My new upvote strategy takes a long-term approach to building Steem rewards. Rather than focusing strictly on boosting my curation reward rate, I'll build up individual followers in my community the best I can I will focus on growing my own community here on Steem – building a strong foundation for us to grow and thrive on.

I delegated some SP through MinnowBooster for the first time today. I had a need for short-term liquidity that changed my mind this time, but I'd rather use my vote directly to reward good content (and thus influence content creation) on Steem.

Upvoting To Build a Stronger Community

I will be moving more of my votes to manual curation, and turning down my auto-votes to leave more voting power for my own discretion.

Rewarding my regular commenters is a big part of my objective in leaving more voting power up for grabs. I want to upvote the community that interacts with me, especially the ones who do so on a regular basis. So far, I have only two commenters on my comment auto-voter list. What it takes to get on that list at this point is pretty simple:

1. Be a real person.
2. Make a comment about the content of one of my recent posts.
3. Do that more than once.

I want to build my own community here on Steem - of real people doing real things.

Renting Out Half My Steem Power Short-Term

I'm not entirely sure how I feel about the MinnowBooster service. I've never bought a vote from it, or delegated SP to it. They have several services I guess, but I chose to fill standing market orders for SP delegation in order to get the best rate for relinquishing my SP.

I filled two orders for SP. Both orders last 1 week, meaning that the SP will be under the buyer's control for 1 week, then under no one's control for the 1 week resting period that follows delegation. The first order was pretty small, and the second was for just under half my Steem Power.

Looking at the accounts that placed the orders, one seems like an actual real person, that I probably never would have heard of otherwise, but who seems pretty cool. That user is @sequentialvibe. After completing the delegation, I checked @sequentialvibe's recent posts. I decided to follow, then I upvoted a post and commented on it.

The other user I am less sure about. The posts from that user are mostly photography, and they all come packed with identical introductory text. The identical intro seems weird to me. I won't call the user out, especially since my criticism mostly comes from a feeling, rather than facts. There are no secrets on Steemit, so check the blockchain if you're still curious.

Bottom line, that user paid me a great rate for a short delegation, and I will be happy to cash that in. I will also be curious to see how they utilize their rented voting power, but it is theirs to use for the next week. This is no doubt going to affect my own curation rewards for the next two weeks in terms of raw numbers.

For those following my trail, my rate of return on curation rewards should be about the same – lately, around 0.2% per week, which is better than average. I hope to raise that with a few refinements to my voting pattern.

Boost Your Own Steem Author and Curator Rewards

Comment On My Posts

Make yourself a new habit: Check my blog regularly, and comment on my posts.
Doing that will help you out in a few ways:

1. You will earn Steem rewards from me and maybe other people upvoting your comments.
2. You will learn more about Steem from reading my posts - how it works, and how to use it (PRO-TIP: there is always more to learn).
3. You will be building community. Community is made up of individual relationships, and commenting on other people's posts is the best way to put yourself out into the Steem community at large, and the smaller community around each user your comment interacts with (including the author of the post you are commenting on, the other commenters on the post, and the larger number of readers who will see your comment without making their own reply).

Follow My Curation Trail

The other change is even easier to do: Follow my curation trail. By following my trail, you will upvote the same posts that I do.

Using Streemian, you can decide whether to follow my voting at full strength, half strength or whatever. You can also choose whether to follow my upvote on posts only, or also on comments. If you're like most Steem users, you are letting your voting power go unused way too much.

Following my trail puts your vote to work – building our community and boosting your SP with consistent curation rewards.

• Chat about Steem and share a dank meme on my Discord
• Follow my curation trail on Streemian

Keep on Steemin'!

"By mutual confidence and mutual aid,
great deeds are done, and great discoveries made."
The Iliad, by Homer