Followers
One of the funnier things I have done on Steemit when I was first starting out just followed a lot of people. Naturally, it did not take very long before my feed was filled with so much “stuff” that I 100% missed out on anything I ever cared about.
It’s the only way in the short term to really find some great people to follow and the community you want to engage in. Starting out you really don't know. It’s even harder with how much people change over time. A lot of the first people I followed were like me-- new. I felt that was a wonderful way ensure getting to meet people. I did meet a lot of great people.
After a while, I did one of my other enjoyable tasks here. Remove all the spam from my feed. It was truly amazing the nonsense that was going on it. I had everything from people who decided to go into nsfw for “more” upvotes, and other people who just thought resteeming everything they read was the way to go among a lot of “other” things. Since then I’m still cutting down my following number faster then I increase it.
My current thoughts are this is a social platform after all. If I can’t at least try and keep up with everyone I’m following why follow them in the first place? I’m currently at 53 people I’m following. I check in on each person over the weekend to see if they are still active if I have missed out on anything major. Did I not see something amazing that needs an upvote and comment? Has this person gone inactive for too long now and I just need remove them?
The great thing about this is the people I follow do a lot of work for me. Both timcliff and denmarkguy found your blog to be interesting enough to resteem. I’m not having to spend hours looking for something interesting to read. My feed is interesting to read. When one of the people I’m following is not writing something they are finding and resteeming something that is.
Comments
I enjoy leaving comments more than I do writing blogs. I’m not left with my own thoughts of having to pick a topic. Even better most of what I would write about already is out on Steemit.
Far too many people seem to focus on just blogging. They seem to have forgotten it’s a social platform. how can you expect the different feeds your blog appears in to help you out if you can’t help yourself out first? They somehow think people will just magically find them and want to engage in their own blogs. I say WHY wait when you can go out and engage with anyone whenever you want.
Now granted much smarter people than me leave shorter comments. I’m just a crazy person and enjoy comments more than turning everything into a blog.
Thanks for a thoughtful addition to the discussion... I did forget to talk about following people... Will update tomorrow (and quote you if you'd like)
By all means, it’s really a topic that people need to go into deeper thought about. I use the people I follow as the first place I tend to curation from.
There are people on this platform that I consider “hard to get a follow from.” They are worth so much more than those that just follow thousands. Yet everyone thinks getting a follow from one of those people will change their life or something lol.
I’ve spoken with those people before about it. They admit it’s like winning the lotto if they find your post and upvote it. I never intend to win the lotto so I prefer not playing it.
I always laugh when I see people trying selling resteem to their “1k+” people that are following them. I remove people who resteem 50+ times day/week. If those people even read their feed they notice and do the same hehe.
I agree. I am more impressed when someone with 3000 followers who is following only 200 follows me... then I feel special.
I don't have a limit of follows. I am fairly generous with my follows, but later I may go back and reduce so that I can keep a manageable feed.