Fortunate

We're all trying to get exposure for ourselves, I guess :) maybe reach out more personally to people?

Makes sense to me, and thanks for the upvote!

You've got more followers on here than me. I have to hustle to get my upvotes, mainly by sharing it around on various other social networks. 500 followers on Steemit definitely doesn't result in the same level of engagement as 500 followers on Facebook. Maybe closer to the level of engagement you'd get from 500 followers on Twitter, in my experience.

Yay! I upvote you whenever I see ya. :)

And I appreciate it, too! I'm not vote begging but I'd love to really see more interaction on this platform.

I'm not sure how I gained as many, it was way unexpected. But I usually get votes from the same people, a good five votes per average per post. I have close to two thousand followers on Fascistbook and receive way more response there. I agree it might be wise to share posts around on other sites. Little to no interaction on Twitter, with about 1000 followers.

I'll tell you the trick that will change your life on here. Use GINAbot. It will search for key words for you. As a PI for example I have it searching for:

private investigator

As a residential security expert, I have it looking for things like:

security camera
Home security
residential security

Having a bot looking for those authored posts and replies allows me to engage people interested in the same things I am. Here's the promising new user information I share. Please check it for some possible helpful tips.

Webpages

There are a ton of other webpages to help you with Steemit. Here are some of the best for beginners:

https://steemian.info/signup-faq (This site is by @drakos and has a ton of good information for new users to help them get started.)

https://steemd.com/ (This site is used to keep track of your voting power and other stats. You do not want to run out of voting power, and you only get so much per day. I keep my voting power around 80% for example. Also use it to look at the coding for other people's posts. If you see a formatting trick they use, you'll see the code for that trick within the post details on steemd.)

https://steem.makerwannabe.com/ (This site will tell you who follows you, who unfollows you, and who mutes you. It is great for meeting new people too. I regularly check it to see who has followed me to see if I should follow them back.)

https://steemit.chat/ (This site is the official chat webpage for Steemit. There are Discord channels too, but I usually stick to the official site. Come in to network and meet new friends. You can directly message people there too, so it makes it easier to communicate with your closest friends.)

http://steemtools.com/ (This site is a comprehensive list of valuable tools.)

Bots

There are a lot of bots on Steemit. Some are useful and good, and others are not. If you see a cookie cutter reply, especially to your intro post, it is almost certainly a bot. Check the account's reputation. If it is low, I would recommend just ignoring them. Everything is public on Steemit, so you can go look at an account's comments and replies. Are they all the same? It's a bot.

There's one good bot worth mentioning for new users. It is called GINAbot, and you can use it to keep track of things the makerwannabe site above cannot easily do. For example, GINAbot will tell you when a key phrase is used, when you or someone else is mentioned by account name, or even if someone deletes a comment. The bot is extremely powerful and free. Simply add the following Discord server:

https://discord.gg/x9Empcm

When you connect to it, it will ask you to register and verify your account with a .0001 SBD or STEEM transfer. Then you will get a direct message from the bot with a private link to your configuration page. Go there to setup your options. The entire process takes 5 minutes, and it will be up and running. You can tweak the settings as you go too. I highly recommend people use it for networking purposes.

I have mine set to look for phrases like "residential security" and "private investigator" as two examples. Then I never miss out on content related to those, and it makes going there to engage in those conversations much easier. Without GINAbot, I would never have had the opportunity either! Check it out, and ask if you have any questions.

Sourcing and Adding Photos

Adding photos to your account as a new Steemian may be confusing at first too. The easiest way it to click to "Submit a Story." Once in there, use the built in Steemit tool to upload an image from your computer. Below the posting window, you will see "Insert images by dragging & dropping, pasting from the clipboard, or by selecting them." Click on the blue text. Once the image is uploaded, you can copy and paste the link into your account settings.

Here's a link to a Google Document I made to help with the coding:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1NlAoGnP8q7ZAxGsEnvza-qotUGkoaae4SwXdubAhi2g/edit?usp=sharing

Graphics, Badges, Signature Blocks, and Banners

There are many skilled and talented graphic artists on Steemit. One of them is a close friend, @grow-pro. He designed my signature gif, badges, divider lines, business cards, and more. You can check out his work further on your own. If you are looking for a graphic artist to help improve your posting images and formatting, he offers low cost services here on Steemit. Look him up!

Account Verification

Verifying your identity is very important because it will get you more support and people will trust you more.

The best way to verify is to link back to your Steemit account by using one of your other social media accounts. Some people will even post a video of themselves writing out their account information since that cannot be Photoshopped.

The more famous a person is and the more valuable their content is, the more important it is that they verify.

Security

Do not use your owner key to log into Steemit.com to post. Use your private posting key instead. Keep your owner key offline as much as possible, and only use it when you must.

