I’ve started putting together a Beginner’s Guide to Steemit to help new users get accustomed to the site, and it’ll hopefully act as a reference guide for the foreseeable future. I’ve been on the site roughly 4 months now, and in writing this I realised there was still so much more that I just didn’t know about.
Steemit doesn’t have a user guide, but then again most other (especially new) social media sites don’t either. There have already been so many user-created guides, and I will be drawing upon many of them in writing this. The problem I found was that many weren’t comprehensive enough, or presumed the reader had some awareness or knowledge of the topic of Steem and blockchain technologies. This will by no means be an exhaustive list of everything there is to know on Steemit or Steem, but is more than enough to get you started.
Writing this whole guide by myself with my limited knowledge is going to be a daunting task, but also means there’s a likelihood of errors. If you spot anything that is wrong, or needs editing, please let me know in the comments section so that I can correct in the 7 day window. Enough waffling on, let’s dive into it.
Steem & The Blockchain
Before discussing Steemit, we need to talk about Steem and the Blockchain. Steem is a cryptocurrency token that can be bought and sold on the open market, and it is what powers Steemit. Steem is the solution to the problem “How can we ensure content creators can get paid for their work?”. In the real world, the content economy is broken. Look at the many “adpocalypse” cases for YouTube. Steem and Steemit seek to address that problem by paying content creators when what they post gets upvoted by other users on the platform.
Steemit is very different to many other cryptocurrencies as it doesn’t rely entirely on mining to generate new units of currency, although you can mine it. How this works is that the network generates new Steem tokens when users post content and interact with other user’s work and then distributes them amongst those users. The amount you get depends on how many upvotes a piece receives, plus your overall engagement with the platform as well as how much Steem Power you hold (but we’ll get to that bit later).
Steem utilises a “Proof-of-brain” concept, which is a type of rewards algorithm that encourages people to post content and interact with other user’s content. This can take the form of “Author Rewards” or “Curation Rewards”, but again we’ll get into those topics in more depth later on.
Steem also seeks to address current issues with existing cryptocurrencies such as Bitcoin or Ethereum, which can suffer from long delays in transactions and high tx fees. Steem is a next-generation blockchain (whereas Bitcoin is arguably a first generation blockchain), specially designed to run real-time applications with lightning fast transactions and no fees. For these reasons alone, you might be able to see why Steem is worth investing in. It was the technical aspects of Steem that first got me interested in Steemit. I’d already bought some Steem, but wasn’t happy with my wallet provider, Freewallet, and figured Steemit would be a better place to store them. So I signed up, verified and I instantly fell in love with the site.
Steemit
Steemit is the first application built on the Steem blockchain, launched in 2016, and from what I can tell they were both created in tandem with each other. Steemit is a blogging platform that rewards its users with Steem tokens, think Reddit but your points are worth something other than just bragging rights. Steemit is far more than Reddit though, as the text content and metadata are actually stored in the blockchain. It was created to show other developers just what could be done on the Steem blockchain, and since then many more platforms have sprung up around Steem.
As mentioned above, Steem and Steemit are proposed solutions to the current content economy. Often, creators have to seek out alternative methods of generating income, such as signing endorsement deals or sprinkling adverts throughout their content. Steemit rewards content creators directly via their upvote and reward system. The amount a creator receives depends on both the number of upvotes received, and also the weight of that vote, also known as Steem Power. If a users with a high reputation score and a large amount of Steem Power upvotes your content, you get substantially more than an upvote from a new users with a small amount of Steem Power. These big users are often referred to as Whales, whereas small or new users are often referred to as Minnows.
Steemit actually has three different types of currencies; Steem, Steem Power and Steem Backed Dollar.
Steem itself is bought and sold on the open market, and isn’t designed to be held onto for long periods of time. It degrades by roughly 9.5% a year due to how it’s produced, which is an intentional inflation. Steem can be converted into Steem Power through a process known as “Powering Up”.
