Welcome, welcome, welcome it is truly awesome to have you here!
The community here is awesome for those who take the time to form bonds, friendships and engage in the right way...You sound just the kind of person the community needs more of. You will come across many negative views of Steem on your travels here, in my experience they are usually from people here for other reasons than interacting and sharing with like minded peeps.
My favourite aspect of the platform is that I can talk to and make friendships with people from Venezuela, Australia, Macedonia, India and indeed South Africa...That is something very special indeed and something I cherish about the blockchain.
For truly community minded Steemians, I highly recommend joining Steemit servers on Discord...For a while I believed I did not need another platform in my life but WOW! I have made some amazing friends there...Real friends. Obviously you should start with @poeticsnake 's server where you can share and promote your posts, chat with some cool peeps including the slithering Steemian herself, It's also an amazing place to get all your questions answered and often join online Steemit radio shows highly recommended.
Congratulations on being Snekked!
If you ever need help or advice, please do not hesitate, I am always around!
So wonderful to be here! I was reluctant at first but I'm blown away already! I will definitely jump onto Discord as well - it looks like an amazing social platform! And wow, I didn't even know there were Steemit radio shows! Thanks so much for taking the time to educate me <3
I am so excited!!!
Oh there is so much more than we initially see. Many of the radio shows (and visual shows too) have amazing giveaways as well as fab info and coaching and workshops, from up-votes, to coins, to physical items etc.
If you need any discord pointers or recommended groups to join, just give e a shout, my name is the same there too. :)