A Few Simple Steemit Guidelines for Noobs

So It's your first day on Steemit. You have great ideas for this awesome platform. Now what do you do?

Better get that sorted out before you make a grand mess of things.

Did you know that as far as I know Steemit does not have any rules. I am probably wrong in this but that is the impression I have found. Many time the impression that people get about a website almost become like fact.

I have been on Steemit since February and through trial and error I have found things that work, and many more that are bad ideas and don't work at all. With this post I will try and walk you through some of them and explain what I have discovered. Not that this is just a collection of guidelines and NOT an all encompassing post. There will be thing that I do not cover. If I miss something feel free to post it in the comments. Will what I suggest be the best way to do things here? They work for me, but I am always looking for a better way. What I do may not work for you. If not, take a look around Steemit for other guides, you will no doubt find something that fits your style.

When I first joined Steemit I had no idea of what I was about to dive into. I didn't even know you could earn money until I had been on the platform for a few weeks. I just thought it would be a great place to share all the great and awesome thing that I found on the Internet. I wasn't concerned with followers or upvotes, and had no clue what the reputation score was all about.

When I first started posting I just wanted to share everything I found. So I did the absolute worst thing I could do.

I started copying and pasting. Nope I didn't even think to give any credit. I honestly don't remember how many posts I made before I started noticing the negative comments. I was very lucky in that I never received any downvotes. But I did get many comments telling me what I was doing wrong, and how to do thing right. I am so glad I payed attention, I just wish that I had taken note of who it was that helped me out so much. I really should thank them. This is also when I found out you could get paid to post GOOD ORIGINAL content.

So I stopped posting for awhile and started studying. I studied Steemit. A lot of it still confuses me but I am still learning. In my studies I found that to succeed on Steemit you absolutely must not cheat. No copying shit. Also there are a few things you need to obtain on Steemit to get thing to work out well.

Followers

You need followers so that when you post that super duper awesome post, somebody will see it and hopefully upvote it. The more followers you get the more eyeballs on you post. And that will lead to more upvote if your post is good.

There are a few ways to get followers, Many of them suck. The worst as far as I am concerned is just following thousands of random accounts in the hope that some will follow you in return. The next worst is the Follow For Follow method, whereby you tell folks to follow you and you will follow them back.

What you end up with is a feed full of junk posts that are mostly spam and plagiarism. Nothing you want to see anyway. So it ends up being a waste of time. That's it for the bad ways to get followers.

The two best ways to get followers are as follows(Pun intended):

1. Before you even start posting, start looking over the Steemit categories and open up the ones that interest you. Start reading them and make meaningful comment that are about the post. Don't just leave one or two word comments like “Good job, or Nice”. Make your comments mean something. Show that you read the post. Take an interest. Do this on 10 to 15 different posts every day for 2 to 3 weeks. People will begin to notice you and they will start upvoting your comments and following you. Make sure to reply to those folks that have commented on your comment. This is a good time to start following people yourself so that things that interest you will show in your feed.

2. Start posting good quality original content. Be sure to cite your sources and to Learn Markdown. Use pictures in your posts, preferably your own. If you don't have your own pictures, then be sure to link the source. Eventually people will start to upvote and comment on your posts. Always reply to the comments.

Followers, upvotes, and comments are the bread and butter of Steemit success. Those combined with great content will help you to do well on Steemit.

OK, my hand is tired and my brain hurts. I know could cover more on the subject, but not today.

Steem on.

Troy.

All images used under CC0