Deliberator's help a beginner. IFC - Championship Round

Maybe you are wondering who @mafm29 is and I hope that you are. To start, her name is Angele. She is a 22 year old with a Bachelors in Tourism Management. Immediately once I started to read her post, I felt a really nice positive vibe about her. I just knew that she was going to be a great positive influence to the Steemit community. Reading further down her introduction post, I was pleasantly surprised to see how passionate she was about her hobbies.

Dancing is my refuge and escape from reality.

At the young age of four years old, Angele was signed up for ballet school. It has since remained a very beloved passion of hers and something that brings her great joy and happiness. Unfortunately, she did have to give up dancing in order to pursue her dreams and focus on her studies. However, when given the chance, she dances her heart out.

photo belongs to @mafm29

Dancing is not her only passion. She is also very passionate about travel, reading books, dogs, fashion and makeup! What I found really interesting was what she wrote about her love for travel. I was very intrigued to read more.

Not only do I want to see the wonderful creations God has made, but I would like to learn more about the places that I travel to. I want to learn about its history, culture and everything else a particular place has to offer.

Angele has a really cool goal that she has shared with us. She would like to visit each and every one of the provinces in the Philippines. Out of 81 provinces, she has already been to 20. Not bad for her only being 22 years old! With her young age and what seems like a great head on her shoulders, there is no doubt in my mind that this new Steemit user will make it very far in life, achieving each one of her dreams. In her introduction, she also shares about her adorable dogs Custo the Mini Pinscher and Pierre the Chihuahua. You have got to head over there and see the picture of those two dogs, they are so cute!

I really think that @mafm29 could bring a lot of positive things to our Steemit community. She really deserves encouragement, motivation and advice to help with her journey here because I think that eventually, we could all learn a little something from her. I hope that you will take the time to help me give her a warm welcome!

You can check out her Self Introduction by clicking here.

I would like to take a moment to share some advice with not only @mafm29 but also with every single other new user here on Steemit. Advice that I think will really help you along this amazing, yet sometimes challenging journey on Steemit...

Tips & Tricks For Steemit Success

Steemit success is no different than any other success. You do have to work for it but with a few tips and tricks, it makes the swim in this big blue ocean a lot easier. Let's start from the beginning and talk about bandwidth. In the beginning, you more than likely will run into a warning that says you have exceeded your bandwidth. At that point, you will not be able to do much at all on Steemit other than look at it until it recharges. Since Steemit is run off the blockchain, there unfortunately are these limitations until you gain some Steem Power. To check and see how much remaining bandwidth you have, you can go to Steemd.com. Just type in Steemd.com/@yourusername. For example, steemd.com/@magicalmoonlight.

There are a few different ways for you to limit using up all of your bandwidth and receiving that dreaded warning. To start, reread your post before posting. Reread them several times and make all of your edits prior to posting. Editing your post after you have published it, will use up a ton of your bandwidth. Commenting and voting will also use it up. In the beginning, be sure to comment and Upvote on post that truly deserve it. The quicker you build up your account, the better off you will be with your bandwidth. With all of that said though, since the best way to get past the bandwidth issue is to build up your account, you want to keep up with Steemit until your account has grown a little bit. Many people suggest posting at least once a day and engaging with community will be your best route.

This takes us to our next subject: How do I build up my account and gain more Upvotes?

To start, don't get discouraged when you see less than average post making a decent amount of money and your post is making less than .05. This will happen and 9 times out of 10, those people paid a bot to Upvote their post. Today we are going to discuss how to gain organic Upvotes. The biggest thing that you need to remember is to be patient. You will gradually see the interaction on your post rise, it will more than likely not happen overnight. Writing quality post and engaging with the community will both get you very far. Getting out there and showing others on the platform that you are genuine, will really help you out. Writing quality comments is very important too, actually read others post. Write a comment that proves that you read the post and you are interested in it. By doing so , you will gain friends and most of the time other users return the favor with a comment and Upvote.

Did you notice how I used the word friend and not follower? That is because you want to make it a goal to make friends and not followers. Gaining followers is very nice and a great feeling but unless you have a community built up, majority of your followers don't usually come back. You want to make a fan base that looks forward to your post, in return your stats will rise.

