I was inspired by this post to say a few things about the comments I typically receive. A lot of it will just be a re-tread of what's written there, but I'd also like to expand on it in some areas.
Ever since the hard fork there's been an apparent deluge of new users into Steemit who do not speak English, or speak broken English. This is a somewhat understandable reason for replies like "Excellent post yes I love it!!!" and the occasional head scratcher like "Hello beautiful brother you are writing such wonderful post again, I am wish that you should come check out my post and blessings to you if you upvote and follow yes thank you dear friend xxoo"
I don't begrudge that sort of thing, necessarily. I guarantee they speak my language better than I speak theirs. What I have a problem with is 1. Constant begging for follows and upvotes, 2. Advertising their own content in my comments section, and 3. Obvious signs that they did not read the article.
A one sentence reply containing nothing specific to the article for example. Or when all they do is copy and paste a little bit of text from the article and comment briefly on it, almost always text from the first few sentences in the article, which tells me they did that in order to give the impression that they read it.
Why would I upvote "Pls upvote"? Why would I follow someone who says "U follow me I follow u"? It also doesn't help to try and dress it up by writing a paragraph or so of flattery when it still ultimately ends with a plea to upvote and follow. That does not work here.
I chalk it up to cultural differences mostly. I think many of the countries these commenters come from are more frank and straightforward on the internet than is typical in the US or most of Europe. If you check out /r/indianpeoplefacebook or this Indian music video about Facebook etiquette, you'll see what I mean. (Not to single out India. Arabic and Chinese posters also commonly do these things.)
That sort of thing doesn't go over well with Steemians from Western countries. It's considered obnoxious, low effort and insincere. As the other article explains, if you're getting started and desperate for upvotes, the best thing you can do is focus on churning out quality content.
There's also the post promotion section of Steemit chat where you can promote each of your posts once per day, as well as various Steemit focused Facebook groups set up specifically for sharing your posts.
That is a more appropriate place to promote your content than in the comments section of my articles. If you hope to entice me to follow you, the way to do that is by writing long, detailed comments which demonstrate that you fully read the article and have your own interesting thoughts about it. This will always at least get an upvote from me, and odds are good I'll check out your profile to see what your content is like.
Anyways I've been fairly liberal with upvotes so far and I plan to continue because I like to share my success and it costs me nothing to do so. But I'd also like it if I didn't get so many "Waooww best articel!!" type comments, and people trying to make it look like they read more than a few sentences when they didn't. That's just my plea to you though, do what you want.
Those of you who don't do this, none of what's written here applies to you. I have a few really valued commenters who routinely come up with fascinating new angles on what I've written that didn't occur to me. You know who you are, rest assured you're not the topic of this article and I treasure each of you.