Yay me!

I reached a huge personal steemit milestone yesterday - I reached 500 Steem Power (SP)!

For some of you, this will be old news on your own steemit journeys. For others, it may seem like an impossible dream.

And some of you might not yet know why this is significant for steemers.

The reason I choose this particular goal and have been working towards it is to achieve the upvote slider which kicks in at this level - I can now determine the level of reward I give to articles and comments.

This is important because I want to give the right amount - and have the funds to do it.

You see, I have been thinking about how I want to give back to steemit - to the community, to the people who support me and to those who could use a leg up.

I have already done a bit, but I look around at what others are doing and it's completely awesome.

So, here,'s my two cents worth of awesome (sometimes quite literally - like the outcome of my upvote in the above photo😊)

Here I set out my give-back strategy.

1. Comment on and reward authentic comments

The first part of my strategy is to acknowledge all the authentic comments people make to my posts (sorry spammers - this ain't you). I have been trying to do this for a while now, and I have discovered that a number of people regularly engage with my posts (quick shout-out to @pinaynomad 🌞).

I really appreciate that people take the time to read, consider, and respond to my posts - so I will respond and upvote in turn. Or at least try to - has anyone else noticed how hard it is to do everything you want on steemit everyday? But do that and have a life too? Forget it!

2. Direct SBD payments

Very occasionally I will make a direct payment of 1-4 SBD to (authentic and struggling) steemers with <1 SBD in their wallets. But never for those who ask for it.

3. Delegations

This is when you delegate part of your voting power (essentially your SPs) to someone else (or in my case to bots). The benefit of this is that these bots are programmed to support minnows (new steem members without much voting power or influence), and in the case of creative bot, creative minnows 🙃 How cool is that?

The SP is still yours (you can take it back at any time with some slight delay), others just get to use it for voting purposes.

I already delegate to two great projects:

• The awesome Creative bot https://steemit.com/@msp-creativebot (This cuteling of creation likes to help minnows create - and is MSP/PAL NET approved); and
• Minnow support https://steemit.com/@minnowsupport Mission- Accelerate the minnow growth through community accounts, and social interaction generating friends, resteems and upvotes.

The mistake I made with these delegations was doing it too soon. You see, the 500 SP limit doesn't count delegated SP - hence me only reaching the 500 SP limit now.

Within the limit of always maintaining and growing my precious 500 SP, I will continue to delegate. So, when I achieve another 200 SP I shall delegate a further 100, and so forth and so on.

My next delegations will be:

• Minnow booster https://steemit.com/@minnowbooster ;
• Mr Squiggle https://steemit.com/teamaustralia/@scooter77/mr-squiggle-the-teamaustralia-curation-martian ; and
• PROJECT STEEM https://steemit.com/@projectsteem Get rewarded for your contribution to Charities!

4. Continue to support the activites and posts of Team Australia members

#teamaustralia is the fastest growing community on steemit. And it's awesome.

So there it is. My strategy for giving back to Steemit 😊

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Thanks for reading!

Picture courtesy of pixabay.com; mashed by @drwom

@DrWom and #teamaustralia footers by the fabulous @ryivhnn