Steem Power is essentially a long-term investment in the platform, as you technically have a proportionate ownership in the network. It also enables you to earn as both an Author and Curator. The more Steem Power tokens you have, the more your upvotes count. As the network grows, the amount of influence you have also grows proportionally. It currently takes 13 weeks to withdraw Steem Power, to encourage network growth and as a measure to prevent you from losing your funds if you account is hijacked.
Finally there is Steem Backed Dollars (SBD), which are intended to be a stable and spendable currency. The value of SBD is apparently directly linked to the value of the US dollar, although I’m personally not entirely satisfied with that explanation, as it doesn’t explain SBDs fairly wild price swings. More research need on my part here I think, but I will save that for a later post.
That’s the technical and theory side of things covered, let’s get stuck into Steemit itself now.
Your Account
So where to start? Let’s have a quick run over the registration process, just in case you haven’t signed up yet. If you’re all ready and set to go, just skip over the Registration section. In case you aren’t already aware, you only need one account for the whole Steem ecosystem, that includes logging into other platforms based on the Steem blockchain.
Registration
Signing up to Steemit is a simple process, simply head over to Steemit.com and click Sign Up. Here you can select your username, then follow the prompts to finish setting up your account. Make sure to spend some time thinking about your username, as it represents you across the platform. You’ll then need to follow the verification process, which shouldn’t take too long. I have heard of users having to wait a few days for their confirmation email. Steemit will likely generate a 32 character password for you, this is your master password and you need to keep it safe. Never give anyone else your master password, and it may be worth considering using a password manager.
Your Profile
You should now be signed up, so let’s start looking at some of the features. If you head over to Settings, we can start setting up your profile.
Here you can set your Profile Picture, Cover Image, Display Name, About Section, Location and Website. Smash that update button when you’re done, and enter your password to confirm the changes. Spend some time thinking about what you want as your profile images and about section, as this will often be the first thing people see when clicking on your profile.
As you can see from my profile, this is how your information is displayed to users. Your profile should be set up now, it doesn’t take very long. Let’s explore one more feature of your profile, Reputation.
Reputation
On Steemit, your reputation means a lot, and you need to keep it positive. Your score is shown next to your display name. All new users start off with a reputation score of 25, and you can increase that score by posting quality original content that engages users. If you plagiarize other people’s work, abuse other users or just post low quality content that most users would consider spam, then your content will be flagged by the community and your score will be reduced. Get flagged enough, and eventually your content and comments will be automatically hidden from view.
It’s important to note that increasing your reputation takes time and patience. You need to put the work in in order to attract an audience, engage with them and produce quality content for the platform. Attempts to cheat the system will most often be noticed by the community, and can result in your being flagged or drawing the attention of community-made bots designed to tackle spam and abuse of the system.
Wallet
Your wallet is where your various Steem funds are stored, and how you can transfer funds, power up or withdraw funds. Each part of the wallet comes with a brief description, so familiarise yourself with it. Your wallet is where payouts for your content goes, and from here you can send them to other users or to an exchange if you wish to convert them into other currencies, including fiat currencies.
Adding Funds
When you sign up to Steemit, you are given a small amount of Steem Power to get you started, as well as a slightly larger amount of Steem Power that is delegated to you in order to help boost your Voting Power. The amount delegated to you will fluctuate over time as you earn more Steem Power. You don’t need to add funds in order to use Steemit, but there are some good reasons to do so. The majority of the Steem created each day goes to Steem Power holders, as Steem Power is similar to holding stocks in Steemit. The more Steem Power you have, the bigger your share and the more value behind your votes.
If you have never traded in cryptocurrencies before, you’ll need to convert some fiat currency (like USD or GBP) into a crypto like Bitcoin or Litecoin at an exchange, which you can then exchange for some Steem or SBD. There are already many good tutorials on this subject, and I encourage you to look into them. One popular exchange site for getting Steem is @Blocktrades where you can easily convert most main cryptocurrencies for Steem or Steem Backed Dollars. Simply enter your username as the wallet address, and the funds will be deposited into your account once they have received the crypto of your choice.
