"Musician's Guide to Steemit" Open Source eBook Project: CHAPTER THREE -  Your First Week on Steem: Meeting People & Joining Communities

5,000+ words in two weeks!! We’re on our way. Here’s Chapter 3 for the Steem Marketing Project, “A Musician’s Guide to Steemit.”

Editor's Note

For the basic info on this project, click here.

Or check out the Open Source repo here.

More updates about this project are on the way - I’m setting up some important stuff right now regarding financial support for members of this project (making sure you get paid well if you participate), and also recruiting / locking down some other roles beyond me doing the writing.

I wish I could share a huge update here but not quite yet. Trust me - it’s all in the works!

Nonetheless I want to keep the momentum going so here is Chapter 3. As a quick note, Chapter 2 is not done yet - I’m going slightly out of order - so don’t worry, you didn’t miss it lol.

This first draft is 2,700 words… wow! That makes this my longest Steem post.

More updates coming soon… If anybody reads this behemoth, feedback is great. But it’s ok if not right now lol - there’s going to be an official editing process in a few weeks, and this chapter is loooong.

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Chapter 3: Your First Week on Steem: Meeting People & Joining Communities

Steemit is a medium-sized online community with about 45,000 active users per day on average. There are two benefits to this size for new users:

(1) It’s big enough that there are many community projects designed to help newer users get votes and support - from @Curie to @OCD and well beyond.

(2) It’s small enough that there is still room for new users to grow an audience. Anybody who joins Steemit in 2018 is still in the “early days” of the site if you think about it.

Many users make a big mistake that hampers their ability to succeed on Steemit. They join the site thinking purely about making money as fast as possible.

The truth is that it takes a few months to build up a steady income stream from Steemit rewards - and that’s if you post a lot. If money is the only reason you are here, it will be hard to have the patience necessary to build support within the Steemit community.

There is an alternative to the money-focused mindset. The real reason Steemit is so great is the community. Focus on the people and you will go a lot farther in your quest for Steem success.

The nature of blockchain, emerging from the depths of cryptography and anarchist theory dating back decades - means that the kind of people who are early adopters of platforms like Steem tend to be interesting people.

You’ll meet steemians from every part of the globe, across all ages, careers, and political persuasions. It is a diverse and intellectually stimulating environment to take part in.

If you focus on learning and engaging with other people, you will go far on Steemit. There are sub-communities for a lot of different hobbies now - from poker to sandwiches to homesteading and much more.

Most importantly, there is an active music scene on Steemit and you will be able to dive right in. Meeting other musicians and making some friends within that scene is the first step to feeling at home on Steemit.

The process of meeting other people is both an art and a science. While you can’t predict the outcome of any one interaction with another person, you can use a basic method that ensures you’ll be able to meet people over the course of a few weeks.

Note: The work of the book begins now. If you haven’t already created your Steemit account, go back to Chapter 2 and do that first. There isn’t a point in reading this book without following the steps to be perfectly honest.

Steemit Step 1: Browse content and leave 10-25 comments per day across different posts.

This sounds simple but many people don’t do it.

In fact the single most common and most devastating mistake that newbies make is that they don’t comment on other content.

When I asked @stellabelle, one of Steemit’s most popular and successful users, for advice about building my writing career, she told me: “Read more than you write.” Steem works the same way.

You have to consume and engage with other users’ content, especially music content. This is the critical first step to building an audience.

If you do anything else before this step - it’s shooting yourself in the foot, honestly. That’s how you end up with less than $0.10 per post and feeling under-appreciated/discouraged. Comment on other people’s posts and you build up some goodwill that comes back around to your own content.

There are a few points to consider when commenting:

(1) Only Comment After Reading The Post

Don’t leave generic or copy-and-paste comments EVER. That is spam and will get you flagged, the single worst thing that can happen to your account.

Flags reduce the reputation score of your account. Every new account starts at reputation level 25, so if you go any lower than that it becomes very hard to climb back up from there. Steemians are always wary of low reputation users.

Besides, generic comments do not accomplish anything. When a user comments “Great post, good job!” without actually reading the post - it doesn’t build any real relationship. All it does is annoy other users.

Read the post. If it’s a video, watch it. Then in your comment say something that shows you actually know what is in the post.

For example, a good comment looks like this:

“This song sounds great! I enjoyed the chorus where the bass goes down an octave and it gets so fat. Also that guitar tone is sweeeeet in the solo.”

