I hear what you are saying - but also remember that those "whales" have also had to work hard to get where they are - whether they invested in the platform or not. We should not become dependant or reliant on others... we should focus on being that amazing, all by ourselves!
If we get their support, then great! - If not - Work harder!
That is my perspective at any rate :)
Thank you for the awesome input @fitinfun ;)
It's hard to get their attention when they are in chat, off the platform, and voting with bots. When I first started here I got the advice to got into various chats for the purpose of "sucking up to whales who hang out there". I am not in chats so I do not know if this is a good strategy or not.
My advice to the little people who ask me is to ignore the whales other than commenting on their posts with relevant remarks. So far that has been my best strategy, but few people comment at all, so I don't know if I help anyone much.
I comment 50+ times a day and get few replies. Still swimming here, but possibly going in circles :)
Are you sharing your content elsewhere?
I have about 3500 pieces of content strewn all over the internet in my 6+ year mission to try to help other obese people lose weight like I did. If you search fitinfun on any search engine, you will find me, me, me :)
I have posted almost none of my content to steemit since I got here in June 2017. The vast majority of what I do here is comment and reply.
I'm just now starting to post a bit again. I tried in the beginning but it was not worth my effort. I actually came for the Alexa ranking in hopes of finding new eyes for my content. But my steemit posts will not rank without $10+ payouts, so it's like spitting in the wind to post my links and information to no one. I might be close though and hopefully will get my content links here soon.
Today, I post into challenges and "how to" posts for steemit noobs and steemians on Twitter. I have about 120 steemers on my Twitlist over there. To be kind - we are very weak in our Twitter efforts, so I am trying to do what I can to make us look a little more inviting to others.
I'm not as negative as I sound on the place - definitely trying many ideas and observing the success of others. But I have also lived through a few failed platforms on this journey, so I am a bit jaded.
The best advice I can give you is don't give up!!!! It is normally when we are about to give up that we are simultaneously about to succeed!
What I meant about sharing your content... was - are you sharing your steemit content elsewhere... but you cleared that up by saying that you havent really posted much until recently.
Keep that up! Keep posting. Use the correct and best relevant tags (this is pivotal) the best to chose from being "life/steemit/blog/writing/story/food/travel" etc. you can search the highest paid tags to get more familiar with that.
When you post something on steemit - share it on FB, Twitter and every other platform you are on - and be sure to tag steemit when you do.
You know... I was going to write an article about precisely this today - how to maximise your exposure and generate interest - in fact I got about 4 paragraphs in - but decided to write what I did instead...
I think perhaps I should write it....
Your thoughts on that?
Oh yes - I do that social sharing. I re-post my own posts and also those I upvote on Twitter, FB groups, linkedin and pinterest if they have a vertical image. I can definitely see the monetary difference in some of the posts I promote.
From what I can tell, I am one of few who promote the posts of others, but it's been working for me. A couple of my upvoted posts have gotten good traffic and further upvotes that I believe came from my social media sharing.
I'm most active on Twitter and find my poor steemers very afraid to retweet or click links! My hard fought Twitter engagement rate took a big nosedive when I got connected with steeming tweeps. I've posted a couple of Twitter tips and have more to come.
I coach twitter and have a lot of success, so I hope for the best. Right now 90% of my steemit twitter connections are dropping their links and doing nothing else, so we really need to up our game.
Helping others to understand that social media is a "give and take" would be the most beneficial here. Right now, there is a lot of "we love steemit!" type posting which definitely turns off the rest of the world. It needs to be a "show" not a "tell".
One of my Twitter posts coming is going to be about"
in order to succeed on Twitter.
Unfortunately, my hero, @jerrybanfield just wrote a post encouraging his followers to drop their links and not even bother going to the twitter site at all. I realize there is a lot of do to succeed on steemit, but dropping links without engaging is a poor plan. This strategy works for jerry because he is famous and has a following. The rest of us will have lead balloons with this strategy.
I would love to see your post on this topic and will surely promote it :)
I have an excel file with the tags divided up and try to post to the more "valuable" tags. I think that is good advice, but mostly for the search engines. I'm not sure how many steemers are searching tags, but maybe that is something I should look into.
If you have enough followers on Youtube you get the dolphin votes immediately and your content only has to be average.
If your blog is eye-catching and upbeat, you can then catch the attention of a few of the old dolphins, or the new Youtube dolphins because your blog fits their narrative, and you will earn enough to supplement your income, like the OP, but you are unlikely to become a dolphin in the sense that you can be powering down constantly and your account holds its value, or even goes up.
If you are not an extrovert and not into recycling self-help and motivation, then you could get dolphin support by starting a contest. They like good contests because contests keep people engaged in the platform.
You could even get a whale vote from @blocktrades if the contest is good.
Blocktrades is one of the few remaining whales that actually reads content and votes for what they like, giving decent rewards to minnows as well as dolphins.
Thanks for the tips! Very helpful and I will dive into my you tube channel to see what I can find that might interest people here. I enter contests, but I don't know about running one :)