A minnow walks up to the minnow doctor and says "Doc, it hurts when I go like this!" Doc says to the minnow "Don't go like that!"
I'm Dr. Aggroed and I'll be your minnow instructor today
Ok, all funniness aside let's take a second to talk about our goals as a minnow, what works, and what doesn't. Then let's put a plan together to graduate you out of Minnow 101 into Dolphin 101.
So, what's our number 1 goal as a minnow? TO STOP BEING A MINNOW!!!
Answer this question for yourself and then I'll share my answer afterwards (no peaking)
What are the three most important ways to evaluate if you're still a minnow?
Here are my answers, and I'm betting you had something different.
- A little platform knowledge
- Follower Count
- Stem Power
Ok, so technically, the consensus defintion of a minnow is 5k Steem power or less, but that's actually the least important of those. Follower count is a much more sustainable answer because now instead of catching one random upvote you now have the potential to get a steady stream of upvotes and resteems. But in order to get those followers you have to have some platform knowledge. So, here's the plan. I'm going to impart some knowledge, you're going to use that to capture followers, and you're going to use that to break the 5kSP barrier and enter dolphin status.
What you're probably doing wrong!
"Aggroed, I'm really frustrated. I just spent 2 hours on this post. It only got 5 views. 3 upvotes. and earned $0.01 cents. This place will only pay 1 cent for my 2 cents."
I hear that a bunch. Minnows are frustrated because their posts aren't getting the attention. My answer may sound counterintuitive to some, but you know what... Don't do that. Don't spend all your time writing long posts. You need more skills than you probably have to make them great. So, it's not a waste of time, but you're not going to earn that much.
But Doc, if I'm not authoring how am I supposed to gain followers, Steem Power, and get out of Minnowdom?
Class, I'd like you to meet @sacred-agent. Come up the front of the room Sacred. Sacred is a 60 year old gent. He's done a little trading here and there. He's somewhat familiar with the crypto landscape. He's been here 2 weeks. Tell them how you're doing sacred.
"Wait, what the shit Aggroed. That 60-year old guy has been here 2 weeks, started with no steem and no followers, didn't bring over an audience and now has 200+ followers and almost $1k steem?" pause... "HOW THE HOLY FUCK DID HE DO THAT?"
First off, please watch your language in here as it's a public setting. More importantly though he followed a different strategy to start.
Rather than writing long articles no one read. He made comments, found his way on discord, chatted with people in steemit chat, and built a small community that way. Because he's commenting on articles he likes he finds people that he already shares commonality with. Because a lot of them were minnows they were happy to drop a follow because they were so happy to have someone comment on their post, and after a little bit of that when he did post he suddenly already had an audience of 200 people.
Next up, he's going to write a "How I gained 200+ followers in just two weeks" milestone post, and he'll be riding the gravy train on that!
Knlowedge piece 1. focus on comments
Yup, it may seem counter intuitive on the blogging platform, but the fastest way to gain followers is comment thoughtfully on others posts. what's a good comment look like? Let me write a quick fake one.
"Hey @aggroed. Sweet piece you just wrote on minnow 101. I'm brand new here and I found you through your post on talking about steemit like I'm 5. I really appreciate what you're doing. I also saw on your wall that you write satire. Here's some of my satire on my witness run. Maybe you'll check it out! @aggroed/satirically-yours-aggroed-promises-to-be-a-better-witness-than-the-8-dead-witnesses-above-him-on-the-list"
Boom, that guy sounds intersting, thoughtful, looked at my wall, and deserves an upvote, possibly a resteem, and maybe even a follow. This guy won't.
"Nice post."
With this knowledge it's time to collect followers
Try this for a week or two. Post comments on tons of other peoples posts. Find gifs, memes, news articles to share. Think of it like you're providing a service. If you're doing it for a minnow you could catch a follow and a friend. If you're doing it for a whale you might catch an upvote. Seriously, 1 upvote from a whale for a meme could be worth up to $14 or so. That's probably 200 time more than you'll make on your posts if you start that way. So, stop writing the long thing no one reads and start working on the thing that's actually gonna help you.
Level up
Got knowledge? Check!
Got comments? Check!
Earned followers? Check!
Now post. Check!
What comes next?
Please vote for me for Witness!
You can find me hanging out on steemspeak, a discord channel that many steemers use to text and talk to each other- https://discord.gg/qjpRj7w
You can find me in Whaleshares- https://discord.gg/GykFB6S
or my new channel PALnet- https://discord.gg/HYj4yvw
I can also be found on steemchat as @aggroed. If you have a post to share give me a good sentence or two of why you think I’ll like it.
