groups and met lots of great people in a short period of time. If you are a little more introverted you can come chat in #quietroom, it's a little less chaotic and allows you to dip your toes in.

@sammosk has created an amazing guide here which covers some of the other aspects of minnowsupport which I advise you to read because I simply can't fit all of this into one post, it's such an expansive project, all designed to help out the little guys!
https://steemit.com/minnowsupportproject/@sammosk/minnow-support-reaching-out-that-helping-fin

Last but not least if you are an artist @artsygoddess has set up an art chat, it is a little quiet right now but hopefully it'll grow and become a great place for artists to chat and help each other out! Join the discord here! https://discord.gg/SVHcXbd

That's all for now, if you have any questions drop them in the comments section or ask over on discord, I hope to see you there :)