Steemit is growing by around 500 new accounts a day at the moment, people are flocking from far and wide, in order to experience the buzz of getting paid for producing quality content.
Naturally as we take on so many new members there are a lot of questions that get asked and a lot of those questions have been answered before in previous posts.
However, because Steemit is in beta mode, meaning that there are still a lot of features that are being worked on by the amazing Steem dev team. So things like the follow function, stickies and other helpful functions are not quite ready yet.
Of course the advantage of being an early adopter on a site that rewards you for your efforts creating and voting on great content, is obvious. You are getting in before the masses and you will benefit financially from doing so. However this does little to alleviate your frustration when trying to work out how something on Steemit works.
Slack acts like the clubhouse for Steemit.com and you will get so much more by joining this (not so) secret club. Signing up to Slack is easy to do and will enhance your Steemit experience.
Get an invite by clicking the 3 horizontal bars at the top right of any page on Steemit.com as long as you're signed in. When you click them, you will reveal a grey menu and halfway down is your invite to join the Steem Slack.
After clicking the Join Our Slack button, you will be taken to a registration page, where you can put your Steemit user name, using the protocol; [email protected] as I have below, at this point you may be asked to enter an email address. I highly recommend starting a new one just for this, that way you'll have your Slack messages in one easily accessible place.
Once you've done this, you will get an email at the address you've created. You can just put in an email address straight away, if you prefer to do that, then use this method instead.
You will receive a confimation email containing a clickable link; once you have verified your identity by clicking the link. You will be taken to the Slack homepage, in the top right you will see the Steem logo, click that baby and you are in!
Do not worry about the pricing tag, Slack is completely free and you will not suddenly be asked to pay; however you have the option to upgrade to a paid account, which will give you a few more features, that you may find useful. However there is absolutely no obligation to do so, I personally haven't, but might do, as I can already see a couple of features that I'd like access to.
The Slack interface is very easy to use and self explanatory, there are a number of different channels on the left. When you click on the channels, you will be able to see the read messages and of course add your own questions or comments.
You can use the plus sign to create your own channel, however I would suggest that you browse the channels properly first and only add a channel if you feel it will add value.
You can send and receive private messages, to search for a user, all these messages are for your eyes only.
You can start a conversation with someone, by clicking the plus sign.
After doing this, you will get taken to a member list, where you can input a user's name directly, searching using the @ sign. Alternatively, you can just browse to see who has joined the Steem Slack channel.
So that's it, use Slack to ask questions, find out more about Steemit and become an even more involved member of the Steem community.
Even if you don't have any questions, or feel like you have nothing in particular to contribute, it is worth being on Slack just to keep your ear to the ground, and keep up to date with any announcements that may affect you.
OK, I hope that helps
Keep Steeming, and I'll see you on Slack.
