Were you aware that I use a voting bot?

Well... I do. And I also claim to be an organic curator.

I've been debating whether or not to "go public" with the fact that I use SteemVoter. Clearly you can see which side of the argument won - but this is not a in any way a product or service endorsement.

I'd rather call it a teaching moment with a good bit of transparency.

^{Screen shot I took of the SteemVoter site}

What is SteemVoter?

SteemVoter is a program which allows a user to create voting rules.
You can:

• Select which user you wish to upvote.
• Set the vote power percentage.
• Set the vote delay in minutes.

They clearly state that they reserve the right to use one vote every day from every account to self-promote the @steemvoter account. "This may not happen exactly every day and we may catch up on historical votes due in small batches."

And if you haven't seen it, they made a huge announcement!

Congratulations @thecryptodrive and @cryptomancer

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How can you use a voting bot and call yourself an organic curator?

It you take a look at my account on SteemD.com you will notice a bunch of replies. This is NOT bot generated. This is me actually spending a good portion of time throughout the day to catch up on reading and interacting with my friends and followers.

I'll get to the importance of SteemD as part of my curation toolbox in a moment.

First, I'd like to share the screenshots of who I bot vote and then I'll explain my selection process.

Okay, you've seen the who but maybe you're now curious about the WHY - and maybe even more curious why you might not be on the list, right?

I've given myself strict guidelines to adhere to and it's worked for me so far.

See, when I first used SteemVoter, I was also following Streemian trails. So in addition to being a very active curator in my own right, SV and Streemian wiped me out. My vote strength was DRAINED and it took weeks to get it back to 80% strength. I stopped following the Streemian trails and deleted everyone on my SteemVoter list. If I was going to use these tools I had to be smart about it.

The SteemVoter Guidelines

Please note that these are guidelines that I created and follow because it enhances and compliments my normal activity.

• Rarely posts more than 3 times a day.
• I subscribe to and support their initiatives
• Quality consistency
• Strictly for curation earnings

And if you look at the list I bet you can find the one account which has a bot vote "strictly for curation earnings."

• Notice there are only 30 users on my list. My personal maximum is 40.
• Notice that everyone is getting a 100% vote.

As a dolphin, my votes still do not carry a lot of weight and I've made it a practice to upvote 100% all the time with the exception of using the slider to vote 50% on comments.

• Notice that with the exception of the ONE account, I've set voting delay to 30 minutes.

Why 30 minutes? Because unless things have changed, the majority of the curation awards go back to the author if you upvote after 30 minutes. Hmm... Come to think of it, maybe I should adjust those to 40 minutes just to be safe.

If I was only here for the rewards my list would be FULL of high-earning members of Steemit. My core motivation is not earning. I want to help people. I want to grow an an individual. I want to have fun. Earning is a secondary perk for which I'm grateful for.

What's your core motivation for being on Steemit?

Using SteemD as a tool to compliment SteemVoter

When visiting my account on SteemD.com I see my account's incoming and outgoing activity. If my bot voted, I do my best to click the link, read it AND follow up with a comment.

How do you think I got past 7,100 posts, y'all?

Words of Caution

There is nothing wrong with trying to boost your curation rewards, but make sure your vote power isn't drained because you've assigned it to trails and forgot to account for your own organic interaction!

Check your account status on:
https://Steemd.com/@ YOUR_USERNAME
https://SteemDB.com/@ YOUR_USERNAME
https://Steemstats.com

If you follow a Streemian trail make certain they are not draining your vote power!

A recommendation

Think of your upvotes as leaving tips for your favorite waitress or bartender...or artist, musician, writer, cryptogeek.
This does not apply to all of my readers but...

If you are not a whale WHY are you voting less than 100%???

I just checked SteemStats and it states that I've made 45 votes in 24 hours.
100% voting power on them all
AND my vote strength is only down to 77.3%

If you're gonna vote - leave a good tip!

^{Everything in this post is my opinion and based solely on my personal Steemit activity. Your account is your own. Steemit responsibly. I'm Meredith Loughran and I approve this message.}

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Are you SteemVerified yet?

Check out SteemVerify & the importance of PoO

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^{Join my curation trail on Streemian}