Have you been struggling to gain recognition on the steemit platform?
If yes, you are not alone. About 70% of minnows are clueless as to how to make their work get the much deserved attention. It doesn't matter how good your posts or articles are, if you don't know what to do, you'll get little to no attention.
You don't have to do it alone; trying to reinvent the wheel, people have gone through that same road, find out what they did to find success.
I was privileged to meet with a curator @ewuoso, I couldn't just let him go, without asking some questions as regards steemit. I'd like to share the lessons I learned from my conversation with him.
@vwovwe: You joined steemit in June, how did you achieve this much in a space of six months? @ewuoso: well, I joined in June, yeah, but I wasn't really active for sometime, I think for the first month or thereabout, I was just there, not doing much. But when I picked up, I made posts consistently, I was commenting alot on good posts too, not just anyhow comments; I tried to make it intelligent and relevant to the post, unlike some comments I see on some posts. I was also on channels, discord channels, a lot of people knew me then, so it wasn't difficult.
Since they knew that this person was active and consistent, without telling me some of them will just go to my posts and upvote. I followed people that could add value to my post; people like @stellabelle, and @surpassinggoogle. For @surpassinggoogle if you make a comment on his post, there is a 99% chance that he'd upvote your post, and if you're consistent, he'd definitely visit your blog, if after he visits your blog, and you keep coming, he might just decide to add you to his Steem voter. There was a time he added me, after a while I think he removed me, he probably felt I was doing OK, I don't know. If you comment they know you, if you don't, I don't need to tell you the outcome. When you make a post, and you use a tag, other people would make posts after you, there is every tendency that your post will get buried. People might not actually see it, that's where resteeming comes in. If you're able to make friends, luckily for you they may follow you. There is a guy called @lukestokes, he followed me personally, for reasons I don't know. Let people know you , if you comment on a post your signature would be there, they don't need to start looking for you, by just clicking on your username your posts will be available to them and they could upvote your posts. Just make friends, join groups; discord, steemit.chat, whatsapp etc let people know you. Commenting was instrumental to my success on steemit.To sum it up, for me; consistency was the key. Instead of posting and running away, then come back to post again after a few days, why not stay around and engage the community.
Lesson #1: Consistency is key
@vwovwe: Considering the fact that you're just 6 months old on the steemit platform. How did you become a curator?
@ewuoso: Actually there are lot of curators, but my kind of curator works for @curie. To be a @curie curator, all you need do is get to @curie's wall and search for top curators. Those with above 90% of approval rate; approval rate is calculated based on the number of post you submitted and the ones that were approved, if the person has a 100% or 90% approval rate, you message the person. Each top curator has their way of mentoring or employing people; some will ask you to go look for good post and bring to them, if the posts are worth anything, they'll submit it for approval, they can do that for a week or two, if the posts you bring gets approval on a regular basis, they'd accept you. Others will ask you to read the guidelines, once you've done it, you'll be given a test. If you pass, they can recommend you. I did the latter; I passed the test and was recommended. That was how I became a curator. On steemit anybody can achieve anything, just know where to go and who to meet.
Lesson #2: On steemit anybody can achieve anything.
@vwovwe: What advice would you give to upcoming steemians, who haven't gotten much yet, but are very eager to make progress on the platform.
@ewuoso: Like I said earlier consistency is key. The person has to be consistent. OK, for instance, you make a post today and the post earned you nothing and you just feel discouraged and decided not to post again, no. One wrong notion people have, is that there is some sought of reward just laying around on the steemit platform, waiting for them to post. You have to interact in the community , steemit is a social media, and as such you have to make friends, it's the friends you've made that would upvote your posts, it's not like a miracle will happen. A lot of minnows have been discouraged due to little or no upvote on their posts, they shouldn't be. I was once in their shoe, I wanted to give up at some point, I was fed up, I was like; "what kind of bullshit is this?" There is a guy called @tojukaka, he was like a mentor then, @samstickkz was also there too, these guys guided me through that phase. The person who introduced me to steemit did it in a wrong way he said; just come, write and make money, he made it look easy, so I was expecting it to be easy. I got to find out the truth in a frustrating way. I got on the platform and started writing and nothing was coming out of it, I was going to quit until I met @tojukaka, he told me the same thing I'm telling you; he said I should be consistent and patient, and he's giving me 100% guarantee that I'd surely get rewarded. Another thing he said is that I should be original, at the time I didn't know how to do research on the internet, but I had a farm, so he said people would be interested in what I do on the farm. So, I started making posts based on the things I did on my farm; catering for my pigs amongst other things. That was how I gained recognition in the community.