It doesn’t have to be gigantic - the example here is only two sentences - the point is, you can clearly see how this comment shows a familiarity with the song it is responding to. The musician who receives this comment will appreciate it as it’s clearly genuine.

Not every comment needs to be a compliment either. You can respond to discussion threads, offer constructive criticism when it is requested, and a million other things.

(2) Never Ask for Upvotes, Follows, or Resteems

This is another great way to get flagged. Steemit isn’t a free money machine, it’s not like this kind of tactic will magically get the rewards rolling in. It’s best to follow a strict rule of never requesting upvotes or any other help.

If a powerful user wants to upvote you, they’ll do it - the reminder does not help.

(3) The More Comments The Better

With those first two points clearly in place, it’s also a fact that the more comments you can leave per day - good comments only - the faster your account will grow.

As a new user I personally aimed for 25 comments per day. This was not always achieved, I often burned out after the first 15, but it was a good goal.

The staring range of 10-25 per day is designed with the understanding that different people have different amounts of time to commit to Steemit. There is a certain minimum that is required to have great results - that minimum seems to be around 10 posts per day.

If you can do 25 per day or anything higher than 10, you will see faster results. More good comments = more opportunities to connect with other users = faster build-up of a network within the Steemit ecosystem.

Don’t beat yourself up though - even 10 a day is good enough to build your base of support. You can do this first step for a week before you start thinking about posting any original topics of your own.

How to Find Content to Comment On

The challenge of commenting on 10+ posts per day is not in the reading or the writing. It’s in finding good posts to comment on.

You can’t leave an insightful or engaging comment on a post that you do not care about. Instead you have to find content that you like. When you enjoy a user’s content, you are more likely to make a connection with them that lasts.

There are several tactics you can use to browse through a lot of content in quick search for posts that are relevant to you. It’s time for another list:

(1) Check the Trending and Hot Pages

This is a good place to start. Trending and Hot both have a lot of fresh content that is catching on with a lot of users. It’s not all great, but there should be some content here that catches on for you.

Hot is particularly nice because this category measures the most popular posts of the last few hours, not days like on Trending. That means you can refresh the Hot feed two or three times a day to find even more content.

There are two other tabs to consider: New and Promoted. These are not nearly as good.

The New tab is too crowded these days to be of much use. You’ll need to filter the Steemit posts down more before it becomes useful.

The Promoted tab is basically never useful and I don’t understand why anybody uses it. Maybe this is just me though.

(2) Filter Down By Category

On the left side of the screen you can see the list of popular tags on Steemit. These are the best way to find more niche content that relates to your specific interests.

Using tags on Steemit is pretty much the same as visiting subreddits on Steem. Each tag is used to identify posts within a certain category of interest like “food” or “bitcoin”. Users voluntarily tag their posts with up to five tags - different from reddit - and it shows up in all five of the tag feeds.

When you narrow down on one tag, you still have all of the “Trending/Hot/New/Promoted” feeds to look through, but now it’s just for that tag. This is when the “New” feed can be more useful on slower tags where you want to see all of the content.

For busier tags like the music tag, even the filtered “New” feed can be too much. Steem is a busy place these days!

Whenever you want to find new content and you have exhausted the main “Trending” and “Hot” feeds, start working through all of your favorite tags from the lefthand side of the feed and you will find plenty more posts to comment on.

(3) Follow Many Users

Don’t go overboard with this, but, it’s good to follow a lot of users. Whenever somebody has content that seems interesting to you, follow them.

Most new users will do well to follow between 100 and 500 other accounts so that the home page will look active. When you follow enough users, you can rely on your home feed to deliver a lot of great content ready for commenting.

The reason to not overdo it is simple: If you follow people you don’t like, your home feed will become a useless mess of random posts. Stick with content you truly enjoy and you will have a useful feed that helps you meet your 10+ comments daily goal.

Step Two: Join a Group on Steem

There are many sub-communities on Steemit. Even though the official “communities” feature is not yet implemented on Steemit, ambitious users have formed large organizations of Steemians themed around certain goals.

We already looked at a few of these projects in the first chapter. Curie is an example of a community that new users can’t join - but you can receive upvotes from it. Luckily there are other communities that are open to all new users.

Why join a community?

Being a part of a group on Steemit is the key to real success on the website. In fact I am not sure if it is possible to be truly successful on Steem without being a part of at least one sub-community within Steemit.

