This may be a little guide but also a rant about how Steemit works. A friend of mine just wrote this article. I also have thought about it before.

Just a little thought before going into more details:

THIS is how this concept works:

You follow somebody if you like what he is doing. If you know him, if you share the ideas, if you are interested in his thoughts, art, photographs, music etc. He will follow you for the same reasons.

My cuban friend is totally right about quality over quantitiy. So let's get into Steemit for moment:

Basically you get votes from people and you are rewarded for these votes based on the weight they have. There are different components to that. First the steempower (SP) they hold. Secondly the percentage of their vote, that they give you (YES if you get bigger, you can choose if you give a 5%, a 37%, a 100% or even a 0,05% vote). Thirdly it depends on how much the voter has already voted and how much voting power (VP) he has left. After the next hardfork you will have 10 (!!!) votes with 100% VP a day.

OMG thats confusing!

Nope, it isn´t, it may be at the beginning, but it surely make sense. Most bigger SP holders split their votes down, so they can vote a lot more. And you can (almost) vote as much as you like, but with less voting power, thus less impact and thus less rewards per vote.

Understanding this, also means the following:

If you have 5 000 followers holding 150 SP each, able to vote for 10 posts a day, what do you think how much this will impact your rewards? And then compare this to one of the major SP stakeholders holding 500 k to 7 mio SP. This means if you get a 1% vote from freedom account (holding roughly 7 mio SP) this has an equal impact as if you get about 500 votes from 150 SP holders.

I can be totally wrong about it in future, but a large follower base is worth nothing on Steemit right at the moment, so

please, please, please,

all you newcomers to Steemit: Welcome, but don´t annoy people with this vote for vote, follow for follow crap. This may have worked on Twitter, or on other Social Media. Here it doesn't. You will only make cute cat into grumpy cat...

TL; DR

1. Steempower = SP = the amount of Steem you hold longterm in your wallet.
2. Votingpower = VP = the impact of your Vote, replenishes to 10 votes with 100% per day after Hardfork19 (google that)
3. Quality over quantity (this concerns your GAINED followers and your CONTENT).
4. You risk downvotes if you annoy people too much, almost all big fish here will at least mute you if you do it anyway.
5. A follower is worth nothing if he has no real interest in your stuff, for he will not vote for you.

I hope this helps somehow to make this place a better one.

Thanks for reading!

Follow for more!

(this is the only time, I personally tell people to follow me, and they will do so, if they liked my content)

@pollux.one