How do you know if your blog is getting better and you're making progress on Steemit? You track it using the right Steem tools for the job.
Many community members on Steemit have created and developed some fun and useful tools for Steemit users to make use of and most of them can be found on SteemitTools.com hosted by @roelandp, the same @roelandp that helped organize Steemfest last year and is laying the groundwork for Steemfest 2 in Lisbon, Portugal from November 1st to 6th, 2017.
I have looked at most of those apps but there are new ones being added all the time because Steemians are busy little bees and working around the clock to make Steemit a better place to be online.
There are a few apps that I have found very useful on my journey building my blog and you may get some use out of them too. Let me show you my favorite ones I use to track my progress on Steemit.
SteemStats.com by @jesta
Steenstats is an app full of useful information and stats about your blog or anyone elses you want to watch. Once you click on the link above you'll land on a page that looks like this:
As you can see from these bullet points it can track a lot of information about your posts and interactions on Steemit. In the upper left-hand corner of the page you'll find a box to enter a Steemit username. You can enter yours and others and track them at the same time.
Once you enter a username the page will change to this:
If you click on the POSTS tab, marked here with a red box, you will see all of your recent posts or the posts of whoever your are tracking. It will show the potential payouts for Steem and Steem Dollars (SBD) for each post
For this discussion let's assume you are tracking your own posts. It will look something like this.
If you click on the little menu icon to the left of each post (marked with the red circle) you will land on a page that will show you everyone that voted on that post and how much their vote counted towards the total payout.
You can scroll all the way down the page and see each vote and how much they contributed to the total rewards and each vote is color coded to show you the weight it had towards your total reward. It looks like this, but I shortened it for this post.
All of this was useful to find out who was voting for my content in real time and who was having an influence on the payouts when they did vote.
SteeMVP.com by @roelandp
Steemvp.com is a really simple way to find who your most loyal followers are and if your blog is growing or not. I don't use it as often as I did when I first started on Steemit, but when I first started I could get an idea of who was really returning to my blog and upvoting it.
The home page, which can be reached by clicking the link above, is super simple. You just enter your Steemit username and it gives you a wealth of information like this.
Scroll down the page further and you'll see more charts about your followers and upvoters like this.
All very good information to see who your supporters are on your blog. I can remember the first time I got an upvote from @ned and @dantheman (The co-founders of Steemit) I was so excited I almost jumped out of my skin.
By clicking at the top of each category of this chart it will reorder the list from highest to lowest Votes, Reward Shares, SBD Payout, or percentage of the shares depending on which list you click. If you click on the Steem User Tab it will list the people who have upvoted you alphabetically so you can find a specific user easily to see their data.
SteemNow.com by @penguinpablo
Steemnow.com offers a wealth of information about your blog, post rewards, and voting power in real-time. All you do is enter your username in the top right corner and click the Save button.
You will see from the top left the current state of your voting power, what 100% upvote is worth. There is a little slider under the Worth of Your Upvote that you can adjust to see the total rewards your upvote will give depending on what you set your slider to. If you're new to Steemit you won't have a slider on your blog yet, that will come later when you earn more Steem Power.
You can also see your daily rewards for posting and curating and what your percentage of your total Steem Power is available right now.
Then you'll see a list of all your latest upvotes, latest curation rewards, latest author rewards from comments you have left, and your latest post rewards from the posts you have made.
There's even a cool new feature that makes it easier to find posts that users have written under a specific tag. In a recent post by @papa-pepper titled, 500 Sbd Bounty And Potential Steemgig - Help Me Improve Steemit he put out a bounty of 500 SBD if someone could make an app that could search a users posts related to a specific tag.
@papa-pepper puts it perfectly: (that was a tongue twister)
Imagine that you could select a username and then choose a tag. When you select the particular tag for a username, every post that user ever made in that tag would show up in order.
By way of example, let's say that a gardener joins steemit. They find the @papa-pepper page and notice that I claim to be a gardener. Since this interests them, they wonder what posts I've made in the "garden" tag. However, my posts are varied, and by scrolling down in my post history they mostly see animal posts, contest, and other content. They conclude, "Maybe he is not such a gardener after all," and move on...
If this tag idea becomes implemented on steemit, though, or if we are able to provide an off-site resource, then the user could just select my username and click on the "garden" tag. Instantly, every post I've ever made using that tag would be instantly available for them to explore. Now, rather than concluding "Maybe this guy is not such a gardener," they will conclude, "Cool, what an interesting gardener with some great gardening posts!" Can you see the difference? --@papa-pepper
@penguinpablo responded immediately by adding the feature to the SteemNow app. Just scroll down to the Latest Posts list in SteemNow and select the dropdown menu...
You know what? I'll let @penuinpable explain it himself in his post titled, I've Added Papa Pepper's Feature Request To Steemnow.Com.
This is a "HUGE" (spoken with a Donald Trump accent) time saver for finding all the posts from a specific author under a specific tag. Thanks guys for working together to make life easier for us on Steemit.
steem.supply by @dragosroua
steem.supply is a great site full of useful information. The homepage will ask you to enter your username in the upper right corner of the site.
Then click Lookup and you will land on a page that looks like this:
Here you will find lots of information about your earnings from posts and from commenting. You'll discover the potential payout of Steem and Steem Dollars (SBD) from each of your posts and comments for the next week as well as totals for the week.
I find it useful to see if my earnings are growing or if I'm getting lazy and they are falling off. If you're a total Steemhead like me then this will be growing every week and is a good indicator of what your results are for the coming week.
