A guide to following the right content on Steemit
So your new to Steemit? If you're anything like me your introduction and initial education about Steemit came from Youtube - for me that was Joe Parys and Jerry Banfield, and so these were obvious choices of people to follow (note - I don’t follower either of them now!). Now what? A common trap for new Steemians to fall into is to mass follow ‘whales’ or accounts with massive Steempower in the hope that one of them will upvote you- this generally leads to disappointment. Today I thought I would share a few tips about how to follow people that will be most beneficial for you.
Why not just follow all the whales?
This is what lots of newbies do, and in general these whales won't even know you exist! I have nothing against following whales or any accounts in particular, but I believe in following accounts because you are genuinely interested in their content or feel you are learning from them.
Follow people for their content, rather than how much SP they have!
The reason that I unfollowed Jerry is that I feel he makes Steemit sound to easy - just invest and throw money at it and you will make money - it isn’t that easy Jerry! When I started I was concerned about how much SP people had but now it doesn't bother me. If you want to know what some of the larger accounts are up to you can just check the trending page, or check out their blog (yes you can read someone's blog without subsequently following them!)
Note - Some of the larger accounts are also Steem witnesses so it pays to at least check out their page.
Don’t mass follow
If I read an article I generally check out the persons blog and get a feel for what they are all about rather than just blindly following. Some people might write a really good article you enjoy but may also post loads of photos/memes/jokes that you don’t want to see.
Don't be afraid to unfollow people!
I go through my ‘following’ page fairly often, and unfollow anyone that isn’t providing information I enjoy. I generally unfollow people who resteem to often, as this just clogs up my feed - I followed you for the content you produce, not the content others produce! On this note, I made the mistake of following a couple of ‘resteem bots’ when I joined - I recommend not doing this. Some of these accounts might resteem 20 + articles a day (of varying topics and quality), and again they just clog up your feed.
I reccomend doing this fairly regularly - its amazing how quickly the list of people you are following grows, and I think that monitoring this and keeping it relevant is important to enjoying your feed on Steemit and finding the blogs that you enjoy.
Follow your interests and passions
One of the best things to do in terms of following the ‘right’ people is to follow those who create content you are interested in. For me this meant spending some time sifting through the tags of music, crypto, technology and Steemit. I sometimes find people have written an awesome blog about a topic I am interested in, so check out their blog and it's mostly about a different topic, and so I don't follow them.
You can learn the majority of how Steem works from the white and blue papers and the FAQ, but there are also lots of gray areas and debates, such as the use of bots and upvoting your own content. For this I suggest following (or atleast reading) a variety of blogs about the ethical side of Steem and creating your own opinion.
Conclusion
I could conclude by suggesting some Steemians who I feel are ‘essential’ for everyone to follow, but I feel that this is a personal preference - just because I enjoy someone's content it doesn’t mean that everyone else will.
What are your thoughts - do you have a ‘following’ strategy?
Follow interesting people if you want to read interesting posts. Follow important people if you want to earn money. They say, basicly it is "proof of brain", in reality, it is "proof of whales".
But interesting content you can find on other websites, too, no need to bother with the super-complicated Steemit-system.
But Steemit seems to be an interesting game, better as playing shoot-them-up ...
Well it is suppose to be proof of brain but it could be proof of bot (but thats a story for another day!) - there are loads of great content creators on here but some of them get lost amongst some of the crap.
Well yes Steemit is complicated when you start but it aint to bad after your here awhile!
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Spot on !!! , great post for new people to immediatly see what's important and what's not :)
I clean the accounts which I follow also on a regular basis..
Thanks !!
Thanks @verhp11 :)
Yeah, totally agree. It’s great to have a good feeds on our steemit homepage. I spent most of my online time on steemit, I rarely use other social media. Because the content on my feeds is just great!
Yeah I agree I have a fantastic feed which I love!
Dude I feel you with the resteeming stuff! Sometimes it’s way too much. That’s the way I see it, if we follow people based on content and what they post/we like, it just helps us all overall. A whale with 5000 followers isn’t going to really do all that much for anyone, unless you get super lucky. At the end of the day, I see this as we are all going to grow together and in 6-12 months, let’s see where we are at :) then who knows from there onwards - steemit could become a very popular platform. Although I hope it never turns into a Facebook/Twitter.... apart from sbd price haha
Yeah I agree - I dont resteem very often. I dont see the point in resteeming something that is already on trending because loads of people will see it anyway!
Yeah bro I agree growing together is the best strategy - one day we might both be wealthy whales :)
offcourse I will follow
As I'm pretty new these are some vital information for me. Thanks for putting it together.
I also fell into the trap of following everybody with high value but following people that you actually like makes much more sense.
No problems glad you found it helpful :) - it is much more fun to read what you enjoy rather than what is 'valuable'
A lot of the most successful users follow less than 100 people. It's a big factor for me whether people actually make an effort to respond to comments. The social aspect is one of the main things Steemit has going for it
Yeah that sounds about a good number to me - I have tried to keep mine about 150... seems like 100 'people' and the rest are initiatives I like to keep up with such as @steembasicincome, @curie etc
I don't but it's something I've been giving some thought lately. Gonna have to sit down and go through my following list and then focus on building my feed into something I actually want to scroll through.
There are a few Steemians like yourself who I want to read everything you put out, but I'm currently drowning in a sea of posts.
Great post mate, as always!
I would reccomend it @johngreenfield - amazing how many people you can follow without it realising - it seems to creep up on you. Youll defiently benefit from better feed - my feed is brilliant!
Thanks for the kind words mate :)
Bro I agree mostly. I haven't cracked a secret code or anything but by doing exactly what you've lined out I've watched my payout go from pennies to dollars.... And when steem was higher I hit $10.
There probably are complicated strategies for finding those big payouts but in the end you have to bring value to someone.
Even though I'm sick to death of fucking kitten pictures some people really get off on it. Some of them have loads of sp. So what I think is mindless garbage, some will think is solid gold. Just do what you like, follow people that post shit you like, share your votes where they will do the most good, and everything will flow like it should.