FROM A CURATOR'S DESK: 3 INGREDIENTS TO MAKE A TASTY POST

Pixabay CC0

---

I love writing long before I joined Steemit and that is one of the reasons I still drop at least 3 unique articles in a week. Sometimes, I enter discord and brag to my friends about my journey on Steemit – I can say I am one of the lucky ones. I have never been visited by Cheetah even before I started using plagiarism checker to check my articles and the sweetest of it all is being visited by great curation communities such as @curie, @OCD, @wafrica, @stach and many more without promoting my post. This is not a post to brag about myself but to open your eyes and brain to what is happening here. I am a curator for a big curation community called @bigwaves, it was founded by great Nigerian curators and I won’t boast about their feats unless they pay me.

Recently, I have discovered people have dropped writing because of the dip. This shows most people joined this platform because of the reward and ignore the other opportunities Steemit can throw at your table. I am writing this article for the faithful and loyal Steemians who are still writing and believe their work is not getting the right audience. Many people stopped writing because they feel no one will see their post, this is not true. Last week, I wrote an unusual post titled The Hurt in Flattery and posted it here. I moved on to do other things until I got a notification from Gina that OCD have visited the post without promoting it. This is to show curators are still busy looking out for extra-ordinary posts and this is the time to get noticed when less people are posting.

Without wasting time, I want to write today on 3 Important Things That Get Your Post Noticed. I am writing this from a curator’s angle and I hope you understand this to make the right change to get the push you need.

1.) What a Title!
This is how I feel when I see some articles, I quickly click on it to read the content. This means, always use an enticing and catchy title to get seen. Most Steemians make the mistake of writing the whole content of their post as the title. I have made this mistake subconsciously quite often till I got awakened by @samest and @futurethinker during their curation shows. Curators are mostly busy with offline jobs and they find little time to come in to get the right posts to curate and log out, it is attracting to see a title that will lure them to read the content. There are times you can coin a title that will make them read the article till end to figure out why you give the article such topic – I hope you understand this. Take your time to come up with a title and ask yourself after: ”If I am a curator, will I click this post to read?” If yes, proceed to use the title.

2.) This Picture Goes with the Title
This is another important point to note as a writer. There are rules that govern the use of pictures which limit us to the kind of pictures to use for our post. I have cancelled a whole post before because I didn’t get the right picture to use. Don’t blame me, I was Mr. Perfect back then when I started this journey. Back to the point, always make sure the picture you use aligns with the title. If it aligns with the title, it sure aligns with the content/body of the post. It amuses curators to see colorful and well-sourced pictures in your post so take your time to find that right picture for your article and never forget to source your images. Your article may be 100% original and interesting but if the picture is wrongly sourced or used, curators will hiss and pass. Learn the Marksdown styling and add class to your post.

3.) The Right Primary Tag
The main problem with most of us is focusing mainly on the reward, this pushes us to be desperate and make silly mistakes. There are 5 tags you can use on your post, the first tag is the primary tag and it is the most important tag. Your post must correlate with the primary tag, the other tags can be used to promote a tag or a community. You can’t write a science post and use motivation as a primary tag, curators will not even open the article. It is important to understand how tags work before you start using them recklessly. Use the right primary tag to get the attention of certain curators – there are curators that only look through certain tags. As a curator, I look for writers under the tag of the community I curate for, this is what first narrow down the posts published that day for me to curate.

---

In conclusion, don’t blame the dip but concentrate on making your blog quality and original. If you think Steemit is down, write a plagiarized post and watch Cheetah and Steemcleaners pay you homage. Make use of these 3 points and watch how rewarding visitors pay you visit. Steemit is for us, let us contribute to push it forward by publishing quality and original posts. Also, we can promote the platform to others till the right investors come around. Curators are still active but will never visit if you make mistakes so be wise today and do the right thing. Thank you.