My newbie mistakes during my first 8 days on ɯǝǝʇS

Yesterday I was looking at my old posts from when I started on ɯǝǝʇS nearly four years ago. My early posts were rather dismal compared to today. Not saying my blog is perfect now, but hand on heart, I think I've come quite a long way. The purpose of this post, is to share my early day mistakes and what I've learnt with newbies and minnows.

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Follow me

21st June 2017 - I posted my first ever post on the blockchain

https://peakd.com/introduceyourself/@livinguktaiwan/first-post-hope-i-got-it-right

As a newbie, I think I did pretty well with my self introduction post. I told people how I found out about the chain - that always help to add credibility and legitimacy. If you came via an existing user, particularly a reputable one, always mention them.

I also told people quite a bit about myself. I didn't include a photo of myself as the whole blockchain thing was still very new to me and I wasn't sure about it. Some people like to remain anonymous and that's fine, but at least tell people what your interest is, you'll be blogging about that anyway. And if you run out of things to say about yourself, talk about why you choose your username. That's always a good ice breaker.

Looking back, the only thing I would change about my post is this

If you upvote and follow me, that will make my day, and if I don't immediately follow you back that's because I'm still trying to find my way around steemit, but I promise I will.

I started off on Wordpress and it was common to follow each other for mutual support. Things are different on the blockchain. Because you can monetise your content, follow for follow can lead to upvote for upvote, circle jerking and abusing the reward pool. The follow for follow culture used to be quite bad a few years ago, but I think it's got better now. However, newbies shouldn't fall into this bad habit. Follow users you genuinely find interesting, and make friends that way.

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Single image post

24th June 2017 - I made the classic newbie mistake and posted a single image with no text

The image itself was actually very interesting. Someone had parked their motor cycle outdoors for such a long time that a plant had grown all over it. It's ok to share interesting things you see in life, but you can't just throw it out on the chain on its own. Talk about the image. Where did you take it? What were the circumstances when you saw it? What's so interesting about it? What do you like most about it?https://peakd.com/photography/@livinguktaiwan/someone-forgot-their-bike

Don't post just one single image on Hive and expect to get high rewards for it. In fact don't even expect to get much or even any rewards for it. Even the most talented photographers on Hive can't always get away with this.

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Short posts

27th June 2017 - this was a post for a weekly challenge

https://peakd.com/yesterday/@livinguktaiwan/upwards-and-forwards

I improved from the previous post, included two photos and wrote 57 words in this post. I added perspective to the photos. One was zooming up the trunk and you could see clearly the texture of the bark. And then I showed the same tree from a distance. Still quite a meh post though.

Unsurprisingly, no one upvoted this post apart from myself. One person commented on it and said they liked the texture of the tree trunk, and even said "Nice find". However he didn't upvote my post. Maybe he was new like me and didn't understand how things work. Personally I appreciated the comment more than an upvote. It's easy to click the upvote button without thinking, but it takes time, effort and thought to type a comment. That's when you know people actually read your post.

There is no hard and fast rule about how long a post should be, to not become a short meh post. Everyone has their different views. More words don't always mean good quality. I've seen people write the same sentence in four different ways to make their post look longer "Yesterday was Friday. I went for a walk yesterday. I went for a walk on Friday. Yesterday I went for a walk." Personally I never write short posts now, and the least I write is at least 500+ words.

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Multiple posts a day

27th June 2017 - this is my second post on the same day

https://peakd.com/photography/@livinguktaiwan/gaomei-sunset

I made another mistake that many newbies does - posting too many times a day.

Posting twice a day is ok, thrice is pushing it in my opinion. Anything more than that I'd consider it milking because people normally do it to milk tokens or autovotes. It is rare that many who post multiple times a day can generate quality content everytime.

Like most people, I consider this a good quality image. I even wrote 66 words about it, another improvement from the previous post. But ultimately the fact remains - single image does not generally get much support on the chain.

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No one supported my great post

28th June 2017 - moving onto longer posts

As I mentioned in my very first self introduction post, I had been blogging for a year before joining ɯǝǝʇS, so I had written decent long articles before. I decided to cross post one of them over. This was a story, a true personal experience where someone committed suicide and could have easily killed me at the same time. Personally, I think it's a great story and was disappointed that I didn't get more response. One guy commented on it, and you can tell he had read my story. That was it.https://peakd.com/story/@livinguktaiwan/pang

Everyone thinks they've written a great post, and when they don't get the support they expected, they become very upset and frustrated. Expectation is the key word here. Don't ever ever expect anything on Hive. You will just end up disappointed. Nobody owes you anything.

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Palagarism

29th June 2017 - the biggest sin or genuine newbie mistake?

This is another single image post with 40 words. It was a London tube map that shows famous landmarks instead of the normal station. It's great for tourist to see where they can go in London. The problem was that this wasn't my own image! I took it from the internet and I didn't acknowledge the source.https://peakd.com/travel/@livinguktaiwan/alternative-london-tube-map

The person who commented was great. He told me that I needed to quote the source to avoid being flagged. This was a genuine mistake on my part, I acknowledged it, corrected it, learnt from it and made sure I never made the same mistake again.

I often see newbies make the same mistake now, and always make a point to tell them. Normally I can tell if the newbie made a genuine mistake or if they did it deliberately. The latter will ignore you and keep doing it. Those are the ones who don't last long here.

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Follow for follow

30th June 2017 - I got 100 followers

Remember I said earlier on, the follow for follow culture used to be pretty bad on ɯǝǝʇS? By day 8, I got 100 followers, I was really chuffed and made a post about it to thank my followers. Guess how many real people responded? ZERO. The only comment I got was from a bot. So where were all these people who supposedly followed me and was reading my blog?https://peakd.com/steemit/@livinguktaiwan/major-breakthroughs-100-followers

Followers mean nothing at all if they don't engage.

A lot of newbies make the same mistakes. They post frequently, they focus on quantity and not quality posts. They follow lots of people, they follow all the whales. They get frustrated when they see other people get $30 per post whilst they only get $0.30. They go onto Discord and whine about it. They share their post link everywhere, they repost the same content again and hope they will get lucky the second or third time round. What they don't do is to look at the quality of their own content and how they support other users.

Followers mean nothing at all if they don't engage. Followers aren't worth anything on Hive. Your network is. And that's where you need to focus your effort. Not on churning out posts day in day out. Not on finding places to share your post link. Not on bugging people to upvote you. Go and engage with people to build your network. The support will come.

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The above are some mistakes made by someone in their early days, yet still managed to survive the chain for nearly four years. Hopefully it will be useful for newbies and we'll still see you around in four years time.