1000 Followers and still only 5-10 views on a post?
I'm slightly disappointed with the number of inactive or fake followers that I have. Ok, very disappointed. While there is a great community here of Steemit, there are also a ton of people who do not engage at all. I Have been trying to write quality content on real stuff since I joined Steemit in 2016 and have had successes and failures over the last year and a half. After some trial and error, I realized that the only way to be successful here is to "act natural". The system seems to work well in rewarding good content on the surface, but recently it has been brought to my attention that there are a few flaws in the system.
My first problem is the self upvoting issue. I'm conflicted on this one as Steemit has an upvote yourself option and if you do not upvote yourself, you decrease your odds of having your content discovered by others. If everyone only upvotes themselves however the platform isn't working. Maybe getting rid of the self upvote all together would be a good thing? Idk. Then there is vote collusion. Voting for your friend's content because it is genuinely good is what is supposed to happen. Voting for your friends one line of plagiarism every 22 hours so that he returns the favor issn't cool. Sure you have the right to do it, but it's not cool for everyone else. Being able to buy Steem and Power it up is cool, although it has its drawbacks. I kind of wish everyone had to earn it so that you can't "pay to win". I'm not sure what the solution is as there are pros and cons either way. There has also been a controversy about flagging and down voting recently where I again am unsure what to think.
The other problem I see is people being drawn to Steemit, upvoting everything in sight, posting 20 times a day for a day or two, following everyone they interact with and then leaving the platform. Although it would be difficult with the platform being blockchain based, some sort of feature should be employed to "remove" these accounts. Similar to the way Instagram removes spam accounts, Steemit could clean up follower numbers. I would much rather have a small but active following than a meaningless number under my name.
Although I love getting upvotes on my posts, I also love when people read them, or at least skim through. Even though I have 1000 followers, only 56 people upvoted my best paid post, and only 32 of them viewed the post. How can you upvote a post without at least skimming through it??? I guess I had a cool thumbnail. Please though, read the post. Don't only vote on it. I think that the best way to get more real users is to recruit your friends and people you know, and to explain to them that standing in the community has to be earned much like it does on reddit or other social networks.
Anyways, on a more positive note- My time so far on Steemit has been AWESOME! I've met a ton of cool new people, learned new things, found a community of like minded people and have gotten much more into cryptocurrency, computers, and technology in general. Ever since my first post, I've been hooked. Over the last few months I finished the "Great American Road Trip" series, a true recounting of my summer traveling across the country with a few friends, as well as a series of opinion based posts.
I'd love to get some feedback on what else I should write about. What does the world want to hear? I often have ideas for posts that I think about for a few minutes and then discard because they seem dumb. Are you more interested in hearing about my life, or would articles on history, politics and current events be better? Let me know.
As they say, "Don't upvote a post by its thumbnail"
Don't forget to UPVOTE, FOLLOW and RESTEEM
(if you are a an active member of the community and actually enjoy my content)
--Aaron