Steemit for Newbs Chapter 4: Niche Be Gone - Getting Started

When I have tried running a blog before, I was always advised to have a ‘niche’ - one main topic and stick to it. I’ve seen people come on Steemit with such a niche and they don’t seem to stay very long. That’s because there is a limit to how many things you can post on any topic. Can you really write 2-4 posts per day on your favorite subject? For weeks… months… years? Most people can’t – but on Steemit, that’s okay!!!

That’s where the social media part of this comes into play.

Forget niches.

Post what you like – and create appropriate tags so that people can find your posts as they need. The most important thing on Steemit is to post high-quality, original content regularly. To begin with, so people can see you, your target should be 2-4 posts spread out throughout your day – remembering that some people come on while you’re asleep. Some people do really well on 4 posts per day (though when I set my autovoters, I limit it to 2 posts/day) – and others much better on 1 post per day or even every other day. Quality is more important than quantity no matter what!

During the course of my week, I'll post chapters of my books - this one at the moment - plus one from my fiction series. I will also do a curation post for one of my favorite contests (I'll get into that later), and a couple of other contest posts for fun and excitement. I will also share a couple of my photos or maybe an art project I've done - always with the attitude of adding value to my Steemit blog! Sometimes, I'm just sharing some personal moments from my life story. Your genuine followers appreciate knowing that you are simply another human being!

Introduce yourself!

Your first (or one of your first) posts should be your introduction post. I have curated bloggers for larger following based solely on an awesome introduction post before. Your personal flavor shines through and we can tell instantly whether we have someone worth following or not. So, don’t shrug this off as a ho-hum type of post. Make it count!!!

Use “introduceyourself” as one of your 5 tags for that post and you will get some welcome notes and maybe a follower or three if you wrote it well.

Original Content matters!!!

Steemit is not like Facebook. This is not where you get to share each other’s snagged memes and get a few laughs. Here, we are expected to generate our own quality, original content (i.e. your own work.)

Be sure you are not infringing on someone’s copyrights. This includes text, images, videos, whatever. The best way to get into trouble on Steemit is to try to post other people’s work without due credit/permission. This will get you flagged for plagiarism and pushed down into the ground by whales if you don’t shape up your act pretty quickly!

Note that Steemit is designed to earn you money, so there is no such thing as "no harm" in using someone's copyrighted work on here! (Copyright on images is now assumed to be with the owner unless they specifically give them up.)

If you must use someone else’s picture – as is true with this book, here is how to avoid trouble…

Open Source/ Public Domain/ Creative Commons! Use work from the public domain/creative commons. Wikipedia Commons is good, but be sure to note their terms. Pixabay, Pxhere, Pixels, and the like are also great sources. Even then, give credit where credit is due. In NO case should you have unsourced images on Steemit – even if the Public Domain license says you don’t need to. Even your own photos should be specifically claimed as your own. This gets more and more important further down your Steemit journey!

It is easy to use Markdown language (used on Steemit’s text editor) to give your source. Put square brackets around the part you want highlighted – i.e. [ I am a source! ]. Immediately follow it with parentheses and the url like so: ( url ). Omit all the spaces in that line… no space between the bracket and the source name. No source between the close bracket and the open parenthesis, and no spaces between the parentheses and the url. (I’m not sure how to show it here without causing it to interpret the code.)

Fortunately, as you type in the Steemit text editor, you can see below exactly what it looks like, so you can play around with it a bit until you have it right. Most errors in Markdown have to do with spaces where there shouldn’t be one or no spaces when there should be! Confusing to begin with, but you’ll get used to it! (Welcome to the world of programming!) BTW, if you know HTML, drop that at the door. Almost no HTML is useful on Steemit!

Add Value! Don’t just post someone else’s photo as if it is your own – even with credit! Say something about it! Why do you think it’s a worthy subject. I’ve lost track of the number of posts I see that simply use a “borrowed” image (even with credit) and expect it to generate income for them. SAY something! Why should I use one of my small number of votes on your post? I can’t bestow them on everyone!

BTW, DON’T use the “photography” tag unless it’s your own picture! That tag is very much reserved for photographers of all kinds. 

Organic Following

Everyone (especially in the beginning) is in the same vote… A tiny number of upvotes available to you worth a whopping 0.01 SBD each! After you’ve given 3 or 4 votes, subsequent votes are worth NOTHING until your Voting Power has regenerated.

It’s really funny to see all these people who will comment that they will upvote if you do likewise… they’ll follow you if you follow them! That’s so disingenuous (even if they are honest – which many promisers are not.) Their following of you will mean nothing because they weren’t interested to begin with – only interested in getting you to listen to them!

An Organic following is formed by people deciding to upvote and follow you because they like what they see! They see you worthy of one of their few votes for the day!!! Consider this high praise!

So…

• DON’T get into the habit of asking for followers/upvotes.
• DON’T exchange upvote for upvote / follow for follow. It’s a wasted effort.
• DO go and peruse the other new posts and comment on things that appeal to you. Maybe they will like your comment and check out your blog as a result.
• RESTEEM - If you find that you don’t have enough content for the day, consider resteeming someone else’s post if you have enough bandwidth at the end of the day. Resteeming doesn’t give you anything except activity on your wall – and possibly a notification to the blogger that you’ve resteemed it. But it could generated additional followers or resteems of your content!
• FACEBOOK GROUPS - If you are on Facebook, there are several groups for exposure and followers. Just search “Steemit” and you’ll find a bunch. However, many of them follow the follower-for-follower model. Clean Steemit and Steemit Dreamit are two groups who promote an organic following.
• DO produce quality and original content! I can’t stress this enough! If you do this, people will begin to notice you. It’s slow-going at first, but slow-and-steady is the tried-and-true, do-it-yourself model for Steemit.

Oh, one quick note… if you don’t have anything to post – go and comment, comment, comment! But not just “I was here” type of comments. I’m talking meaningful comments which contribute to the dialog. Sometimes, even an “I love your photo” is all you can muster, but you’re going to get further if you can show how you relate to it… “I visited that place ten years ago – I just loved that beach!” You’re more likely to generate an author’s reward on your comment (yes, really!), gain a follower and possibly make a friend! (And that’s what social media is about, isn’t it?)

Reputation!

You begin with a reputation of 25. This goes up as people upvote your work. It can also go down if people flag your plagiarized material. There are also people who will downvote you because they felt you were insulting and rude. For most people, that doesn’t hurt so much, but if you insult a whale (someone with high reputation and/or huge amounts of Steem Power (SP) ) they can pound you into the ground with flags until you have a negative reputation!

This isn’t meant to scare you, but it is a cautionary tale – I’ve seen it happen more than once! If you behave yourself and treat others with respect, you won’t have too much trouble.

Next chapter, I will talk about Bandwidth problems and the solution – Steeming up. 

Click here to read book on DBOOKS.ORG