When I joined Steemit, I was very passionate about trying to help new authors who were contributing to the platform get discovered. I felt very strongly (and still do) that in order for the platform to be successful, "regular users" need to be able to feel that they can join the platform, make quality contributions, and become successful.
The Steem platform is not a "get rich quick" opportunity (at least for most people). I have found, as have many others - that in order to be successful here, you need to put in a lot of work. There are thousands upon thousands of authors who are all competing for the attention (and upvotes) of the larger stakeholders. Why should they pay attention to you?
Stakeholders are typically interested in voting on content that will make the value of their investment go up, and most do not want to spend hours a day digging through all the "garbage" people create to find a few good posts.
Many users join the platform and spend a few weeks creating content, then give up because they don't earn enough rewards. Instead of seeing the long-term potential of the platform and putting in the hard work to establish themselves, they decide the platform is "unfair" or "not worth it" and leave (even though a few dollars of tokens earned today may be worth hundreds some day).
Users who are here for the "long haul", establish themselves as content creators who are consistently adding value to the platform. These people are helping to grow the value of our shared investment in the Steem blockchain. It is important that when there are users who are putting in the work to make this platform better, they get recognized (and rewarded).
The @curie project stands out as one of the amazing curation communities we have, which is dedicated to the mission of finding and rewarding good content. They do amazing work, and are responsible for hundreds (if not thousands) of quality users sticking around.
The @ocd project is another great curation project that is helping undiscovered authors get noticed (and rewarded). I want to highlight today, because I think a lot of users can benefit by checking them out.
@ocd is a team of 35+ curators lead by @acidyo. @acidyo is someone I know cares very deeply for the platform and the users in the community. The @ocd curators do the hard work of digging through thousands upon thousands of posts, to identify 'good' ones that are worth checking out.
Every day, they nominate and reward 20 posts (10 in non-English languages). These are published in their daily newsletter (example here). They also resteem three posts per day from the @ocd account, which has about 6,000 followers.
Authors - if you are a content creator that is producing quality original content and you have not been getting highly rewarded, you can use the tag ocd-resteem tag for a chance to get resteemed. Please do not spam the tag though - it is only intended for authors that are producing quality original content.
I love following the @ocd account and upvoting the authors that they select, because they have already done all the hard work to identify good quality content from undiscovered authors that are producing original content.
They really are amazing group of people. I’ve stop by a couple of times in the past just to toss upvote on the 10 people they highlighted that day.
I’ve also been blessed to have been selected in the past. I even on very rare occasion use the tag they have set up to try and get a resteem. I can only hope people choose to respect their tag and not clutter it up many times a day with whatever they push out with a few moments of thought. It is always great knowing if I spend a fair amount of time on something more than usual it is a place I can try and reach out to.
I also gave them my witness upvote not to long ago. I really wish I had more energy these days to comment and engage more with people they select. They are a great example of what this platform is supposed to be about at least in my eyes. Rewarding people for their effort free of charge. Such a thing can empower and motivate people to want do better and give back in higher quality content.
This is really a helpful post for me as a new user, i like the way you said "The Steem platform is not a "get rich quick" opportunity (at least for most people)". Before reading this post i was among those people who think, this is a "get rich quick" opportunity. But now i feel inspired by this post and i understand the way it works. And thanks to you for mentioning those users who are really supportive for new users. Thank you @timcliff
I have seen these guys to a great job on the Steemit platform!
I love what these guys are doing.
They curate and expose many awesome writers, artist, and other content creators.
Hopefully they can get more support to expand their reach. They do a great job.
Found so many world class artists through @curie, @ocd @artzone and @sndbox. How many other solid curating accounts are there? So much art in my feed making 2 cents a post that people need to see . Resteeming like crazy you cannot even find my own art on my page lol!
Yes @twirble, this is so true. I haven't checked out @curie yet, but will do so. The platform can greatly benefit from a team of real curators to separate the grain from the chaff.
Good post. Thanks for sharing such a nice information.
You got a 19.92% upvote!
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I have followed them for quite a while and there is some good posts that they curate. If you have not followed them you really need too.
Thanks for this post, @timcliff! Means a lot coming from a reputable Steemian and witness as yourself!
I just wanted to add that we also encourage manual curators to front-run our votes on the ocd posts and nominations and get increased curation rewards by voting on unique and quality authors!
Hello @acidyo
I will love you to trow more light on this
Thank you sir
Hello @timcliff you are right about @ocd
I have personally gotten resteem on my quality posts twice since I join steemit. I believe @ocd deserve a follow and upvoting of resteemed posts, as these post has already past the test of quality by the curators.
I all wanna advice a follow on @ocd curation trail.
Tombs up for @acidyo for this project.
You are right @samiwhyte
A trail should be followed too to support this account.
Thanks for dropping a feedback on my comment
There isn't anything better than when someone you value and trust tells you about someone they trust.
Nice job. Followed @ocd
after reading what you have described here, it can be used as a benchmark that what is written on this page should be original, not to be plagiarized, to have good and good language skills and good writing skills as well as to produce a good work also, thanks for your exposure, regards steemit
I have been following the @ocd account and I knew they were trying to help the people who write good content post, but you explained it so well, that I feel I can really trust and should be supporting their project because they really are helping so many people and like you said and also helping this amazing platform.
