My experience at the Blue Waves Academy: Bluewaves Mentorship Project

Official Image of the Blue Waves Academy from Here

After being taught about steemit and cryptocurrency by @destinysaid through the @africaunchained project, he recommended I join the @bluewaves academy. This academy was set up to mentor minnows and redfishes by mentors @ogochukwu and @dragonslayer109 in the way of steemit and understanding the etiquettes needed on steemit.

I was one of the first 30 minnows inducted and I've learnt more and understood other concepts that were not very clear to me. We were mentored on the following categories: Personal Branding, Steemit Etiquette, Content Quality, Steemit Mindset of which I'll share what I have learnt.

Personal Branding

One should promote himself/herself on steemit. Yes, branding is mostly known with companies but you too can brand yourself. How do you want to be viewed by others and what do you want to be associated with? Many come on steemit and think it's a bed of STEEM that can be slept upon by just posting anything which is not so true. One needs to be a force to reckon with and deserving followership. Adding value to steemit and bringing new innovations is one of the ways to brand oneself.

Steemit Etiquette

Many (newbies) minnows and redfishes do not know how to socialise on steemit. Just like every other social media, one needs to make friends and engage with other people. When making comments, one should do it right, not like the spammy "follow me as I have followed you or upvote me because I just upvoted you." One should not go upvote begging and there has been a trend of sending messages with post links in memos to dolphins and whales which is not good of good steemit etiquettes. One should try to follow the rules of steemit judiciously in order not to be flagged and discarded like a soiled diaper.

Content Quality

One of the most important things on steemit is the quality of posts. One shouldn't copy and paste posts from other people, that is intellectual theft. When writing contents, if researched, it should be referenced well and all images used it not originally one's should also be referenced. Whatever niche, one should always make one's post worth the read. It will be a brain sore reading a post that doesn't make sense at all. And one's post always goes in line with personal branding, doing what one loves and doing it well.

Steemit Mindset

Every newbie coming to steemit thinks they are in an upvote factory where you post anything, upvotes will come rolling in and viola, blockchain wallet grows bigger. But after a few days of blogging, one sees it's not that way. As stated earlier, one needs to engage with people and add something meaningful to steemit. You have to give, help out in any way and contribute and maybe the blockchain revolution will bring smiles to your blockchain wallet. Steemit is not a quick way to riches but is a lifelong investment that can be one's legacy.

Conclusion

Credit

Above is the summary of what I learnt. I have graduated from the academy and made new friends. The final question asked before graduation was, "if you had the power to change something in steemit, what would that be?" My answer is to change the way flagging is done. Many users flag indiscriminately and an example of this is @oluwoleolaide's post where he shared with us how a serial flagger goes around flagging newbies.To reduce the occurrence of this, a team will be set up to overlook all flagged posts and crosscheck if they are worth it and all flagging will be done in form of an application making it a long and hard process for ingenuine flagging. This may be a wish but it will go a long way in helping newbies if indiscriminate flagging is stopped.
I have read a lot of posts on how to survive and make it on steemit, the dos and don'ts of steemit (my favourite are that of @inquiringtimes and @luzcypher found here and here respectively), they are helpful but mentoring is nothing compared to reading. So I encourage every minnow to join the @bluewaves academy here.
Thanks to mentors @ogochukwu and @dragonslayer109, It was an amazing experience.