It's very concise and easy to understand so you can easily get a snapshot of your earning for the next week.
SteemFollowers by @shaunmza
SteemFollowers is a very straightforward app that will show you who is following you and you get a good view of the number of followers you are getting on a daily basis.
As you can see from this screenshot, it takes time to grow a good following. You can't quit before the momentum picks up or you'll never reach your full potential on Steemit.
Notice how in the last few months the number of users following me each day is starting to grow exponentially. This is not unique to my account. Some people think it's because of the Steemit Open Mic contest that I host but I've been hosting that contest for 39 weeks now.
It takes time and persistence to grow a following. Right around the 10th month of persistently creating good content and interacting and engaging with people something magical starts to happen. The number of followers grow faster.
Let's look at another example from a user that started at the same time as me.
@sweetsssj writes about travel, food, and cats. Her posts are very well done with great pics and a compelling story. If you look at her blog today and see her 4500 loyal followers you think, "Wow, she is rocking it!"
CORRECTION: She had 4500 followers this morning and is now at 4800 followers! 300 more followers in one day!
When I show people her blog I hear all kinds of reasons people come up with to explain her success except for the one that really counts. "Of course she's doing well. Look how cute she is." "The whales must really love her." "I can't afford to travel all over the world and write about it."
The real reason she is doing so well is because she is persistent as hell when it comes to writing great content, engaging her readers, and expressing her story in a passionate way.
Persistence is the key. Let's have a look at the graph of the number of her followers and see what it tells us.
Hmm, this looks just like the graph above. Right about the 10th month she has exponential growth in the number of followers she is getting. What changed. Her posts look the same as when she started. They have improved over time but nothing really drastically different from her earlier poss. It's her persistence. Persistence really does pay on Steemit.
Take note new people on Steemit. I guarantee you that she did not wake up one day and say to herself, "Hey, I know! I'll start asking people to follow me so I can get more followers!"
These are not the weak-ass follow-for-follow followers that are a total waste of time type of followers either. These are real, loyal-as-hell followers.
If you are new on Steemit and are asking people to follow you or to upvote your post then you're doing it all wrong and only hurting yourself.
BAD DOG NO! STOP DOING THAT RIGHT NOW!
Don't believe me? Then read this post right now called, New To Steemit? Steemit Tips You Need To Know To Succeed On Steemit
Do you want to know the mindset of a successful Steemit blogger? Yes? GOOD DOG. YOU GET A BISCUIT.
Then read @sweetsssj's post on creating a great blog titled, Sweetsssj's Tips To Successful Lifestyle Blogging On Steemit
In fact, just 8 days ago she reached her 3000th follower milestone so she has actually gained 1800 more followers in just 8 days! You don't do that by begging for followers. You do it by writing great content, period.
Take note again newbies. In her post announcing her 3000th follower which you can read here, My 3000 Follower Milestone Is Now Conquered - Big Thank You To All My Followers And Steemit - Here's A Recap Of My Entire Journey she not once asks anyone to follow her. Hmm. Interesting. Why? Because she doesn't need to. The content will do that for her.
OK, end of my rant to newbies that beg for follows and upvotes. I'm just saying. Stop already and put in the work. That's how you succeed on Steemit. What, did you think people were just going to give you money for nothing and chicks for free?
SteemDB.com by @jesta
SteemDB.com is another app by @jesta that has a lot of the same features as SteemStats.com with one little extra feature worth mentioning and that is being able to track who is Resteeming your posts.
When you go to the homepage it will look like this:
Enter your username in the upper right hand corner and you will land on a page that looks like this:
There's a dropdown menu called Social. Click on that and then choose Reblogged. (circled in red above) Then you will land on a page that show you all of the people that have resteemed your posts and when the resteemed it.
The page looks like this:
When I first started checking this it only showed an occasional resteem but as time went by and my content got better, the frequency of people resteeming my content began to increase. What started as once a week became once a day and then several resteems a day and then once an hour and so on.
This will guide you by letting you know if your content is worthy of being resteemed. As long as this number keeps increasing you're on the right track. If no one is resteeming you ever then you need to improve your content to give them something to resteem about.
NOTE: This number really started to increase to every hour in about my 9th month of writing every day. Notice how that correlates with the number of increased followers that also began to grow around my 9th month.
Why is that? If I was standing on a street corner asking everyone that walks past me to come see my great show that I'm doing tonight at the local theater, some may come see me, but not nearly as many people that would come if they heard about this great show from all their friends and family. If they heard about it from an article in a newspaper or on TV. Why?
Word of mouth is the best way to advertise or sell your brand. Getting Resteems on Steemit is like word of mouth advertising but it only works if you create good content. It does not work if you beg people to Resteem your post.
SteemDB.com's Reblogged feature allows you to track who is resteeming your posts and if the frequency of the amount of resteems is growing so you can adjust your approach to writing posts that will grow you a following.
Conclusions
Not only do I use these tools to track my progress, I also use them to look at other successful bloggers on Steemit to see if I can glean some information about why their blog is doing so well and apply what I learn to my own blog posts.
If all this sounds like work to you that's because it is work. But it is work without a bosshole breathing down your neck, or clocks to punch, or stupid meetings to go to. And if you're blogging about something you're really passionate about then it won't feel like work at all.
These are tools that will help you track your progress and guide you to succeed on Steemit but the passion and uniqueness that only you possess and craft onto a blog page is your key to succeeding.
Use these tools wisely and Steem on.
For these and more tools visit SteemTools.com and have a look in the toolbox.
