Steem.supply | Your Eyes May Deceive You; The Rules of Engagement

I first joined Steemit in May of 2016. I've been around the Steemit block, and learned quite a bit along the way. One of the most powerful lessons you learn in Steemland is that it's not the number of upvotes, but the influence of those who upvote you. Now, that statement is true to an extent, however, I have to say you must look deeper into this statement. You may have some of the more influential Dolphins and Whales follow you, but you still cannot turn them into upvotes. Posting content that those followers want to engage with is key.

Case in point: @jiujitsu has 714 total followers, yet only 33 upsteemers. That's an engagement level of 4.62%. I check this stat often, and regardless of my growing following, I still tend to keep that low to mid 30s range of engagement.

One of the reasons for this is due to the content that I post and re-steem. I have slowly drifted away from my original Steemit account @framelalife, which I grew to a decent level 60, with 1610 followers. When I created @jiujitsu, I wanted to focus solely on jiu-jitsu, mma, wrestling, martial arts, and health and fitness. This is a great idea, and I love the challenge of growing my audience and recruiting them from the mainstream social media. However, it's been a very slow process, and sometimes very frustrating. Trying to attempt to lure non-digital currency, mainstream social media users to Steemit is not easy. I am gaining traction, and learning a lot in the process.

Recently, though, I decided, for now at least, that I must also post a wider variety of content to reach my growing followers. Many of them probably did not follow me based on any jiu jitsu or mma related content. They most likely followed me due to my upvote power/worth, based on me voting their content, or my engagement on their content by following, commenting, and re-steeming. This is fine, but I need to turn these followers into upvotes. If they care nothing about most of my content, then I have to alter my content type to earn their attention. I have found there is little love for jiu jitsu, mma, or martial arts content. We are a very small portion, % wise, of the daily rewards pool.

Luckily, I do like to create content that is not related to my original intent. I will always create content related to bjj and mma. I will always support those who do. However, you will now notice a much wider variety of content. It's going to be interesting how I balance this content, and continue to recruit and grow bjj and mma in the Steemit ecosystem.

I'd love to hear other's opinions about this topic. How do you market and promote yourself on Steemit? What type of rules and boundaries do you set on your type of content, if any? What is your content engagement % , and are you happy with it? What ideas do you have to create and promote more engaging content? Sound off in the comments below!

Steem On! @jiujitsu