Why #newbieresteemday Could Use Your 500 SP - And How I Suggest You Distribute It

The Launch

Yesterday was the launch of the Newbie Resteem Initiative: Its Here - Its Launched ... Come Join Us!!! (Newbie Resteem Initiative). And wow what an exciting day it was!

This great idea was conceived and is managed by @mudcat36. And I immediately decided to throw my efforts behind supporting him. For details: The Steemit Newbie Resteem Initiative.

While I'm not surprised the interest in the program was positive, I am blown away by the speed at which people decided to adopt it. We had many posts of people making the day their #newbieresteemday in order to help out newbies! On top of that we had massive demand for the resteems and an overwhelming response from the newbie community. All from a "cold start" with absolutely no preparation (other than me and @mudcat36 talking about the concept).

In fact, my post in less than 24 hours had been viewed 223 times and upvoted 59 times! And this doesn't even count all the other posts announcing the new initiative (see the hashtag #newbieresteemday). And while we did manage to get a $12.60 upvote, more than $10 came from one whale @surpassinggoogle who I had sent a quick message telling him about it.

Think about that for a second... that means we got 58 upvotes worth about $2.60 out of a total of 222 views (I took out our benevolent whale)... That is some serious interest in the newbie community, I can say that because of the views and the upvote rate was very high (obviously we are the ones with the lack of "punch" to our votes so the upvote total is meaningless). But make no mistake, just read the comment section and you will see organic enthusiasm from the community both newbie and slightly higher minnows too. I can't imagine if a few whales start to pay attention to it and then we would be off to the races. The initiative is exciting and needed for sure!

Why I'm Writing This Post

One of our early adopters and a new "founding member" @plushzilla brought to my attention a way to get some STEEM delegated to our cause. He told me of a contest where @suesa was delegating 500 SP to the winner of the contest: Do you want 500 SP Delegation?... Isn't it great when other's quickly try to help you? (Note: its a credit the the "concept" not to any individual, that he would've thought to bring it to my attention)

So I decided to "compete" for the delegation of SP in hopes of furthering our new initiative. I thought, wouldn't it be great if we could have @mudcat36 get the voting power that 500 SP more would provide him? In fact I thought, wouldn't it be great if we could even convince @suesa to give a few more of us some SP to encourage the newbies with our resteems. So I set out to write this post in hopes of appealing to our cause.

The Contest Objectives By @suesa

From her post in her own words:

"I want to delegate the 500 SP to Minnows who will improve the Steem community. Be it with their posts, their actions, their commitment or by attracting new users."

"Furthermore, I encourage everyone with a higher SP to do something similar. With Steem price rising and the user base increasing, there are more and more users with very little SP, even if they invest. If we want them to stay, we need to give them more impact on the platform."

These words are very powerful to someone who just launched a new program. From @mudcat36's article, "This is the first post for the Steemit Newbie Resteem Initiative, we are an initiative aimed at strengthening the Steemit platform by promoting and supporting new users in their first month on Steemit."

Coincidence or fate? I know where I stand ;)

What We Would Do With The Delegated 500 SP

I am just a partner in this project, and as such I am just one voice. But I would suggest that we would use the delegated SP to upvote as many posts as possible that are resteemed by our participants by using their feeds. That's a mouthful, lol.

A quick explanation of how the project works for those that don't have time to read our posts about #newbieresteemday.

These are the 6 things you really need to know:

#1 Its a way for anyone who wants to help newbies learn, get noticed, and grow.

#2 Its easy to do, you just decide on a day of the week that you want to help newbies.

#3 Make a "master post" for the day inviting people to recommend a newbie's post to be resteemed (note: they just put the link in your comment section). See my example at #newbieresteemday

#4 Encourage anyone to suggest a link to you, and you will read and make suggestions; and of course resteem it in support. We want to encourage and train at the same time, so this action is a natural way to do so effectively.

#5 ALWAYS tag your daily "master post" with #newbieresteemday so that others can also go to that tag and easily find and support newbies with resteems and suggestions too.

#6 Spread the word. Encourage your followers in comments to join us and work together. @mudcat36 has a goal of 15 founding members, I have a goal that is much higher than that. I know at least 15 of my friends that will support this and do it (you know who you are) ;)

So by giving delegation of STEEM to @mudcat36 you will give him some power to reward and encourage all 6 of these activities. Helping the newbies is obvious, but also encouraging the other members of steemit with upvotes can also send a strong and powerful reinforcing signal to ANYONE who helps the cause. By having some SP behind the upvote, it will just give the cause more power to move quicker.

My example from yesterday. I have a whopping 32 SP and was limited on what I could upvote yesterday. I drained my "voting power meter" down to 70% (I normally keep it at 85% or more so that I can get the $0.01). There were many great comments and things I wanted to highlight further, but my only real tool was the comment section (I only have so many votes). I was online from the moment I lauched my introduction until 1:40 am and I still had many unanswered replies. If I had greater SP, I could've used the upvote button a little more, and my words just a little less. It would've enabled me to reach more people because there is only so much time in the day. (Please note: I love to comment, but I don't ever want to leave weak comments because to me its shows lack of respect. So without upvotes as a efficient way to show that respect, then my only tool is to write a genuine response to each worthy comment)

So to sum up, there is many ways in which delegated SP could be used and it would depend on how much we received as to what we would do with it. While we plan on making the initiative successful anyways (I didn't even know that programs like this existed 24 hrs ago), with the help from the larger steemian community we could move things much faster. We don't mind doing the work either way, so any attention in ANY form will help our efforts to go a long way.

Having said that...