@vwovwe: At what point in your steemit journey, did you get proper recognition? Reason why I'm asking this question is that, a lot of steemians especially from the Uyo community have been complaining that, they've been posting consistently for some time now and the maximum value they get from their post is 1SBD to 3SBD.
@ewuoso: Before I answer that question, I'd like to ask; how do you measure if you're successful on your post? How do you measure the amount of payouts that you're supposed to have from your post? For instance, you got 5SBD from your post, how do you know that that wasn't what you were supposed to get?
@vwovwe: OK, they probably saw a similar post, that was not half as good as theirs getting nothing less than 30SBD and they feel their post is undervalued.
@ewuoso: Yeah, it happens, but you're not the one to decide the value of your post, it is the person reading. The beauty of steemit is that you can make a post on any topic of choice. If you're a sports lover and you see a post about politics, you won't even click it. If a person that likes politics saw the post, he would read and probably upvote it. There're some people on steemit that would just post memes and get massive upvote, for those kind of people, it is the friends that they made. If I'm your friend on steemit and you make a post, even if your post makes no sense, I'd upvote. Like I said earlier, when I was introduced to steemit, I was passive for
like a month until a friend showed me his progress on the platform, I was a bit motivated, so I made my first real post, when I started it was just 2 to 3 lines. I had a celebrity I was following on instagram, who was abused because she was black, so I followed her story and made a post about racism. I made 14 SBD from that post, it was my first, I was really happy. But after then, I was struggling to make 1.5SBD, that was how the frustration I mentioned earlier started. I almost gave up. One other thing that helped me at the time was @jerrybanfield's upvotable, there was a thing he was doing then called upvotable. I got into upvotable like 3 different times. When you get in there, the person that took your post there gets 10SBD and you also get the same amount. I got that amount 3 times, I was loving steemit already. There was a time I got in OCD too; they're a set of curators like @curie, they'd submit your post to whoever is in charge. I just saw a comment on my post, that my post was chosen, if I want my post to be featured I should comment yes, and I did . I went to meet the person who wrote the comment but he said my post was voted out, I wrote another post again and it was accepted. From then I just thought to myself, since I'm already making it, there is no reason to leave steemit. So I think, that was the point I began having proper recognition.
Lesson #4: You're not the one to decide the value of your post, it is the person reading.
@vwovwe: For those still in school, like students, how do they cope with their studies and steemit at the same time, you just said being active and consistent is a major factor for success on the steemit platform.
@ewuoso: Just because you're active doesn't mean you can't attend to other things, it depends on how less busy you are. I finished my service year after graduating in April, there was no job, I usually go tothe farm, aside that I wasn't going anywhere, so I was always on steemit. As a student you shouldn't neglect your studies just because you need to make money, that is what you'll fall back on at the end of the day. You don't have to be online 24/7 to get recognition, give time to other things that add value to you.
Lesson #5: You don't have to be on steemit 24/7 to be successful on the platform.
@vwovwe: what has been your major challenge on steemit and how did you surmount it?
@ewuoso: My major challenge was trying to make the community accept me for who I am. Most times when I log in, I see people making posts on science and technology, it was researched anyway. I admire them, I'm know nothing about science or tech. I was a farmer and I didn't know how to put up my farming on steemit. I had a chat with @lukestokes, he told me I didn't have to go online to make research before I make my post, I could make posts from the things I know about farming, he made reference to @papa-pepper; he takes videos and pictures of animals and writes about them and I felt encouraged. @tojukaka also said the same thing, he was impressed with the fact that I was a farmer, he told me I should just try to be me, that I should make post on things that I know very well and I'm familiar with, he gave the idea of taking photos of my pigs, writing about how I've been rearing them. So the fear that I won't be accepted because I knew nothing about science and technology or cryptocurrencies at the time faded away.
Lesson #6: Be yourself; succeed with what you're good at. Don't do things just because others are successful doing it. It may not work for you.
Brain-picking #1; 6 steemit lessons from a curator | Ecency
