Been quite a few weeks since I've started adding some upvotes to Proof of Shares and it seems the community is enjoying the added incentives to share their and other authors content on Twitter in an effort to give them more visibility and possibly onboard new accounts to our ecosystem. At some point we're going to have to automate that part because as you can imagine voting the hundreds of shares daily by hand does take quite a lot of my time and sanity. We already have some ideas in mind of how this could be automated while minimizing abuse, something like posh tokens earned by the account in the equation should make sure to reward people properly. We're not going to make the equation completely transparent because we don't want people to figure out the best ways to abuse it.
Talking about abuse, now that there's Hive rewards included in POSH we've noticed quite a few people upping the amount of daily shares. This is of course great and something we want to see but let me talk about certain scenarios we don't want to see and where we're not going to have a problem blocking certain accounts from earning POSH or Hive from the shares.
There was an account a few weeks ago that not only had a new Hive account (surprisingly had powered up some Hive) but also a brand new Twitter account. What he would do was quite literally spam share hive links onto tweets without rhyme or reason. Not only was he not earning any POSH due to our limitations, but he also stopped earning any Hive when this spam was noticed and the comments weren't rewarded. Even on posts where someone else had already shared it and his share was edited into the same comment he wouldn't earn any Hive from because "surprisingly" his tweets never performed well because he had no followers and was being quite spammy so the hive rewards went to the other sharer mostly. We were about to block this account from the POSH program when we noticed that Twitter had taken care of the issue from their side, his Twitter account was suspended which is nice to see that they are doing something and at the same time it makes our jobs easier and POSH more valid.
Similarly even those who do have an active twitter and are just now joining POSH you have to be aware that not only will your followers dislike seeing you spam 50+ hive link tweets per day, but it also doesn't make Hive look good from outsiders. Curb your enthusiasm about POSH, please.
There's other ways people seem to abuse POSH so I'd like to make it clear that we do not take kindly to those attempting to manipulate the way they earn POSH by cheating their way to more likes and retweets by either buying followers/likes or asking/forcing your friends to like them consistently. There's some out there even creating alt twitter accounts just to earn a couple hivetoshi's from their POSH earnings. Cut that out, please, you're only going to get yourself banned from the program.
We strive for genuine engagement and twitter performances to reward with POSH. Similar to how things run on Hive we want to see deserving members being rewarded fairly for their contributions sharing Hive content on #web2. If you're trying to cut corners to unfairly earn more POSH than the other members you're not only cheating them out of less POSH but at the same time cheating those who've bought tokens and the project out of value as well since it's been running a buyback program for quite a while now mostly funded by the reward-pool which means you're attempting to cheat the reward-pool as well, yes they're all connected in the spirit of empowering our ecosystem.
With that out of the way, here are some tips on what you can do to actually grow a genuine following and receive genuinely good performances on your proof of shares:
For those who are new to Twitter and Hive; try to grow them both simultaneously.
Similarly how we'd recommend you to grow your Hive connections, by engaging with authors you're interested in their content or subscribing and being active in community niche's that interest you, do the same over on Twitter. Follow Hive authors that you follow here as well, let them know about it on Hive, there's nothing wrong with "follow4follow" over on Twitter if you're already following them here. We want people to create connections with each other on #web2 because it makes us all stronger as a collective and gives our Twitter presence a bigger reach. If you stick to a few certain niche's you're interested and knowledgable in you're more likely to do well on both Hive and Twitter rather than spamming random posts.
After using the #hive tag, add in some other tags that are relevant to the post you're sharing. Check what tags are trending on Twitter that day and share a Hive post by someone discussing that particular event on Hive or tag relevant people on Twitter you think may be interested in reading said content. Similarly there, though, don't spam tag people or tags that have nothing to do with the post. If you're using peakd links you're also able to see if you're getting that post a lot more views that would reflect on your Twitter performance.
You can use a myriad of Hive and tribe front-ends that are eligible for POSH, as long as the 
Talking about peakd, another great way to use peakd links that not many may be aware of which not only will validate if your tweets are doing well but it may also give you some onboarding stats and possible beneficiary rewards if your tweets are bringing in users directly from outside of our ecosystem. Here's how you can generate these links before pasting them in your tweet:
This action will generate a link that looks like this: @fmbs25/can-hive-help-the-santo-domingo-nursing-home-puede-hive-ayudar-al-asilo-de-ancianos-santo-domingo
Which means that if outsiders click your Twitter link and read the post on peakd, become curious enough to attempt to register, they'll be sent to Hiveonboard.com where they'll receive a free Hive account after verifying with SMS. Once they've completed those steps, you'll receive a notification memo to your wallet letting you know a new user signed up under your link and when these users post you'll receive some beneficiary rewards from them (until they decide to remove them). The rewards are of course not that important but with just a couple extra clicks you can make sure that your tweets are bringing in users from #web2 to Hive directly and you can easily find out when they join to help them out with some guidance and possible delegations to use our blockchain.
At some point in the future we'll try to add some extra incentives for direct onboarded users, especially if they also sign up for POSH and link their Twitter to verify to us that they're genuine users who joined Hive thanks to your Tweets. As you can see these are the kind of activities and genuine interactions we want to reward with POSH which bring more traffic to our #web3 ecosystem and strengthen it.
There's a lot of new things coming up for POSH, as usual these things take time but I hope you're all as excited as I am to see everything be released and how they'll aid our platform in the long run.
Happy POSH'ing!
