I absolutely promote my posts. When I started on Steemit, my first few posts didn't get many votes at all. It was only after speaking with one of the mentors in the @promo-mentors Discord group that I discovered curation trails were the way to go. Initially, I had a mentor turn me on to three or four different Discord channels. Promo Mentors was one of those. However, over time, I've joined quite a few more.

My promotional efforts begin with writing quality posts, however. Most of my posts take at least an hour to write, format, and publish. By spending the time up front to ensure my posts are the highest quality possible, I have received personal invites to other Discord communities, one of which is #steemitbloggers, which has very strict rules regarding posting and supporting other members. Their intense emphasis on quality is the reason it's such a great community.

Another thing front loading my posts with the upmost quality does is put me in the running for getting picked up by curation trails. I get @curie votes fairly often as a result. I've also been picked up by @ocd, @qurator, and other curation trails out of the blue. It's because I spend time crafting high quality posts.

After creating the posts, I visit my various Discord communities and share my posts, use the upvote bots where they are available, and make sure I support others in the community. Many of the groups have rules, such as, in order to post your link you have to upvote and comment on two others (some only require one). These rules ensure people aren't just link droppers. And the expectation is to leave quality comments, not just "hey, good post" and leave. So I make sure I follow all the rules and look for posts that I would actually be interested in reading. Sometimes that is difficult, but I make the effort to support other Steemians.

While in my Discord groups, I try to make a point to find people to support who I have not read before. That way, I get my handle in front of people who are not familiar to me and to whom I am not familiar. I have picked up new followers that way.

I am a member of more than 30 Discord groups, so it takes me about an hour to go through that process. On any given day, I'll share a link to over 20 of those groups and read anywhere from six to a dozen posts from others, leaving comments and upvoting. It's probably the most important thing I do. On some days, before I go through all of my groups, I have anywhere from 50 to 100 upvotes on my post already, and I'm sure that this is because many of the people in those groups follow me and watch for my posts (because they know they are high quality), and some are probably following curation trails I'm a member of.

In the past, I've used bidbots. I haven't used them after HF20. But I waited two or three days before doing so and was careful which posts I used them on. I didn't want to ruin my chances at getting a @curie vote.

Sometimes I share my posts on Twitter, Facebook, or LinkedIn. I don't do that with every post, just on ones I want to give a broader reach to. Of course, doing this also promotes Steemit as I don't expect many of the readers on those websites to also be on Steemit. From time to time, I'll share a post in a Facebook group specifically geared toward promoting Steemit posts. But that's low-level promotion, in my opinion.

I am also very particular about how I use tags. I make sure my primary tag is the most appropriate one for the post. I use the other four tags to give my posts a broader reach. I make sure I use the #steemitbloggers tag because the curator, @jaynie, will often choose posts for her daily appreciator or Steemit Bloggers curation post and she only chooses posts with the Steemit Bloggers tag. I've also promoted my posts with #theluvbug tag. I also don't limit myself to five tags. I will use tags within a post if I think I can make it relevant and reach a wider audience.

If I want a particular Steemian to see my post, I'll tag them in it. This often draws them to comment on a post and will often get me resteems.

One final thing I do is, I make sure I respond to all comments on my posts. It's mostly to acknowledge the individual for stopping to comment, but I also get into some good discussions that way. And it keeps people coming back for more.

In short, I start with making a quality post. Secondly, I support other Steemians and use the Discord channels to my advantage. I make sure I treat Steemit like a social network and not just a blogging platform.