❓Answering Common Questions: How do I get more Votes? - Part 4: Build Your Brand!

in steem-help •  7 years ago  (edited)

Remember...We're Entertainers!! Make it Entertaining!

We're not writing for a grade, We do this for their Attention!



A HUGE part of being entertainers is to be entertaining...right? Because @arbitrarykitten laid it out so well..I'd rather you just check out her post on how to keep your reader engaged in your post HERE. She hit's on all the major points drawing them to your post in the first place with headlines and thumbnail images to getting them want to keep reading. Remember, we read through the posts that keep us entertained and/or curious throughout...right? I'm sure we've all started posts that lost your interest early one!

6 Essential Elements for Writing Evocative Posts by @arbitrarykitten



The rest of this guide will get into things to think about to make YOU stickout outside of your posts. Things that can help make you more memorable. On some level we are all creatures of habit scurrying around this attention economy called Steemit.

Q: Ok...so what do you mean by Building my Brand?

I want you to imagine your at the grocery store, walking down the cereal isle. Among these many dozen (likely more) cereals catch your attention first? The ones you've seen a billion times before in all kinda of ads and likely in the eye level spots on the shelf for years and years?

These major brands like Frosted Flakes (They're Grrrrreat) or perhaps Life (Mikey Likes It!) have repeatedly done everything to get in front of you as often as possible! In the case of the cereal...they use things like having a consistently recognizable box, name repetition (count how many time they try to use the cereal names in commercials) to easy to remember slogan. Obviously those two I used above are still ingrained in my head.

My point from all of this....on Steemit YOU are the BRAND!

We as content creators HAVE to have a way of standing out from the crowd. While this is important with your posts themselves, it's just as important with yourself! This idea of making yourself unique, being easy to identify and have people want to seek you out is your BRAND!

Q: How do I know what my Brand is? What should it be?

This is really something that you will work with and refine over time. In the end only you can say what you want your brand should be. But what your brand is...is how people remember (or don't remember) you. Don't stress out if you can't answer these right away...it's going to take time. Even for those that have already branded themselves, it's often difficult to reflect on it and clearly state what it is...and they already have one in place!

So simply try to keep this in mind as much as you can..try to think about what it is that you bring to the table:

  • What do you do?
  • What are your experiences and/or what have you learned?
  • What perspective does this provide you?
  • How do you think others remember you or your posts?
  • What things do you do to make yourself stand out? (like post formatting, sign of banners, the comments you leave, etc)

Every day or two try to reflect on these questions...reflect on what you've been doing and how it's been working for you. I want you to (metaphorically) walk be able to walk into a bar where every person shouts your name in greeting!

Q: What are ways I can make myself more memorable?

Sure..you want people to like you. But how many people have we briefly met only to never see them again?

Some things you can try to get people to recognize you and remember you include:

  • Using the same or similar formatting style in your posts. If you copy/paste a post (from the Steemit editor..not just viewing the post) into a Google document (or on your computer) and strip out the text and pictures from it...you have a TEMPLATE! Not only is this a huge time saver, but it also give your post's look extra consistency!

  • Have a sign off message and signature. You've likely seen my "Keep Smilin and Steem On!" graphic at the end of my posts followed by the cursive sykochica. Both of these are extremely easy using sites like:

*Banners are those graphics you see in many peoples posts whether is be something saying upvote/resteem/follow or showing a community you support and/or belong to. (You can see my banner for the Team Girl Powa community right now in my posts.)

Remember that everyone that opens the post has to at least scroll past this to get to the upvote button!

  • Put yourself in front of the same people regularly. Hang out in the same place for a while. Of course there's nothing wrong participating in multiple communities. But if you are only in a chat or discord with other say once a month...do you really think it's going to make you memorable to people you just met?
    • Share you you are! Simply going into a chat room and saying "Hi" really doesn't cut it. Tell me a story...or something crazy that happened to you recently...a memorable experience...an opinion...it really doesn't matter what it is! I just want something REAL! To be memorable...you have to move beyond the small talk!

And as always...

Keep your chin up...Keep posting...Keep improving!

Part 1 of this guide on getting more votes can be found HERE

Part 2 of this guide on headlines and thumbnail images can be found HERE.

❓Answering Common Questions: Why do my Post Payouts and Account Value go down ❓

Click HERE for a list of All my Guides!

Please Follow, Upvote and Resteem if you found this Guide Helpful.