Thank you for explaining this a little bit better @timcliff.
I will definitely be checking out and supporting @ocd.
Hello @timcliff
I love what you wrote about today
This project has really help many minnows, I believe more people need to support this project for maximum benefit.
This is a great initiative. Several times I was nominated in OCD, several times I was supported by Curie. That's great! Only one problem remains. Ois can't do this every time. Most often, such support is provided 1 time. But I also continue to do quality work. My posts are getting better and better. But unfortunately, most often they are underestimated. You're right, Steemit is a long way. Your work should always be excellent, it is the path to success. It's long and hard. But I'm not giving up. I believe in my success. Although it is sometimes so sad to see your message unnoticed.
Though i am not getting much reward as for now but i am sticking here because i know the potencial of this platform, yes it could take sometime for me to get noticed but i am pretty sure the day will come soon ;)
Thanks for introducing these persons to us!
I am definitely going to follow them,
As far as @cure concerns, can you tell me the critera of the post that they accept, i will be very thankfull to you @timcliff.
Be happy and keep spreading happiness like this!
https://steemit.com/curation/@curie/expanded-guidelines-mar-2018
Thankyiu sir!
Thank you for this info @timcliff. I must admit to not having heard of the @ocd account before. Sounds a great idea and worthy of support. I'll have to go and check it out. Thanks again.
appreciate the shout-out to @ocd, and thank you for consistently supporting the resteems!
Hi Tim. Thank you for bringing @ocd to my attention. I have heard of them, but did not how their curation process work. I only realized through you that anyone could use the ocd-resteem tag for their quality content. Key word being quality, of course. I will be sure to share the information with our newbies in the #newbieresteemday community.
I'm part of the ABC's of Curation team with @newbieresteemday. We're a small account but we strive to lift the spirits and morale of our newbie community with our upvote worth and curation trail. Our group of volunteers have passed along many great posts to Curators from @curie. So many have been curied and it is a wonderful feeling to see our undervalued newbie authors finally receiving recognition for their work.
I am happy to learn that @ocd and @curie are both projects helping to discover and support authors with beautiful voices and minds to share.
P.S., I know you have met @mellofello from our team @beeyou. I'm his teammate, Paula. He mentioned your post to me since I help out with the @newbieresteemday account.
Thank you for sharing this information!
I completely get what you are saying here @timcliff but this is like putting a bandaid over an arterial bleed and calling it "healed".
The problem with "Curation" and "upvotings" on Steemit go so deep that even the "fixes" are nothing more than bandaids. As I wrote two weeks ago
and bandaids just will not fix the arterial bleed that is draining the value of Steemit. THIS is a Major Problem
d
PS: I upvoted your post....but you probably can't tell as now my current voting power is $.03 cents.
I started out as a "have not" here and worked my way up to a "have".. I understand the struggle. In my view - you are looking at it wrong.
One of my post was featured in their daily compilation. I think they are group of people who wants to help others and make this community better.
Hi Tim. Thanks for exposing @ocd as a curie group. My newbie initiative, #newbieresteemday, have forwarded about a dozen great posts to @curie in the past couple months and most of them they received massive upvotes. Basically we helped the curators weed through the noise to find good signals. It is so awesome to see great content get recognition and rewards. We’ll try to submit a future great post to OCD as week and hopefully that will double the chances for the authors.
Acidyo is an amazing guy and has put in an incredible amount of effort in manually curating people and bringing true organic quality on to our platform. OCD and Curie are great projects.
Thank you, @timcliff I'm new to Steemit, and didn't know of these projects. I love the photo of people using a metal detector on the beach, sifting through millions of grains of sand. I actually tried that once, and it's a lot of work to come up with a precious find.
Just wanted to tell you that I used your guide on how to buy cryptocurrency for the first time, and made my first transaction tonight. It's nerve-wracking if you haven't done it before, yet is actually quite simple after you've gone through the steps. Thank you for helping out the minnows and newbies!
Cool! Glad to hear that it helped :)
@ocd is doing great. I'm a follower and I made it a point to engage in the posts they share.I hope one day my name will be listed in their daily issue!
The only way to make this platform sustainable is inviting new users to join in!
I know it takes time to discover original contents especially from newbies.
But it is always kinda demoralizing after spending hours to create a post, and it is ignored.
In steemit i have discovered that persistence is the key..
I won't give up!!!
Nice post
en tu publicación se nota que eres una persona humilde e inteligente felicidades realmente disfruto su publicación siga asi y que dios lo bendiga saludos @timcliff
Gracias :)
I was chosen once by one of the curator of @ocd and it feels great to be recognised by them. I have been follow them since then.
Good to know about their project:) its great to have projects like these that show appreciation to hard work here on the platform that id easily missed... ! Following!!!
Tganks @timcliff🤗
Surely platform needs more people like you so that we can attract more and more people. The more people we attract the more everyone will benefit from it. So i would say its a lovely start from you.
Thanks @timcliff ..... I'll follow @ocd now.
