A TABOO Secret Tactic For Minnows

I have a knack for breaking taboos. Or maybe I just have a knack for proving to people that the World won’t implode around them by doing or saying something to which they’ve been conditioned to fear.

Other people seem to be comfortable breaking taboos when they’re with me, too. It’s like I’ve given them permission to utter the things which must never be said aloud. I’ve had two people tell me that they didn’t love their children (that was a while ago and they both love their respective children now). I’ve had people tell me things that I’m not going to repeat here in case it gets misinterpreted that was with what they said.

I’ve also learned how to make people feel that they have permission to listen when it comes to my hobby of macroeconomics because the truth is the most taboo thing of all. You don’t get to climb the ladder in universities or central banks or will a Nobel Memorial Prize for Economic Science (it’s not quite an 'actual' Nobel Prize) if you accurately describe what’s going on with the money system. Conformity is mandatory.

How Does This Help Minnows?

I’ve read a heap of posts that offer advice to minnows about how to get started on Steemit and build up a following or get rich or make friends. There’s a lot of great advice, but there’s one thing that I’ve never seen mentioned in any of those posts. It’s a secret tactic that’s most definitely been in use since the early days of the platform.

The Normal Good Advice

As you may already have discovered, authoring great content isn’t enough to get you an audience. Even if something you’ve written gets picked up by one of the curation projects and resteemed by people who have thousands of followers doesn’t guarantee that more than a handful of people will read it. You need to engage with other people on their posts or with other commenters on other peoples posts.

Your comments must demonstrate that you’ve actually read the post and have a reason for commenting on it. You need to gain recognition as someone who says things that are worth listening to. I’ll always check the blog of someone who writes quality comments, just to see if I ought to be following them (perhaps I should have named this post “How To Be A Steemit Stalker”?).

Join a group on Discord, like those which are run by @minnowsupport, @qurator and @thesteemengine, and make friends there. The people in the chat are more than happy to help minnows and make friends, so you could get a few followers and upvotes. You’ll definitely find people whom you would like to follow. @thesteemengine is particularly good at getting people to engage with one another.

Building Your Community

Finding good content can be very difficult. Looking at the Trending, Hot or New sections is a road to nowhere. The trick is to click on the tags of posts that you like – that will bring you to more content that’s similar. Every time you find a post that’s talking about the kind of thing you want to blog about, make it your business to get to know the people who’ve left worthwhile comments.

The Taboo Advice

Some people are here to make money, which is fine. I’m here to engage with an audience and, for me, getting STEEM is a means to an end. I’ll explain that more in a moment.

Go hunting for comments that have received big upvotes (above 1 or 2 SBD) and visit the blogs of the upvoters. Become a regular commenter on their blog. It doesn’t matter if they don’t write articles or make videos about the kind of things that you’d typically look for – they just need to produce something that’s interesting enough for you to want to engage with. I found some of my favourite bloggers this way!

It’s taboo to say that you’re only commenting on someone’s blog because you’re hoping for their upvote, but that’s what I want people to do with me! My aim is to get a high enough upvote for people to want to stalk me. If you write a comment on any of my posts which demonstrates that you’ve actually read whatever it is I’ve written, then I guarantee that you’ll get an upvote from me.

My Mission

I have a purpose for being here – I want to spread ideas about things that I believe would benefit society. I think it’ll be worth your while to hear what I have to say and, if an upvote is what it takes to get you to listen, I’ll upvote the living b’Jesus out of you!

It isn’t always obvious from people’s comments that they’ve read my post, so it will require you to give it some thought. It doesn’t matter if you agree or disagree with me, so long as you engage in a non-trivial way. I also check the blogs of people who leave quality comments on my posts, so you could end up with a follower who’ll upvote or resteem your posts.

Maybe we could even become friends (not a taboo friendship, though).