Curation and Content

Curation and Creating Content are two very import activities here on Steemit. Until now I have been more focused on creating content but with some free time from work coming up, I will be able to do some serious curating.

Content creator

For the content creator the primary focus is creating quality and original content (more about that in a moment), whether it is a blog, articles, stories, videos or stories, the content needs to grab the audience to make an impact.
It is also important for the content creator to gain a loyal group of followers and gain some visibility. Even if you have some interesting and high quality posts, it is easy to go unnoticed in the large quantity of posts that are being submitted. Getting on the Hot and Trending pages can be quite a task.
Interaction with the community is key, responding to comments and networking is very important. Investing time is an important and difficult factor, but doing this will pay itself back later.

Curator

Curation is in my opinion one of the hardest things to do. You have to find good quality posts and determine if they are going to do well. The thing is, that it is hard to predict if a post (even of high quality) is going to do well.
Curation also means discovering new, fresh talent. @curie is probably one of the best curators with an eye for upcoming talent. It is highly recommended to follow (them? I think they are a team) on their trail (Streemian).
Curation is highly underestimated and a very important part of Steemit. I think that curation should be rewarded more than it is now. Curation will become even more important as Steemit keeps growing and the number of daily post will increase.

Payouts

As I said, I am a very lousy curator, part of this comes from the fact that I don't have the time to both write posts and curate. I feel that if I am going to do something, that I have to take my time and give it my best. Simply upvoting the posts in the Hot or Trending section just won't do.
Because of that I notice that my curation rewards are not that high, especially compared to the payouts I get for my posts.
I might be that I am doing something wrong. I will have to read up on some curation manuals or guidelines to determine what the best approach is.

Quality posts

So what defines a quality post? This is very subjective but I think that there are some key elements that determine a quality post (of course we can always agree to disagree on this).

Original content
This is a given. The post has to be original and not some copy-pasta-like material.
Newsworthy
The post not always has to be about breaking news but rather something "fresh", meaning some new insight or something worth sharing.
Informative
I like posts that teach me something, this can be some new information or maybe something not commonly known. It doesn't matter as long as it gives me some new insights.
good story
Again, very subjective but I love a good story, it can be funny, scary, insightful, it doesn't matter as long as it the story told is interesting.

source

Preparing for Curation

I have some free time coming up and I have leased some Steem Power from @minnowbooster for 4 weeks to do some curating. I read the Minnowbooster posts but never gave leasing Steem Power much attention (too busy writing posts). It was not until I understood that 1 Steem will give you 65 Steem Power and if you lease for 4 weeks that 1 Steem will grant you 100 Steem Power that I became (very) interested.

I had some Steem dollars doing absolutely nothing in my wallet and leased 55 worth of Steem (1375 SP) for the coming 4 weeks.
On Steem now on the top left side of the page there is a calculator (very small) that you can click open to calculate what your upvote will be worth at a certain amount of SP.
In this case for 55 SP, I more than doubled my voting power for the next 4 weeks.

It was hard to decide if I would lease 3575 SP for one week or 1375 for 4 weeks, but in sight of my upcoming 3 weeks of freedom, I decided to go for the long haul.

It will be interesting to see how the increased SP and dedicated curation will play out. I will post after the 4 weeks how it went and if leasing SP is worth it in my opinion.

"Gaming the system"

Well not actually gaming, but there is a playful element to Steemit. Just posting will not get you where you want to go but there are means to aid you in your success. There are new initiatives to help minnows popping up daily and my advise is to try these out and see what suits you best.
Things I have tried so far:

Lease power @minnowbooster
Boost visibility of my posts @minnowsupport
Invest and get some extra payouts @randowhale
Gain some followers with the Friendtrain @infobunny (although it seems that the train is standing still at the moment, possibly that @infobunny is enjoying some well deserved vacation time)
Feed a whale with @make-a-whale and get some nice upvotes and curation in return