Awesome, this is good to know, thanks!
There is so much stuff on steemit it is difficult for a lot of people putting effort in to get recognized. This account seems like a good solution to that!
~Zoey
I think you have done something very right, very useful, of course for beginners like us, the motivation you give to be the spirit for us, continue to work my brother we support you.
I have 85 days on this platform and I never give up .. every day I work hard, no matter that I only generate a penny a day in publication, some day I will be seen with the big ones .. of this platform I am a very ostimistic person and never I give up..
and thanks for the recommendation of the ocd-resteem label, I did not know
Thanks for sharing your tips. Every new steemian can learn a lot from it.
I have realized afetr I started myself that steemit is a long distance run, and that only quality posts and comments have value.
I agree with you about creating good content is time consuming, but the recognition from the community are not matching up. However I'm looking forward on the long term success of steemit. Thank @ocd and @timcliff for making positive moves on Steemit community.
i find this post particularly interesting and informative because i am new to steemit and need all the help i can get to enable me make notable difference as part of the vibrant steemit community.
I am just a beginner in Steemit; and my first question nowadays of which answer I would like to find was exactly that one. Thank you for this meaningfull post @timcliff . With the help of this post of yours, I see that I have saved time which I can use to contribute to Steemit platform. This post is like a short cut like "ctrl+F" :) ... My thanks also go to @ocs @acidyo @curie ... Besides I would be more happy that if you nominate and reward more than 20 posts in a day (but most of them can be in English cause that English is much more common in the world and can contribute Steemians to contact much more)
I have long followed @ocd
viewing the @ocd content is very useful
thanks for the very helpful information
I love them but i like @acidyo because he makes quality and he gives us some quick updates ob his post
Thanks for giving direction on how and what the main task of these accounts do, have heard of @ocd but never taken time to actually read into what they have been doing.
Thank you for this post. I was told about using ocd-resteem tag in my posts that i think are worth curated. But i never got to follow @ocd until now.
Excelente post no conocía esa cuenta ya la sigo y le vote como testigo ya que si hacen este trabajo para todos nosotros lo merecen saludos. Nos Leemos Luego...
Dave Letterman used to have a little section on his program called, 'Is this anything?' There would be a video of a performance or event or news article, and he and Paul would decide whether it was something or not.
Right now, I upvote a lot on things on Steemit because they are 'something', not necessarily because they are something I care about. It is truly overwhelming and somewhat depressing to sift through the ocean of nothingness and meta posts on Steemit. I mean, the amount of copy/paste, obvious no effort money grab, SBD/steem, steemit cheerleading, steemit voting fraud complaints, how to game the steemit system articles is mind boggling. The fact the community values what Exyle had for lunch every day at $200 says a lot about this(in addition to other things wrong with the platform).
Most non crypto freaks would just not stand for this type of thing. There's a lot of garbage on the other social media platforms, but at least most of the garbage could be considered 'something' to somebody, even if it's something you don't like. I mean, I'm putting the bar pretty low here.
I'm looking forward to the day where I can find enough articles of personal interest to fill my allotted steemit time, not feel the need to use my voting for general curation, and cut most of the meta posts from my feed. Although, I probably would still do some general curation because that's a thing I like to do.
So, thank you for sharing this shortcut to quality content. Maybe this is the only way it can work. Maybe I'm naive, and the monetary incentive on steemit is just going to cause it to be flooded with crap forever or until it sinks it. But, I hope people keep trying to make it better.
I'm hoping that communities will make the content discovery on the platform much better.
Do you wonder about the power of Steem? Not just it's monetary value, but as a tool to make change happen? I often think about that and the more I work on steemit, the more I see huge potential. I noticed you have a philanthropic side to you and you are supporting @dobartim . I think what he is doing is very innovative and shows there are lots of good people out there.
I too am on steemit for the long haul. There is far too much potential just to ignore this platform. I have only been on for less than 3 months, but there is so much value around. I am just trying to get the word out about me and what I have to offer steem.
I have recently started a very simple project on steemit. It is called 'Upvote a tree', where I donate 100% of SBD to the cause of reforestation here in Northern Peru. I actually plant the native tree saplings myself and I post videos about it on here. I have worked in the field of international development for over 10 years and I have yet to see anything close to what steem can do for the world. The principle of just a simple upvote, no mater the value, means it is participatory and driven by a growing community. I could go on and on about my thoughts and visions, but I know you probably get loads of messages and thank you for reading this far.
Kind regards,
@intrepidsurfer
They do a great job guys.
Good to know this! Helpful for this steemian community, do they have a discord server, or can we look for them on steem chat?
Not sure. Good question though. You should ask @acidyo.
You raised salient points. Steemit isn't a get rich quick platform - this is one thing that most curators, especially the new ones find difficult to understand. But with dertermination anf consistency in generating good content, one can truly become successful on this platform.
Initiatives like @ocd are commendable. Thanks to them for making it worthwile for curators especially the new entrants.
"Users who are here for the "long haul", establish themselves as content creators who are consistently adding value to the platform." Totaly true. And there is a lot of newcomers who want just sit and watch how their wallet is filling itself. This is not hyip "investment"