Per the advice given by Arcanage, you should only use your owner key to:

1. Recover your account.
2. Change the other keys.
3. Give a present to your children a few minutes before dying.

There have been some scams in the past. If you click a link to a site that prompts you to log into it, be extra careful. Double and triple check the address to make sure it is really steemit.com. A recent scam was using "lsteemit" as the domain name, and people were entering their owner keys to log into it. That allowed the scammers to take those user's accounts, empty the money from them, and then ruin their reputation by using the newly hacked accounts to further the scam.

If you find or suspect a scam, please report it in the #steemitabuse channel on steemit.chat.

Don't Lose Your Content

Make sure you are copying and pasting your post content often as you write it, and put the data into another document to avoid losing it. I'll copy and paste my content into a Google document as just one example. Some people use Markup editors to do the same.

Definitely keep a backup copy right before you post it too, for some people have come back the next day to see half or the entire post missing even though the day before it displayed correctly. Make sure you copy and backup your long replies as well, for they can vanish immediately after clicking to post them.

Engagement and Authored Posts

In the beginning, unless you purchase some Steem Power, your account will be extremely limited in bandwidth. You can see the bandwidth you have on the steemd.com site. Since you only have limited amounts, it is best to use your bandwidth to engage others instead of authoring long and detailed posts. Once you have more SP in your account and more followers, then I recommend people start authoring more. Never stop engaging other people though through replies. It is the best way to gain followers and build your network with quality people.

Again, welcome! If you have any questions about getting started, look me up on the chat site or reply to this post.

I had 11K followers on G+, and it didn't help much. The feed here is practically useless. We cannot depend on it to have our posts seen. You have to engage people directly, and the best way to do that is with GINAbot from my experience. I also use steemit.chat and tons of steemit discord servers.

It's hard to keep up with people's posts. I have to be notified by even my closest friends when they post to make sure I do not miss it. The feed is useless of course. I'm going through my daily GINAbot notifcations now, and that's how I found your post. The bot looks for "voluntaryism." Bam, you wrote it in a reply. Here I am! :)

Hello @finnian LOL I also got here using GINAbot looking for @ifc and you didn't mention it but for some reason she does that, i assume it is from the word not'ifc'ation lol, anyway yes you are absolutely right, with the comment below, you definitely have to engage in the community to get your name out there a bit, so that your followers are like oooo @nexusvortex777 just posted what does he/she have to say today. Good Luck @nexusvortex777 and keep writing, check out others posts and steemIT!

Also you can check out the #newbieresteemday tag if you haven't already there are a great bunch of people involved from all walks of life. If you have any questions on how to get more involved, or more known that is a great place to start, although you aren't quite a noob it's a great place to meet people!

Good point. There isn't a notification system and the feed sucks for finding stuff. I find it's useful to get in the trending page for relevant but not saturated hashtags. I regularly look at the trending pages for stuff like occult, magick, esoteric and alchemy. There's definitely some room for improvement of this platform. I wonder if the rumors of something like Steemit being developed for the EOS platform are true and if so whether they'll do a better job.

I wonder how that would work because I had EOS when it was very new, and I was forced to sell it as a "US Citizen." Sure, I could have used a VPN and faked my location, but I didn't want to go there.

Definitely check out GINAbot. It takes 5 minutes to setup from start to finish. Here's my GINAbot blurb for new users:

There's one good bot worth mentioning for new users. It is called GINAbot, and you can use it to keep track of things the makerwannabe site above cannot easily do. For example, GINAbot will tell you when a key phrase is used, when you or someone else is mentioned by account name, or even if someone deletes a comment. The bot is extremely powerful and free. Simply add the following Discord server:

https://discord.gg/x9Empcm

When you connect to it, it will ask you to register and verify your account with a .0001 SBD or STEEM transfer. Then you will get a direct message from the bot with a private link to your configuration page. Go there to setup your options. The entire process takes 5 minutes, and it will be up and running. You can tweak the settings as you go too. I highly recommend people use it for networking purposes.

I have mine set to look for phrases like "residential security" and "private investigator" as two examples. Then I never miss out on content related to those, and it makes going there to engage in those conversations much easier. Without GINAbot, I would never have had the opportunity either! Check it out, and ask if you have any questions.

Sounds very useful! Thanks for the info. I'll definitely check that out when I get a chance.

As far as EOS goes, I'm somewhat surprised to hear that you're not allowed to hold it as a US Citizen, although I know your country has put a lot more regulations in place than most. Is it because it's technically still in the ICO stage? That's the only thing that even comes close to making sense. I'm here in Canada, where our government has said cryptocurrency investing is fine as long as you report any capital gains on your taxes.

It's a control thing of course, but they are cracking down on crypto here. I'm not sure why the EOS thing specifically was done, but I was told by Bittrex that either I sold or lost it. I sold it therefore. They got some type of order apparently from the US government.