RE: Mr. Gagnez is joining Steemit! How can I be useful and valuable to the Steemit community?
Welcome to Steemit @iamgagnez. You must first learn to survive on this platform; easy if you do nothing, but that is not why you are here. The best advice I can give you is; be thoughtful when commenting on other people's posts, especially whales as they can flag your account into oblivion while answering to no one, and be aware that the price of Steem can fluctuate wildly regardless of what we do here. Post original material and when you don't, at least explain what another's content means to you and/or credit it's creator.
Make certain you log in with your posting Key. Some operations require a master or active key so be sure to log out after using them and log back in with the posting key. Never log in with your master key if you can avoid it, use the active key instead. A hassle I know; but it's the best way to protect your account from being hacked. Powering up what you have is also good protection as it takes 13 weeks for a potential thief to get it out, giving others time to try help you get your account back. (not always possible)
Remember to have fun! Kind regards!
This is great advice @onnovocks - thank you! I knew nothing about the posting key vs master/active key, I will look into it asap. Also I will check into "Powering up". Again, thank you.
There are 4 keys: Master, posting, active and memo. For most things you use the posting key and for transactions use your active key. Only use the master key to change passwords. If you lose the master, or if a hacker gets it, you lose control as the hacker can use it to change your passwords.