Taking part in a project will do so many things for you. For starters, it gives you something to actually do other than wander around hoping to get upvotes.

If you are a part of a Steem community, you’ll have some idea of how to proceed. For example by joining the open mic community you’ll now have the option of posting one or more Open Mic entries throughout each week.

Even more importantly, taking part in a community will connect you with established Steemians. As soon as you get into a Discord channel relating to Steem, you’ll be in conversations with users that have been here for months or even years.

Many of Steem’s biggest influencers hang out in the community chats and threads that take place around Steemit. That’s how they got so popular!

Here are a few of the different kinds of communities on Steemit:

Curation Groups: These are the groups, like @Curie and @OCD, that seek out great content each day and reward it with powerful upvotes. The biggest projects can give away $100+ in one vote, while smaller ones may offer a few bucks.

Contest Groups: There are many opportunities to compete for prizes on Steemit. Steemit Open Mic is technically a contest since five people win prizes each week, on top of some smaller bonus prizes. Then there’s the sandwich making contest, the Steemit Poker League, and a bunch of others.

Interest Groups: Some communities aren’t projects or even official events of any kinds - they are just tight-knit groups of users who blog about the same thing. Homesteading is one example of this - and it’s a high-earning category on Steem, including one of the very top Steemians: @papa-pepper.

Incubators: A Steem Incubator is a lot like a Business Incubator: It’s where promising Steemians and steem project teams go to find funding and mentorship for their work. With Steem, these incubators can offer upvotes, rather than direct funds, allowing for intriguing new models. Right now @sndbox is the only Incubator I am aware of, but more will probably pop up with time.

Not every single group fits cleanly into one of these boxes, but it catches the majority of Steem communities.

When it comes to joining communities, we already looked at most of the big music ones back in Chapter One. I’d advise that literally every musician who joins Steem, if you play any instrument, to participate in the Steemit Open Mic for your first month or two. That is one of the best ways to get connected with other musicians on Steem.

Beyond music, you will find many other opportunities to connect on Steem. Finding a second thing besides music to be involved with on Steemit is good, it’ll help you get more of a general appreciation for this site and will make you even more friends.

Start out by focusing on contest and interest groups. These are the easiest to join, with many of them encouraging new users to participate.

Here are two communities on Steemit that are worth checking out as you begin your journey:

(1) Minnow Support Project

The Minnow Support Project, or MSP, is one of Steemit’s largest projects. The purpose of the MSP is to help “minnows,” aka new users, get started and find success on Steem.

Sounds pretty good, right? MSP is an awesome resource centered around a large Discord channel full of users from all around the Steem ecosystem. You’ll encounter other newbies like yourself as well as powerful high reputation and Steem Power individuals.

By seeking out opportunities within MSP to participate, you will start to earn upvotes and followers. There’s a 24/7 MSP radio station which often has 10-20 people hanging out in the chat, so that is a good place to go. The main chatroom is often the best opportunity, just waiting for conversations to happen and chiming in when you can.

You can find more information about the Minnow Support Project here.

(2) Steemit Chat

Steemit Chat (found at https://steemit.chat) is where a lot of Steemians hang out to talk in real time throughout the day. It’s arguably the “main chat” of the Steem network.

When you first join Steemit Chat you will spend most of your time in the general chatroom. This is where all users go when they first join the platform. It’s a great place to meet some new people so be sure to introduce yourself.

Over time you may discover some other good channels on Steemit Chat. General chat and its offshoots (like General 2.0, an invite-only chat for regulars) are the most active, but some others can be good.

This changes often enough that I won’t recommend specific channels. Instead, met people on Steemit Chat and ask them for up-to-date recommendations.

Communities Will Take You Far

Being a member of a larger group within Steemit is the key to making a lot of friends and building up a strong “home base” to rely on. You’ll get new followers, setting yourself up for successful content as soon as you start posting original topics of your own.

Participating in a community is not a one-time activity. You will naturally find new groups to participate in, and may stop participating in old ones, as time goes on.

Keep an eye out for new groups to be a part of. Once you have a full schedule, you can scale back on this - but not until then. Finding strong communities to be a part of is one of the most important things you can do on Steemit.

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And that’s it for chapter 3. This project is off to a great start and I am excited to see it continue… more updates soon, so keep an eye on my feed if you want to stay in the loop.

Bye for now,

_{(this is a Sndbox project. For more info on Sndbox check it out: https://sndbox.co)}