Welcome to the community @unclesam. It was good to learn about your country. I admit I never heard of it before!

To be successful, here are a few tips.

First off, just be active. Post articles, upvote stuff you like, follow people who you like and comment on other people's work. All activities can bring a level of reward, so it's best to just let rewards happen and otherwise use the platform how it feels right to for you.

When making posts, quality of the content (original, well written, etc.) matters, but I would suggest saving things you put a lot of time into for when you have more followers. If you stay active, your follower count will rise and your posts will begin to reach more people.

So many more things I could say but I'll leave you with one more tip. Read the whitepages (link found in the drop-down menu, upper right of screen). This has a lot of information on how the platform is set up and is very valuable for someone who is trying to go beyond a casual user.

Best of luck, I'm sure you'll enjoy!