My Suggestion For The Best Use For Only 500 Delegated Steem

While everything I said above is true, if I am limited to "only" 500 SP, then I have to make a choice as to what is the "best use" of that limited delegation for our cause. I would first want to beef up the 2 tools that are invaluable to our efforts. Without them and what they do for us "smaller" players, I'm not sure we could get any traction.

The first tool is @originalworks and I use them to recognize the newbie's post on any link I resteem (95% of the time they don't know about it). This not only is valuable because it gets "some action"on the post, but it also teaches subliminally the newbie how to use @originalworks in the future (which spreads that message very effectively). By giving newbies this tool it helps them with their confidence, helps them to learn how to help others, and generally teaches them to come up with "good content". I would award them 250 of that delegated STEEM because they need to be strong to handle the new workload we have planned for them. ;)

The second tool is @resteemable and I also use them to recognize the newbie's post on any link I resteem (99.99% of the time the newbie doesn't know about it). This is valuable because they not only "upvote" the posts, but they ALSO resteem it to a much larger base than any of us have. I have noticed some serious activity when I summon @resteemable to the rescue. They are very valuable to our efforts because they "multiply" our message that we are here to aid the newbie through the use of resteeming. In addition, while I have amassed 2500 followers in my first month, many others have not focused on getting that large of a following. Sometimes they think they won't do much good by resteeming a newbie for a day because they only have 50 or a 100 followers. Well @resteemable solves that problem because every person who volunteers to share their feed for a day encouraging newbies, can have some punch thanks to @resteemable. I would also award them 250 of that delegated STEEM because they really need to be strong to handle the new workload as we get bigger.

My Other Suggestions For Delegated STEEM (and for bigger fish in general)

There is 2 other services that are very helpful for us newbies that I would also consider delegating STEEM to if I were bigger than I am. These services do the same thing and they are the upvote services that give an actual return on the investment of SBDs (and I'm also evaluating a few more too). The first is @bumper and they are consistently providing us newbies a 3x your SBD for an upvote. The second is earthnation-bot and they are providing a 5x return of upvote to SBD investment.

This is important because the newbies can grow their power by using their meager SBD to either grow their own SPs faster or to reward others with a bigger punch. Both of these outcomes are positive for the steemit community. For example, I was able to launch a contest by using a small amount (0.5 SBD) to upvote the post which increases the prize pool.

If you notice, I had 45 upvotes but without the use of these services the prize pool wouldn't have broke $0.20. And therefore I wouldn't have had the participation of 54 comments and 147 views. Simply put, I wouldn't have been able to do another contest until I got a lot bigger and you would be missing my small contribution to the place we can be. We (the smaller guys/gals) need more support and @bumper and @earthnation-bot provide us this support that is very effective and it helps us to get more engaged. So while I am making suggestions on what you "bigger fish" should do with your excess STEEM, I recommend this area and these 2 services as very effective ways to help the smaller community assimilate into the steemit community faster.

Finally I have one last suggestion to all the dolphins and whales out there. And I say this with all due respect to where you are in the system and what you have managed to achieve before I got here just 28 days ago. I recognize the beauty of the design and the "virtuous loop" that is created by the rules you have devised and adhere to.

But while I have seen first-hand the generosity and thoughtfulness of many of you, as a group I think you can do a lot more to help us newbies out and encourage us. I guess there must be thousands of you out there and you can really be a force if you follow @suesa's lead and engage us directly. It would mean a lot if you can stop by every so often and look at the #introduceyourself tab and not only upvote the new newbie, but also read the comments and see who is "doing the right thing" for the steem ecosystem. And this applies to many common posts out there too. We don't get seen much because we rarely have a trending article, so to find us you can use the pages of our resteems in this initiative to find many decent "small fish" to develop. I see so many comments out there offering tips and encouragement that if I were a whale, I would be rewarding and encouraging with my upvotes. Again, I'm not criticizing, I'm just offering a constructive view from my limited and humble experiences here for the purpose of maybe helping to illuminate how we can work together to make steemit even better than it already is.

It isn't easy to "get noticed" around here, I'm a professional with 30 years of experience as a "grown-up" in the real world with lots of confidence and understanding; and I have a challenge to be seen. (And its not from lack of talking because I've average almost 100 comments a day). ;) So just imagine how a shy little newbie feels? I can promise you that the more you either 1) engage yourself or 2) get someone like "us" to engage for you, the faster the development and broadening of the base will occur. This is exactly the purpose behind #newbieresteemday, to encourage and motivate the smaller players to get involved by helping the newbies. They become the teachers, the coaches, the motivators, the mentors, and the role-models for a new generation of newbies. If you support our initiative (in any of the 6 ways listed above) you will be efficiently encouraging a whole cadre of steemit enthusiasts that are motivated to make a difference.

I hope you support our effort in any way that suits you. We are all on the same team and you have some very good players in the bullpen ready to help. Please consider this long and wordy post as constructive, it is something that is truly heartfelt. We want to succeed "with you" and use this system that we are a part of to make a difference in lots of people's lives.

I want to thank @suesa for giving us a chance to win some delegated SP, but more importantly I want to thank her for taking the time and effort to help us to broaden our reach. It is messages like this, that make me get up and write this on only 4 hours of sleep.

I know we have an enthusiastic following out there for this project and I hope you (my fellow steemians) use your resteem to get this message "out there" and the comment section to send your own message out to the larger community. This is a tremendous opportunity for you to also thank @suesa and to let your feelings be known about the issues we are discussing in this post. So don't be shy and get your voice heard. ;)

As always, be humble... and