New to Steem? Here are a few basic tips...

I know there are a lot of posts like this. I am not writing this as an attempt to be part of any trend. I have just noticed a number of new people that have joined that I see potentially unknowingly missing out on opportunity. It is likely they don't know. So I am writing this post for those people to give them some tips to perhaps help them succeed.

FIRST: Every post should have an image. You can add an image by copy and pasting it into your post, drag and dropping it, or clicking the select image button to choose one to be uploaded. This is likely the most common approach you will use. You can also add images by linking to them from another site using markdown or html. Let me know if you need help with that. An image (A video works too) tends to make your post more noticeable in the feeds. IF your first image is porn, or extreme violence and you have to wonder if it might not be safe for work, kids, etc then one of your tags for your post should be NSFW. This will show your post in the list, but it will not actually show the content until someone chooses to REVEAL it. People tend to look at them, and they do fine. Whereas images shoved into peoples faces that should have been tagged NSFW can actually result in the post being flagged into oblivion since you were not giving people the option to see it or not.

SECOND: If you post a video it is a good idea to include some original text by you. Even if this text is stating that THIS IS A VIDEO I MADE, because anyone can slap someone elses videos and images into a post. If you don't add anything of your own to it then most people won't seriously up vote it. There is nothing wrong with being a video aggregator of some type and sharing videos you like, but it is important you accompany that video with some of your own text so that it is also something of your own. It could be as simple as a summary, and your opinion about the video. This is important for a couple of other reasons. 1) Currently videos, images, etc are hosted on centralized servers such as youtube, vimeo, etc. So they can theoretically be censored. Your text is stored in the blockchain it is decentralized and cannot be censored. So having text means at least part of your post is not subject to being censored if some external centralized service decides to do so. 2) People are not always in a place where they can watch/listen to videos. Having text gives those people something to interact with. I also read a lot faster than a video. Thus, if I end up watching a lot of videos during the day I am actually reducing the amount I could have taken and learned that day. So me personally I rarely watch videos that are very long. Time is valuable and I have many things to do.

THIRD: Engage! Speak to the people that reply to you. If it is short reply that says something like "Good Post" then it isn't surprising if you don't have much to say to that. Yet you also have a vote. You can up vote comments to let people know you saw them. Initially your steem power is going to be low enough it may not matter much, but eventually it will unlock a slider which let's you adjust how much power you want to put into a vote. I typically vote 10% on comments so that I am not burning through my voting power for the day. Yet up voting the comments also lets people know I saw their comment, appreciated it, and if they didn't get a specific response from me I still acknowledged them. Though it is just as important to engage and reply to comments as you would a person speaking to you about it in life. People that are fire and forget tend to catch some flak for it. Engaging will gain you followers, and it will show you people that you might want to follow. You should browse through the posts so you can find people to comment on their posts, vote, and engage there as well. These are all keys to making steemit into something more personalized to you and to making your experience on steemit get better and better. It also makes you a lot more valuable to the platform and the community.

FOURTH: Stay civil. If you don't like something and feel like talking about it. Feel free. Yet keep it civil. Trolling, and being a jerk on steemit are quick ways to send your account into a crash dive. This is also why we don't have too much in the way of trolling and such. This is also one of the things that makes steemit so incredible.

Good luck, and I hope this helps some of you. It may save me writing specialized comments explaining these things. :)