The Steemit Site
Steemit has quite a simple layout really, especially when compared to most modern Social Media platforms such as Facebook or Twitter. Despite having been on the world wide web since shortly after its inception, I’ve personally never been drawn to Reddit, the self-proclaimed front page of the internet, mainly just because of its user base. Steemit is different, there is a very active community who are passionate about growing the Steemit network. There are an abundance of user-created bots designed to tackle spam, abuse and plagiarization.
Site Layout
As you can see, the site is quite plainly laid out. You have your Trending, New, Hot and Promoted tabs along the top, a selection of popular tags along the left hand side and the feed in the center. Search, Post, Profile and Main Menu are in the top right of the page. Steemit is still in beta, so expect the layout of the site to change over time, with possible new features or a complete design overall being likely at some point.
Tags
Posts are organised into categories called Tags, which each post having up to five tags. Think of tags like hashtags of Twitter and Facebook. The most popular tags are displayed on the left side of the homepage/your feed, and if you scroll down you can find a link to view all tags on the platform. This can be helpful if you’re trying to figure out what tags to give your post. Clicking on a tag shows the top trending posts under that tag, but you can select New, Hot or Promoted from the top to change what posts you are viewing.
Posts
Your posts include both your own original blog posts, and any comments that you write on your own or others posts. Every single thing you post on Steemit, or any other Steem based platform, is stored on the blockchain. 7 days after posting, your content is locked and forever memorialised on the blockchain. This is why it’s very important to ensure that every post you make is quality original content. Take your time when writing posts, both blog posts and comments. The blockchain is open to anyone to view, so trolls and spammers do not go down well on this platform. Let’s get practical, and start off by writing your Introduce Yourself post.
Introduce Yourself
Let’s start off by going ahead and pressing the small pencil icon in the top right corner of the page. You are now presented with the Create a Post page. The best way to get a feel for what to put is to take a look at some of the trending Introduce Yourself posts. This way, you can figure out what kind of information the community is looking for. Steemit puts a lot of emphasis on Social Identity, and this post is arguably your most important one. Try to make your first post your Introduce Yourself post, sadly I didn’t get that piece of advise until it was too late.
One important bit of information to include is essentially verification of your identity for the community. This can take the form of linking to your other Social Media accounts or personal website. Again, take a look at others introduce yourself posts and get a feeling for what is expected here. The quality of the content being produced for Steemit is constantly increasing, raising expectations from new and existing users.
For an example, here is a link to my Introduce Yourself page: [IntroduceYourself] Hi Steemit! John here...
It’s very important to make sure you put the right tags on for this post. Make the first tag introduceyourself so that others can find it easily. Using the right tags is very important when trying to get your posts viewed by other users.
Although you can edit your post for the first 7 days after posting, try to keep this to a minimum as it can use up your allotted bandwidth on the platform. We’ll go into bandwidth in more detail in a later post.
When you're ready, and you've checked your post for any errors, it's time to post. For now, leave the Rewards drop-down at Default (50%/50%) and leave the Upvote post unticked. We'll go into more details on why in the next post. Get your cursor or finger hovering over that Post button, then smash that button to unleash your creation onto the world!
That should be enough to get you started, we'll be going over more topics next time include the different ways to style and format your posts, as well as voting, payouts and the other platforms that are built on Steem. There'll also be some more general things that I couldn't fit in other places, plus some tips for promoting yourself.
So, what do you think of this guide? Has it helped you? Are there any glaring mistakes that I've made? Make sure to let me know down in the comments section, and if you guys either enjoyed this or feel that others would, I'd really appreciate you resteeming it to get it out there. If you're new to the platform, welcome! Drop me a line in the comments section, I really enjoy chatting with you all. As always, make sure to follow me for the latest Cryptocurrency, Internet and Pop Culture updates, and until next time, Peace!