It's a big pond, and you're a little fish. But with any luck, not for long!

Arriving here on Steemit can involve a bit of, well, culture shock. It's not just the fact that this is a rather international community without a lot of segregation, but then there's also the culture of Steemit itself. Much of this is related to technical details of the platform that aren't necessarily obvious, even if you've done a bit of reading.

For example, I first thought that "whale" referred only to vote pooling bots: build-a-whale, buy-a-whale, rent-a-whale, sail-a-whale, whatever. Now I understand that whale and minnow represent the ends of the spectrum on which users fall by their STEEM Power, aka their ability to reward others with payouts. Nobody ever told me I was a minnow or schooled me on the best ways to fatten up a bit.

So, for posterity at the least, I want to briefly tell the story of how I got started on Steemit. Or alternatively, how to be a minnow.

1. Curate Later

When I was first learning about Steemit, the curation reward mechanism really excited me. Yes, the crypto and blockchain and all that are super cool, but paying out users who post popular content isn't exactly a revolutionary idea (although paying them in crypto is a big development). On the other hand, nothing like curation rewards exist on the major social media platforms that I've used. Curating written content is a skill I think I have, and I was stoked to offer it to the community here.

I proceeded to curate the shit out of my new posts feed for a while, and I managed to earn a few cents SBD. See, curation payouts are scaled according to the value of your vote, so curating as a minnow generates little in the way of rewards. The penny or so that your vote is worth also doesn't go very far to demonstrating that the content is valuable enough for others to read and vote on. While I look forward to playing the curator role on this platform, that requires an investment to start to matter, and I wish I'd understood that sooner.

2. Post a bit

Crafting the nicest possible post to introduce yourself is wise. Adding the introduceyourself tag will probably get the attention of a whale or two who'll give you nice upvotes to get started. But after that, probably nobody is going to read the shit you post, at least nobody that has the voting power you're looking for to get a worthwhile payout from a post. But you also shouldn't just stop posting.

My strategy for now is to post every few days with solid, relevant insights for users of the platform, but not to sweat too much about these posts. They don't have to be my best work and probably few people will see them, but they do represent an important record of the fact that I'm active on the platform and that I'm contributing some real brain power.

3. Comment more

Making an insightful comment on a popular post where some bigger fish are hanging out is one of the best ways to get attention and upvotes as a minnow. At the same time, posting unrelevant comments or just saying "good job" is a great way to annoy people and create a reputation as a spammer. Ask yourself, does this contribute to the conversation? Can I ask a question here that others might be wondering about too? If you do, you could be rewarded with upvotes more valuable than you'll receive from making posts.

To this end, I'd recommend finding some users to follow who are creating popular posts in areas that you're interested in. Then use your feed to jump into the discussion while things are still hot (most of the action takes place in the first 24 hours that a post is live). As an added bonus, other visitors to the post might see value in what you've written and decide to check out your posts or follow you.

Fin

I hope you've found this a useful introduction to minnow strategy here on Steemit. If you've got your own tips, disagreements, or anything else to add, I'd love to hear it in the comments.