What does a SteemitWorldMap curator look for?

One of my main role on Steemit is curating for the @SteemitWorldMap. I've been doing this since @martibis launched the Map sometime back in August 2017.

It was a short while after I had joined Steemit. One day I saw a shout out for people to join the project. I jumped onboard immediately along with five other people who put their hand up. Fast forward year and a half, we have a team of 5 curators today. Myself and @choogirl from the original bunch are still here, and since then @itchyfeetdonica and @lizanomadsoul have joined us. We've come a long way over these 18 months and at times it was really hard work for different reasons. During the good times, we had up to one hundred posts a day pinned onto the map, each one had to be manually reviewed by us. Then at one stage, there were only three of us left in the curation team. When Steem was low, so was morale on Steemit. We did question was it still worth keep the Map running? Luckily we did. Because here's what we've achieved with your support:

• there are over 36000 posts pinned onto the map
• these were added by over 2000 Steemit users
• we've issued 509 issues of the #TravelDigest
• curated over 9000 posts
• authored by over 1000 Steemit users
• and over 14000 unique visitors from on and off Steemit have visited @SteemitWorldMap

Impressive right?

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Apart from gloating how far the @SteemitWorldMap have come in the 18 months, today I want to tell you a bit about how we curate, specifically what I'm looking for when I curate for the Map. After all, we all like to know how curators think, and how we can improve our chances of being curated.

It goes without say, original quality content is the first and foremost criteria. We don't tolerate plagarism or recycling of old posts, and do our best to not curate them. Second, your post must be written in English. Our team is small and we don't have the resources to curate non English posts. These are pretty much the only strict rules we've laid down. In fact, we've sort of evolved as we've grown and truth to be told, we don't have any written rules.

Is that good or bad? And how easy, or difficult is it to be curated by @SteemitWorldMap? Actually, it's not that difficult if you know what we're looking for. And if you read our #TravelDigest you'll know the type of posts we curate every day.

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There are a lot of photographers on Steemit and many post some of the best images I've seen. Single photo posts are great to showcase your work, but unless you're a very strong writer, it isn't that easy to articulate a travel story through one photo. Help us to help you by posting a few more photos to complement your travel post.

Closely linked to that is the length of your post. We don't have minimum word requirements, but I find it's not that easy to tell people about your travel story or experience in a few sentences. Tell us a bit more about your experience or the place you went, why was it good, bad, memorable.

Food is another popular topic. There's a difference between reviewing how good the food was at a restaurant, and reviewing a restaurant from a travel, cultural, culinary, architecture or historical point of view. The latter is what @SteemitWorldMap normally curates.

A lot of people don't pin their post on the Map because they think they're only travelling when they travel, ie when they go away on holiday. Actually, that's not quite true. Going for a day out to your local beach, taking the kids to the amusement park might not be travelling for you, but someone else from another part of this world may be looking for something to do when they visit your area. Don't forget, over 14,000 visitors from all around the world have used the Map so far.

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I have thoroughly enjoyed being a curator for the @SteemitWorldMap and the above are just some of my experience from the past year and a half. It doesn't represent the official view of @SteemitWorldMap so you might see slight differences from other curators.

The bottom line is, I have thoroughly enjoyed reading all the posts pinned onto Map, travel related or not. I don't follow everyone because I know I will see your post when you pin it onto the Map. So keep them coming!