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Image Sources:
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Brand
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hey @sykochika .... i want to ask where i can get steem power delegations...blocktrades is not providing now....sorry it is off-topic question..please help

That I'm not quite sure. I've seen a lot of people looking for that. But everywhere I've looked has also been out. :(

As always great tips. I finally persuaded my sister to join Steemit (it is strange that it is necessary to persuade someone to come here, right? ;), first and foremost, I recommended her subscribe to your blog and to follow the steem-help category. You do a great job!

That's awesome that she joined up! It's is a little more fun when the family's on here too!

Haha...yea, always a bit surprising when people aren't just eager to sign up, but hopefully 2018 is the year that changes.

Awww, thank you!

I hope that the network Steemit will cope with the influx of millions of new users in 2018 ;)

@sykochica Thank you for this valuable information! Truly helpful for new members and it's highly appreciated given the surge in new members on Steemit!

we are providing the service time to build a brand like never else thanks for sharing this amazing post

I agree we need to keep the users engaged to have them look and want to come back for me. Great post to help others here!

@sykochica thanks for the master class on branding. I got some branding of my own to do, wish me luck.

Brand is definitely something I have been working on. Part of my love for Steem is being able to talk about whatever, which I do, but I am working toward some consistent posting topics too.

Awesome, I have bookmarked this for future consumption

This post is very useful for me
Thanks for sharing @sykochica

its all about the brand time to make it slowly and steadily

Why do we not have a bookmark button on Steemit?! That way we can just go directly to articles we like and reference when needed. Grrr. Wait, there’s resteem! One stop shop for easy referencing. 🙂

Great article and so very helpful. I never thought about using the Steemit editor or where to go to get a kick-ass signature. Thanks for all the helpful tips!

I have tried to follow all of the steps outlined here and the @arbitrarykitten link, but it seems like it's a hit and miss for me. While I was lucky enough to stumble upon an awesome few, I fear that it's nowhere near the volume I wish my readership has. Don't get me wrong though, I'm not complaining with the readers I already have. They're fantastic and wouldn't trade them for anything in the known universe, I just wish that I was able to find more of them.

Perhaps it's the community aspect that I'm lacking. When I was starting here on Steemit, I threw myself out there to every community I could find. Nowadays, I feel like most of them are closed off and clique-ish, and that there's no room for old minnows such as myself. Here's hoping that I catch a second wind this year.

more "sense" = more votes. That's my answer to that :)

Crafting and thinking about one's "personal brand" was something we talked about often at Autostraddle. After awhile it even become a joke...sort of...because even though we were laughing at ourselves for using the term it still did actually matter. And I find myself going back and forth with how I feel about it. But I guess the trick is to remain genuinely you, while still being compelling and not giving your whole inner self away 24/7. But it's a difficult balance to achieve.

Nice post:D

Your posts are always so educative. I have been applying the things I've learnt from your posts and it's going really great.

Absolutely Grade A information! I'm upvoting & resteeming this!

Legend!

innovation is the key to success here and i don't seem to have that mind

This is a very important step and should begin with participating in a community :)

  ·  7 years ago (edited)

OMG,Good dad, I love this post

It's not easy to get a brand... I think those people who have a clear vision of what they gonna write gets their brand build faster... But at the end of the day it all about attention maybe after steeming for some time you may get high reputation i.e high attraction

Boom! Wisdom. Resteeming this.

Yup, as always it was very helpful

This sooo helpful as I am just getting started. Especially, the links you included to create different looks for posts are great! Have upvoted and resteemed ! Thank you

Great write up! And so true. Many people do not realize that their online work is a direct representation of them. You truly are creating a brand. And how you interact with the public, including how you conduct yourself anywhere in your life, directly hinders or spurs your brand growth :)

Resteemed :)

Informative tips @sykochica, thank you for sharing..

Great read for us neophites. The tips on the signature and text generators were outstanding.

Just wanted to leave a word of thanks before I read the first three parts.

i'm very thankful i've stumble upon your page @sykochica
especially since i'm a minnow and i still don't have an idea on what and how to do stuff.
i did not even know that you can put signatures and graphics on your text. i only knew plain text. so sad for me (LOL)
anyways, thanks for the tips and for the site for cool text graphics and online signature. :)
i'll read your other posts one by one and absorb the insights that you're giving. :D
thank you once again and have a great day ahead!

Was just going through all you old post I now saw what also admire and wish to learn to do, and I which is signature thank for this post