Many people come to steemit and give up almost immediately because they find it hard to work with?
What they fail to recognise is that Steemit is not Fakebook or Twatter. Steemit is a blogging platform and most people are not bloggers or in the case of Dlive vloggers.
Let’s define exactly what blogging and vlogging is.
Put simply blogging and vlogging is a daily or weekly record of what you have been doing in your daily life
There are of course as many variants of this basic description as there are people and each will have it’s own unique flavor and style.
You will have to ask yourself some tough questions if you want to make it in this very competitive steem ecosystem.
Why do you do the things you do. For example, on steemit. Do you even want to make a blog? What will your blog be about? Or on Dlive what will your vlogs be about?
In my video I explain exactly what I do and why I do it. My motivation.
These are key questions to understand if you want to make progress anywhere including steemit and Dlive. Whether it is blogging, vlogging or photography or any aspect of your life.
If you can answer honestly. Why do you do the things that you do and what it is exactly that you do. You will make faster progress.
What is your objective. What are you trying to achieve by your blogs, vlogs and photos? Be honest.
These would seem on the surface to be very basic questions that anyone should be able to answer but as we all know, they are not the easiest questions to answer.
Let’s think about blogging for a minute.
Many people think that blogging or vlogging is very easy but they find out very fast that like any creative activity.
It is a skill that you will have to learn and it can take a very long time to become a ‘good’ blogger or vlogger
When you write content, you must be sure to think about your audience. You must get to know your audience (KYA) and use language that they can access easily.
Using long words may make you sound intelligent but if it is lost on the audience you are wasting your time and theirs.
I’m not suggesting that you have to dumb down what you write but you must bear in mind who you are writing for.
Many of your readers may have English as a second language for example.
Not everyone is a coder and writing long lines of code can look like gibberish to many people.
Making the bridge between technical writing and writing for the general public is a skill in itself
When you write your blog about a topic. What sources are you using to back up your claims? Are your sources of information trustworthy, legal and legitimate? In the absence of knowing the ‘facts’ about a topic.
Don’t write about it or if you do, state that this is just an opinion. Write about things that you do know a lot about.
I may write a course on the rights and wrongs of writing for public consumption but that is beyond the scope of this article.
So, what about vlogging?
Vlogging is not a new thing. The term vlogging is fairly new but people have been doing monologues to cameras since the invention of the movie camera. The same questions arise as in blogging. Why are you doing it and what is it exactly that you are doing?
You will see many copycat vloggers doing the same stuff as each other on many platforms including Dlive. Don’t copy other people. It just doesn’t work. And worse you may paint yourself into a corner that you really do not like.
The advantage to you is ‘you’. You have your own views and opinions about the world and it is up to you to share ‘your’ views on whatever it is that you find fun, interesting or useful.
The chances are that if you found something helpful, useful or interesting there will be other people who agree with you and find your content interesting too.
There are well over 2 billion internet connections on the planet. You will gather an audience. It’s just a matter of time and helping them to find you. When you create a piece of content. Make sure that the title directly relates to the content.
The search engines will pick this up and present it to those people that are searching for that kind of content.
It’s not rocket science…it’s computer science
Do what you feel comfortable doing and know something about. That way you will find your motivation to continue producing content that you are happy with. Do not compare yourself to others as that it a fruitless and soul-destroying way to go.
Not everyone is a blogger or vlogger and both are skills that have to be learned by doing it. So, don’t wait until you have all the right gear. Work with what you have and your skills will improve with practice.
It is never to late to learn a new skill. I have been taking photographs for decades but it is only very recently that I have begun to learn about photo composition, framing f/stops, ISO and aperture and it is a lot of fun.
Will I ever become a great photographer? That is the wrong question. I’m just enjoying the journey as should you.
Figuring out your what and why will save you a lot of time and grief.
Hope you found this post helpful.
My video is at DLive
