How do you Steemit? - 1: Voting/Curation

This is the first of a five part series in which I'll be talking about how I 'Steemit'. The topics will be as follows:

1. Voting/Curation (This post)

2. Steem Power Delegation

3. Posts

4. Interaction

5. Bid-bots

The goal is to be open about what I'm doing here and perhaps provide some hints to help other users. I'm also hoping there will be some feedback from you guys, containing tips, tricks, and advice to aid the Steemit journey - How do you Steemit?

_{Courtesy of pixabay.com}

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Voting/Curation

Voting is key to the platform. Without rewards for 'mind-mining', our community is unlikely to last and our best mind-miners are likely to jump ship to somewhere they feel more rewarded for their work.

Note: Anyone who isn't mind-mining and producing their own content feel free to jump ship right now!

So with 350,000 registered accounts and 35,000 active users each day, how the hell do you get around voting for the superbly mined stuff? Answer: You can't.

Some of the best stuff will always be missed, even with an 'auto-voting' bot and hours of manual curation. Don't worry about it, do what you can to surface the good work.

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Auto-voting with SteemVoter and Streemian

The auto-voter tools are not loved by all, but I find them essential in aiding how I want to reward good content and authors. This is a list containing some (but not all!) of the reasons why you might find yourself on my 'auto-vote':

- You are present in a 'community' I am interested in - e.g. tags: steemitexpats steemitcouples sfpl

- You are the user that introduced me to Steemit

- You are a competition host

- You have me on your auto-vote (and I've noticed!)

- You are a consistently good writer/blogger

- You consistently comment on my blogs

- You are my Girlfriend

- You are a user who promotes Steemit, online and offline

- You are a supporter of Minnow support groups

- You have delegated me some Steem Power

- You are @abh12345

Now, I make 0 apologies for any of the reasons above. This is my vote, and I can choose to vote on what I want. I think it is a fair stab at spreading the love, even if it is not perfect.

_{Courtesy of steemvoter.com}

I currently (11th Sept 2017) have 30 rules set on steemvoter.com out of possible 50, and so there is room for more lovely people...... Lets see :)

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Manual Curation

Basically, manual curation takes a lot of time. However, and unlike voting via bots, this is your chance to expand your community and reward the new/existing but not noticed by you so far, authors who are mind-mining with uniqueness and skill.

I manually curate over a wide range of topics and in the past 2 weeks, I have voted for 415 different users (myself excluded)

_{Courtesy of steemreports.com}

My manual curation usually happens in the introduceyourself tag, on blogs that stand out, and on user accounts that I expect a blog will receive further votes on. I will try to vote between the 20-30 minute mark to gain a curation reward but for some posts I will vote before the 15 minute mark to show clear interest to the author.

With 2-2.5k Steem Power, curation rewards are usually in the region 0.001/0.002 and so not really worth worrying about for me as yet.

A manual curation tip for a guaranteed reward

Have you ever thought about checking the Wallet of bid-bots like Booster? Viewing these wallets can tell you where a large vote is going to land in the next hour or two. If you are looking for an additional boost to your curation rewards, why not follow the money and vote the post before @booster does? Don't tell everyone about this eh? ;)

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Self-Voting

Yes, I self-vote. 99% of the time this is restricted to my own blogs, which I average 1 per day. It will usually be a 100% vote, unless the slider wont move to 100% because i'm on my phone - I have to settle for 88% sometimes :) My current max vote is equivalent to 0.17$, I don't feel bad about rewarding 2 hours of my own mind-mining with this sum.

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Voting on Comments

This is something I do a lot of and will discuss again in the forthcoming 'Interaction' post. I find voting comments or 'interactions' a good way of rewarding users that are communicating, on my posts and their own. Sometimes your vote can be lost in the 100+ votes that a user will receive on their blog, and so I like to show that I am supporting the user and their work by adding an additional vote to their comment.

Voting a comment doesn't need to be at 100%, just enough to make a mark is fine. It's difficult to quantify how rewarding this is but I suspect that I've gained a few followers by showing this small but additional support. I especially like to do this if i find a valuable 'older' post that cannot be rewarded as its past the payout date. If you ask a question and receive a reply, it's a nice gesture to up-vote this reply.

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Other points to note

- I don't give a shizzle about my voting power, as long as it stays above 40%

_{Courtesy of steem.supply}

- I vote dozens of times a day with variable power ranging from 4% to 100% (500 SP is required for the 'slider' on steemit.com)

- add @originalworks in a comment in your blog for a +1

- follow @minnowpond for a +1

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Summary

So this is part 1 of 'How do you Steemit' complete.

Next time: How do you Steemit? - 2: Steem Power Delegation

Please comment below if you have any questions, feedback, ideas to share. This is what the box is for :)

Thanks for reading today

Asher