Today I have decided to spend almost all my day in the New section (I know) of the introduceyourself tag. It was a though day for me, as I am not used with such a high volume of content to look at, some of it was in languages I've never seen so I skipped that part, and try to curate and spread the small knowledge I have gained since I am here. I know there are witnesses and users who just do this as a normal activity, but for me it was not that common. Let me share with you a little of things I have found there:
Spam - A lot of it!
I know that most of the times this is the reason why people never use the New tab, especially with no tag selected. The amount of posts was untraceable for a human being, especially because I was spending time trying to comment and tell everybody what is wrong and what is right and welcome the new people to the platform. But it was another kind of spam too.
I found at least two people spamming and asking the newcomers to follow and upvote them. They was @ashishgj-agj.inc and @arvindkumar. They had comment like the following:
As you can see, I have flagged them, I know some may judge me for doing so, but trust me, that was the only way I could stop them (at least for a while). At first I have asked them to stop spamming people, and explained why this is bad, but nobody gave me any attention, and their comments kept coming to each post under the introduceyourself tag. They were actually hunting the posts here if I am allowed to say so. After a few flags (and I don't have that much SP) they stopped.
I find it really mean to go to the people under the introduceyourself tag and spam them. I remember when I was new to the platform I barely understood anything, there was a lot of information coming on to myself and a whole different thing from the basic and classic social platforms and spam comments are not what I wished. I even remember that I have seen a few posts of @ned (on that time he was much more active) and he was announcing SMTs I think. I was asking myself who is this guy, what is he talking about and why does he have so much success? This is just to make you remember what it means to step into Steem and hope you will catch on the way. How evil should someone be to go to these new users and spam them to gain followers before they understand what is going on?
Some good content
So after I finished with the spam comments, which made me happy (and left me with a smaller amount of voting power unfortunately), I have found some good content. I remember just the post of @xeccedentesiast which I have curated, encouraged to go on and write good content, and then kindly resteemed. I was happy to see that introduce yourself post reaching the Hot section after it was curated by me, that made a part of me proud.
I know I have curated more content, but this was the best and relevant example I could give. This left me with pretty low voting power at least for me as I am trying to curate much posts at pretty high voting power.
What everybody wishes is much harder to achieve - Steem followers!
This one really caught my attention:
Surfing the introduceyoursel section, at the end of my day (it's getting late here :) I found this post which it was actually a question for steemit people, rather than an introduction. The article was containing only the following question and a gif
Outside of directly asking for a follow, are there any tips on getting more followers?
I was more than happy to replay with a short explanation so this article contains a part of Posting my comments series:
I would suggest to never ask for people to follow you. I never did this even though right now I would have had a lot more followers if I did. Simply post good quality content, comment to other people posts (but with real comments not just spam them with a Great job) engage with them and a part of them will follow you. It is better to make friends you can trust or who you can have fun with, rather than have a lot of followers who do not care about you. Look here at this article for new people on the platform. It contains some important guidance which will help you a lot. And never expect a huge and exponential growth because that is simply impossible. Everybody needs time to develop on the platform and few just wait to make it until that point where they have a lot of followers and people who support them and who they are supporting. hope this helps, even though it is not exactly what you are searching.
PS: Next time you want to ask, I suggest using the asksteemit tag. You can replace the introduceyourself with it, as this is not an introduction post. Good luck!
Today I have tried to offer the newcomers a better welcome than they usually have and I encourage any of the more experienced users to do the same and help the people who just join the platform to find their place here among us. This will be a progress I think, for the platform.
I think I have the idea to made this incursion in the introduceyourself section after I have seen @son-of-satire's post a while ago where it was mentioned I go to the "introduceyourself" tag to welcome new users and I realized I was very rarely doing that. Also another person who made me thought of doing this is @swissclive's post about encouraging newbies who I think makes some great job in helping the platform by offering his votes this way.
Wish you all the best and steem on!
