First, let's get this out of the way, "what's in it for me?" right? That's what you're asking. Well, a lot, perhaps.
I'll explain it all in a minute. First, let's talk about how this goes down, shalll we?
I want to conduct an experiment. Can we, the plankton and minnows of steemit, put a post at the top of trending? I've been working to prove it's possible for some time now, without seeing it happen in quite some time. There are several challenges we'll have to overcome to get there.
To set this up, first, let me say we'll be using a plankton account, 
I'm not sure. That's part of what it makes it so exciting! I think we can, if everyone will really do what they can to help. With a few hundred of us working together, surely we gain the attention to get more votes on board and carry it the rest of the way.
I promise you this, if
I've got ideas, as you know, but, I want your input here. I'm thinking we just go straight for the jugular, like, "Here's How This Post Got on Trending Without Buying Votes!" But, would it work? I'm not really sure.
The post itself will be a declaration of the power of the little guy. It will include a list of links to any blog that helps support the project, with your best post front and center! If that means 200 links, or 400 links, then so beit! I'll keep editing the new ones in as people sign on! If I have to edit it ten times a day, I'll do it!
I'm going to run a series of these articles through some friendly accounts that will gladly help promote us and see how much attention we can get over the next several days, then on Sunday, the article will be launched from
Once the article is in place, we will promote the heck out of it! I'll be using Steemit Facebook groups, Steemit chat and I'm working on getting into Discord more. But, again, here I'm open to suggestions.
can add it to the contest list they run, there are probably others.Whatever else you can think of to help make it go, leave me a comment. I'll take as much input as I can. Not all of the ideas will probably get put to use, but this is brainstorming people, share!
I said I'd explain and here it is. By joining this project, you'll get the following, provided you help do the heavy lifting (promoting, upvoting, etc)
As always, I have my own motives. I'm not trying to hide it. I'll be keeping half of the payout to further my work here. But, beyond that, I'm hoping to get the following.
. I haven't put as much time into it as I want, but it's hard to do when the audience is small and the payouts are not enough to cover the time.We're starting at the bottom, so, let's have a conversation. Got an idea of how to make this work? Great! Add it in the comments. Want to "sign up" to help? Great! I'll be making a list of everyone that says they're in over the next couple of days, I'll add it to ALL posts on the topic. Let's call it #projectminnowvote and use that hashtag as one of your tags if you want to share about it!
As a part of this, I want to encourage as much interaction between all of you as possible. So, go, follow each other, upvote each other's posts, comment, resteem, whatever! Let's start some buzz!
If this works, people, we could build a network capable of making this a regular thing!
I'm not a huge fan of automated curation, or renting votes. You know that, but a weekly post, with comment links to any posts deserving a boost, could be huge! Imagine a weekly post that got 500, or 600 upvotes, with 100 comments, all saying, hey, take a look at what this account over here is doing that's not getting attention!
Then, what if the highest voted comment/link got our attention for a few days? Could we change trending? Maybe. I think it's worth a try.
Last night I was looking over my posts and feeling pretty good about the interaction, but I got stupid and clicked into Trending. I started looking at the posts sucking so much of the reward pool up. And you know what I found? They're not special.
In fact, the one thing they all had in common? Paid votes and a LOT of them. Some of them paid more than $200 SBD to get there, something many of us cannot afford to do.
The bigger problem for me, though, is the poor quality of the content. And it's what visitors are attracted to first. It's the pattern that's being set for success here on Steemit. Is that what we want? I don't, so this is my response.
*If you're in here are some ways you could help promote it!
Some of you will want to watch and see what happens. That's great! Could you do me one favor? Please, please, please, don't do anything negative. Encourage each other. If you don't want to participate, at least don't stand in our way, please? Thanks! That includes negative comments, pointing out problems, being unhelpful, or otherwise distracting. Just go do your own thing, we promise not to rain on your parade!
