Reflections of a Newbie (and some Questions too!)

I'm officially one month old! Though I'm totally fresh bait on steem and one month isn't much to celebrate, I thought it was an opportune time to share some of my reflections/concerns/thoughts about steem thus far.

Overall, Steem has been a really rewarding experience for me. I've enjoyed expressing myself, especially to such an open and receptive community. Like the many have said before me, this social media platform has a lot of potential!

What makes Steem work is its incentives for solid content, transparency, and being yourself .

However, these incentives do tend to conflict because there is also an incentive towards popularity. Which, frankly, is my largest frustration.

• Often people upvote without even viewing the content because they know the content will be popular, which ultimately supports a cycle of popularity contests rather than engagement.
• On posts, the users who upvoted the content are listed, but I would rather be able to know the users who viewed my posts because those are the people I'm really attracting. Many times, the users who upvoted are the same people (or bots??) that upvote my content and are not necessarily people engaging in my topic.

Getting People to Engage in my Content is the Hardest Part of Learning Steem

• Aiming for Votes vs Comments
  There are certain types of posts that attract upvotes, while other types of posts that attract comments. And I've had a difficult time with my own content trying to find that balance. My writing/blog pieces with personal pictures and anecdotes often receive the most upvotes see A Late Night Ghost Story
  Comments, on the other hand, are hard to come by. My philosophy posts tend to receive more comments by comparison, but I guess some of my personal stuff got responses too.
  Science vs Technology
  A Blatantly Cheesy Post about my Mom
  

• Length of Post
  But there are nuances to all this too. In my writing, length seems to matter. It's disheartening, but the posts I often work the hardest on and contain a lot of detail (like this one) often don't get much response. Likewise, my posts with one picture also don't seem to attract. Person Centered Care: The Future of Healthcare
  A Recipe for a Thursday Night
  
  

• Variability
  I post about a range of topics from philosophy and scientific research to blogging and reflecting. I'd like to think the variety helps me to appeal to a range of people. However, I think I really just appeal to the "jack of all trades" types on Steem and I wonder if I would do better to stick with one thing and attract a bunch of people from that group. Perhaps less variability and more of a focus could make for more followers and consequently more upvotes and comments.

• Participating in the community
  The best way to get people to engage in my content is to engage in other's content! I try to spend time upvoting, commenting, and reading what other users have to say. Other users not only give me inspiration for my own content, but also help me to be a better part of the community.

THE BEST PART OF STEEM: The Steemit community! It has been my own personal psychology ant farm. Except not really ants...something infinitely more entertaining and difficult to understand.

From gardeners to conspiracy theorists, new ageists to cryptos, and artists to meme creators, Steemit offers an amazing group of sincere and dedicated users. For the most part, it seems to me that people are well behaved, avoiding creepy or mean comments/posts and trying to be supportive and proactive wherever possible.

• The community compensates for the lack of information and instruction from the management by always discussing and proposing new ideas. I think if the community didn't talk about steem...we wouldn't be able to use steem.
• But it also seems that the community is divided between cryptos and non cryptos, with no bridge between them. It's two different worlds and I fear that divide may not be good for us. There is a chatroom that perhaps could connect our worlds and lend a hand in discussion...but I'll be honest it's pretty lame. I know it's new though, so there's still hope!
• The politics on here are always interesting to analyze. Clearly most people are somewhat anarchists, but it's odd (coming from an American perspective) to see the liberals, conservatives, and all that's in between come out among this one shared interest. Because there is an emphasis on decentralization, the politics are not polarized like they are on other media platforms, but rather share some similar attributes regarding the role of the government even though people sit on different sides.
• I haven't seen a lot of ageism, sexism, racism on here...which is odd for the internet. I'm curious as to why that is, if it's due to the incentive to be popular or perhaps something deeper about the type of people who choose steem. (and of course I'm generalizing, I'm sure there's some bad stuff on here.)

General Questions after one month of learning to swim

• Though I talked about different tactics I've been using to gain followers/upvotes/comments, overall I'd say I haven't seen significant results. I get about 40-60 votes within the first couple of hours from more or less the same users. Why is this?
• One time, someone commented on my post and earned like over 100 upvotes, but my post only earned around 40 upvotes and had like 9 views. But if only 9 people viewed my post, how could the user get over a 100 upvotes on a comment?
• I haven't invested nor done anything with my rewards or Steem or Steem dollar, how have all of your experiences on here changed by actually trying to profit from the platform?

Clearly, I'm still trying to figure this all out! But in many ways that is the best part of Steem: learning and exploring a whole new world! Though I'm only one month in, I hope that I'll keep growing and diving deeper into this world of Steem.

AND PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE....Any suggestions about ways to improve my steem presence and/or answers to any of my questions above? I really would like to know! Thanks for reading :)

Sources
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