As I come to a close on my first week on the platform I find myself finally coming to begin to understand the benefits and limitations of Steem. I had high hopes when I started out, and while Steemit isn't all I was hoping for right now, that doesn't mean it can't be. Also please note everything in here is opinion not fact (well except the part about mining not working).
My first week I have tried to post as often as I can, and be as active in the community as possible for me. I read all I could about the system surrounding Steemit, and even tried my hand at mining (which to my dismay I found can no longer be done). I have completely immersed myself, and this is how I see it.
If you want to be successful on Steemit (monetarily or influentially): you have to post, especially when just starting out. Curation rewards are hard to get and when you don't have that much power you won't get much of anything from the curation pool, even if you were early on and it was a huge hit. To further this comments only get you so far, and their visibility is limited to the viewers of what you comment on. Posts are the best way to make some small amount of Steem/SP starting out. Even if you just make pennies, it's at least moving you upward slowly.
Now that doesn't mean don't up vote! Definitely check out the new to to see if there are things you like. Find people to follow and treat Steem like any other social media platform, upvote the stuff you like! I have a theory but it isn't tested yet. If you follow someone you like and you know gets a lot of votes and upvote them early, it might be a decent strategy to get curation rewards. Again not tested yet.
Small posts are sometimes better than long posts. I have found that people don't often read a long post, and it makes sense we are in a busy society. Keep it short if you can, and write properly.
If I were in it for the idea of monetization I would leave Steemit, cause it really isn't doing it for me. However as I dove in head first; I have come to really enjoy it for a social media platform. It's not even for anything that makes this particular platform special, rather it's because of the community. I love the Steemit community, even a small account gets attention and usually it's positive. This is probably because it is such a small community. If I'm reading steemd.com/distribution right, only 20,791 out of 163,510 accounts are actually active!
I have found the community to be non-toxic for the most part and just a great place to be. The one thing we need to get going is the promotion of more tags. Right now it seems the biggest tags are pretty normal: life, Steemit, mining, art, photography, blog, etc. Your usual high up tags, I'd like to see some not so usual or more tags up there. Personally I am going to try to help out the gaming tag.
That is what I have learned/experienced in my first week in Steemit. I hope it was interesting at least.
