Once again @michelle.gent is on the ball with providing the #story-mentor group with valuable tasks to complete, AND she finds the time to respond to everyone involved, (even with my 3500 character stories, which again I must apologise and share my appreciation to you for the advice given from that).
So... Our mission, should we choose to accept it is to think about what we’d like our writing career to bring us.
When I joined Steemit, almost a whole month ago, I joined under the impression that it was a social media platform which paid users with a cryptocurrency for their posts. Sort of the case but there is so much more to it. You can't just post anything, it has to have good content and be of value to the readers.
I started off with random posts, before taking the advice of looking for my own niche in which to write about. As most who follow me will know, I explore abandoned and closed down mine systems around the UK and over the last year, have gained a large arsenal of underground photography.
I thought that maybe I could do what many do on other platforms such as 28 Days Later. Unlike that particular urban exploration forum, many of the Steemit users don't share this kind of thing, and thus far has had relatively good feedback from users reading my adventures, who otherwise wouldn't even consider what I do.
The Steem and Steem Dollar's earnt from the platform are not the priority of me being here, yes initially it was, but since getting back into reading and writing it's become a bonus for doing something I've grown to enjoy thoroughly.
Nobody has the right to upvotes on their work, some posts win some posts lose, and patience is the ultimate key to success on Steemit from my understanding of how it works thus far. Yes some people get lucky or already have a following within the crypto world, but most of us are in the same boat. We work together and read and upvote each others good content and we grow together, just like the members of the #story-mentor tag.
Having had a go at a horror story yesterday, I would like to work on that base story and develop it with guidance of the group and the #steemit community. My trouble at the moment is getting an audience and following. I have tried researching what are the best times of day to post etc but it just doesn't work that way. I constantly try commenting and interacting with other peoples posts, some who I don't even follow but like what their 'trending' or 'new' post is talking about. This gains me followers and I think if I basically rinse and repeat this until the following grows, then I can't go too far wrong.
Networking and interacting with the right people, as well as of course, producing good content for my followers and chosen hashtag (mainly adventure) will be my main focus for now. After all, this is a hobby not a career for me. I have spent far too long in university to back out of the architectural career I have built myself from the age of 15.
Eventually, the ultimate goal, I guess, would be to have my own successful hashtag to put my adventure blogs under, just like @michelle.gent and the #story-mentor tag which I think has been a great success in the short time she has had it open. I'd like to develop a following for the mining adventures, I'd like to progress my horror story to a point where it is worth putting up as a self published ebook. And, of course, I'd also like to earn Steem and get into #bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies.
To conclude, overall, I aim to keep doing what I am doing, the following grows steadily each day, I have now got a decent curator and author reward collection coming in daily so my Steem Power is constantly increasing, which gives me the drive to continue and improve.