Starting out on steemit can seem very daunting at first and can take a little while to find the ropes. I've nearly been on steemit for a month now and though it would be a good idea to give 10 tips to newcomers to steemit to help them out, and maybe even those of you who are established steemians will find some good information in this. If you found this post useful feel free to upvote it and if you have any questions once you are done reading, please leave a comment and I'll make sure to reply. So without further ado, let's get into the tips. These are in no particular order.
1. Comment on posts
Commenting is something that is severely undervalued here on the steemit platform, especially with newer users. It is a great way to build up some steem power when you first start; leaving a good comment on someone else's lucrative posts could lead to quite a few upvotes, building up an extra bit of steem power over time. Steem power isn't the only benefit to leaving comments on people's posts. You will also be making a name for yourself in the community and building your followers, giving you more consistent upvotes on future posts. I have had a few people reply to a comment I've left on their post who have said that they checked out my blog after reading my comment, enjoyed my content and decided to follow me.
2. Upvote your comments
This second tip follows on from the first. Upvote all of your comments. It amazes me how many people do not take advantage of this. If you don't know, the comments section of each post are ordered by which has the most steem power assigned to it. Even if you don't have enough voting power to add any value to the comment, with the amount of people that I see who forget to do this, it will surely rank your comment higher, giving it more exposure and a higher chance of other people upvoting your comment too.
3. Upvote all replies on your posts
As well as upvoting your own comments, it is beneficial for you to upvote everyone who replies on your post. If people see that you are upvoting commenters, it will encourage them to interact with your posts more often, bringing in consistent upvotes and followers. Put simply, if you help someone by upvoting their comments, they will help you by upvoting your posts, a very friendly and great thing about the steemit community as a whole.
4. Take advantage of the 100% power up when you start
When you are writing your posts you have the 3 options on how you want the steem to be distributed to you when you get payed out. You can either decline the payout, split it 50/50 into steem power and steem dollars, or power up 100% by having all your rewards paid out in steem power. I recommend utilising the 100% power up when you are first starting on steem to build up your steem power to get a more powerful vote; this will definitely help with tip 2 and bump your comments up higher. If you opt to go 50/50, the steem dollars you receive take 3.5 days to convert to steem for you to power up into steem power, so why not just put all of your rewards straight into steem power instantly rather than having to wait.
5. Be consistent
I'm sure all of you have heard the saying "consistency is key to success" and this rings true to steemit. Post regular content to your blog, giving people a reason to follow you. If you just post randomly, with long gaps between posts, there is no incentive to follow you. I tend to make two posts a day, quite often making more, and very rarely doing less but I post every day, allowing me to have gained 64 followers to my blog in 27 days. You can also be consistent in the type of content you post. If you make a particular post and people enjoy it, if they see you post more of this content regularly on your blog, they are likely to follow you and give you more guaranteed upvotes on your posts.
6. Persevere
I know that it can be disheartening when you have spent a large amount of time crafting the perfect post and not see it reap the rewards that you feel it deserves. But as you keep posting you will see that the amount you earn for each post will steadily go up too, you just need to keep trying. It also helped lessen the feeling of disappointment by changing my mind set on steem. Many people agree that steem as a cryptocurrency is very undervalued and many are predicting steem to increase in price by 10 times in 10 months. Knowing this, I am now happy if my post even only makes a few cents, as I am confident in steemit and steem and do see the price increasing, meaning these posts will be worth more in the long run.
7. Make use of images
As you have probably noticed, this post is littered with images. The first benefit of using images is that they can get your post noticed. If you look at the majority of posts they have a picture attached to them; so an attention grabbing picture can grab the attention of people to click on the posts and see what it's about. Another reason for them are that make for more attractive posts and break up text. If I had posted this without any images it would just be massive chunks of text, nothing attractive to read.
8. Follow people who you know will make a lot from their posts
This can be an excellent way to get a bit of extra steem here and there. By upvoting their posts, you have the possibility to cash in on some of the curation rewards that the post pays out. Also, partnering this tip with commenting can be a great way to earn even more steem. If you upvote your comment you could be highly ranked in their posts. On top of this, some people on steemit who have large followings, such as @trevonjb and @jerrybanfield reward their fans by upvoting their comments with a lot of steem power. If you've been upvoted by these large content creators, and rank highly in the comments section, you can often expect a few more upvotes, increasing the value of that comment even more.
9. Make use of markdown styling
Formatting posts on steemit works by using markdown styling, a guide of which can be accessed from the posting page on steemit. It's a lot easier to learn how to use markdown than you think, this post itself just uses basic markdown to insert images and create headings but has a big impact. Becoming sufficient in markdown can make your posts seem more attractive and professional, and much more enticing for an upvote.
10. Have fun
Probably the most cliché of all the tips on this list but I still do think it is very important. You should be posting what you want to post and not have them dictated by what you think should be successful. Yes, this might give you the odd post that blows up every now and then but if you keep consistently posting what you enjoy, you will be followed by people who enjoy similar things to you, and these people are more likely to be guaranteed to upvote a lot more of your posts.
Thank you for reading this post if you have got this far. This sums up my top 10 tips for starting out on steemit. Hopefully this benefited you and you will be able to take some of these tips on board to grow your steemit account. If it was helpful please do upvote and resteem this post, also leave a comment, I'm going to be sure to follow my own advice and upvote all of you and I will try my best to reply to everyone.