Here is an example of a well thought out comment:

Welcome to Steemit @mafm29!

What a pleasure it is to have you here with us. I loved your introduction and I think you bring a lot of positive energy with you. You seem to have a lot of goals and dreams with so much passion to achieve them, it is amazing. You have a lot of interest that you could talk about here on Steemit that I think you would do really well with.

Your love for dancing, would be great to do an entire post on and many more beyond that. Your passion for it, is awesome. Travel post do really well around here. Anytime you travel, I suggest you take pictures and share about your trip here with us! In no time, you will more than likely have really good feedback from them. Your dogs are adorable as well! I have two small Pomeranians :)

Steemit can take time to get ahead and start seeing progress but with dedication, you will see results. Just don't give up. It was really hard on all of us when we started. The best advice that I have for you is to just get out there into the Steemit community and engage with other users. Meaningful comments will get you many places around here. The community is great and building friends will really help you in the long run.

Good luck on your Steemit journey and let me know if you have any questions!

Joining Discord is an amazing way to engage with small communities here on Steemit. There are so many groups on there with different users that each focus on their own unique thing, their own unique way to help make Steemit a better place and to help the members gain better rewards on their post. Engage, engage, engage!! It really helps. Discord makes it fun and simple to connect easier and talk with other users. You can go to almost any post and find a Discord link. Click on it, and it will usually take you directly to their own amazing little world.

Placing your focus on high quality post can take you many places on Steemit. You will gain more of those "repeat customers" by constantly writing quality post and you have a much higher chance of gaining high Upvotes if your post is excellent. Writing a long thought out post can sometimes take hours, we don't always have those hours to spare when life gets in the way but it is still a good idea to keep up with your Steemit account. It is okay to not write a really long post that takes you hours but remember to always try and keep quality in mind.

If you want to write a shorter post, that is great. Just try and spice up your post to give it some personality. If you are adding a picture, tells us something about it. Don't post just the picture. Try and add a quote, how the picture was taken, what the picture makes you feel, anything at all to add that personal touch.

However, it is a great idea to write long post that are packed with quality for many reasons. Writing a quality post consist of a few different things. First, you want it to be really thought out. Again, add things to your post to make it your own. If possible, throw in some facts or articles from the internet (make sure you always source anything you copy from the internet). Formatting will help you a lot. Learn how to do different things with your Steemit post. Pictures add a lot of spice to your post too. Of course, you want to always source where your pictures came from.

There are several different ways to format, I will share a few tricks here to help you get started.

This symbol --> * can do a few different things.

---

Italic

To write a word or sentence in italic you simply put this symbol * before and after whatever you want to be italic. Be sure not to put a space between the symbol and the words.

---

Bold

This is the same thing as above to write your word in bold but this time you want to put two ** before and after your words (no space).

---

Italic & Bold

Same scenario here too but this time you want to use three *** before and after your words (no space).

---

Do you want to center a text or picture? All you have to do is write < center > before your words and </ center > after. Do not space the symbols and word "center", I only did that to show you the symbols used.

One easy way to add bigger text to your post is by adding these three small lines --- directly under the phrase you want to be bigger. A big tip that really helped me in the beginning was learning how to make words clickable. For example, you write whatever word you want and you change the word to where it can be clicked on and it will take you directly to whatever other link you desire. For example, click here and it will take you to @ifc!

What you do is this, [write the words you want to be clickable inside these two symbols] now directly after this symbol ] you want to use this (place the link you want the words to take you to here). Notice how you will use these symbols [] first and these symbols () next, with no space in between. You can also do that with pictures to make them clickable!

My last tip is a simple page break. You can add a simple line to break up text in your post by adding those three same lines from above --- but place them on a line by themself with no text for one space before and after the symbols.

Steemit can be challenging but it is very rewarding. The community here is amazing and getting to know them is better than any reward. So, remember to try and engage as much as possible. Get out there and make yourself known. Write great post, great comments, join contest and have fun! Don't give up or get discouraged with Steemit. Never give up. Give it your pure dedication and patiently wait, things will look up in your Steemit life!