I find so many of the help posts for new users seem to take a few things for granted. I recently had a friend from work @hilockwood join steemit and I was going to send her my old post with some advice for new users. It's a great and still popular post, but it wasn't consistent with what she was asking me and looking back it would probably be way over someone's head on thier first few days here.

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It's hard to remember just how complicated and overwhelming this place was on the very first day

I'm excited for the opportunity to see Steemit again through the eyes of a brand new user and what to take this opportunity to help once again. Instead of just giving this advice to her I'm going to share it with everyone here and hope it helps.

1. Complete you Profile

This would be my first piece of advice, before you start of doing too much around here, it's a good idea to complete your profile. When I see comments from new users, I often check the about preview or even click back to their profile and try to determine if it's a real person. If I feel it is, I usually like to drop them a nice hearty upvote to get them started, but if I'm not convinced they are a real preson, they are likely going to get skipped over.

Unfortunately there are some sophisticated bots around here that will leave comments just to fish for upvotes. Try having something a bit personal in the about line, it will come up as a preview when someone clicks your comment, it will help especially when a lot of people are suspicious.

Same goes for the rest of your profile. Add a cover photo and profile pic, put your location (of course not your address but maybe at least your city or country). If you want use that link for a personal blog you might have, maybe a twitter or linkedin profile. Sometimes Facebook or Instragram may be too personal if your profile is private.

2. Seed your Feed, and search for content.

I understand even saying it like that is likely over your head, but what I mean is you need to start following people that your interested in and finding content you enjoy.

The search features isn't the best, although it seams to be much better all of sudden, so it's probably an okay to place try. Honestly, I would suggest avoiding the trending page,you are probably not going to find much value in that stuff, and much of it is really steemit related. The new page is really busy and your going to have a heck of a time fishing for any good content that appeals to you. So your best bet is too start searching tags, but even that can be hard to navigate, so lets start with that.

Searching Tags

There are 2 main ways to do it. First you can select the tag list on the left side of your feed as you see in the photo above. If you click the view all tags, you'll see an alphabetical list you can scroll through, but this just has the most popular tags. You won't find "starwars" on that list, but maybe you really like star wars. You can try searching or you can just type ii manually in your search bar just like this steemit.com/trending/starwars and you'll get a list of post that are all tagged starwars. Or whatever interest you may have, you can see in the photo it's showing /politics.

Do that and find some articles to read, comment on and follow the authors who's posts you enjoyed. You'll be off to a pretty good start with just that really.

Searching Feeds

The next way to find people to follow is lets say for example you find one author your really like, or some profile that you feel has the same interests as you do. For example say your really into woodworking and you stumble upon @jist here, who's really serious about woodworking. You can see his feed and see who he's followed, you can also see that he only follows 148 people so he probably doesn't just spam follow a lot of people with crap quality. @jist probably has a well curated list and it's probably pretty niche. (hope you don't mind the shout out buddy). Well what you can do is just type /feed after his username, just like the photo, and you'll be able to see his feed. (PS thanks to @mattclarke for that tip).

I think these two ways will really get you started navigating some good content that you enjoy and building your feed and following list.

3. Comment

I wrote a whole post about this exact topic here. It's worth reading but I'll give a couple highlights and an overview for if it's your first day here.

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Comments are your best and pretty much only way to get noticed early on, your going to have zero followers and not a whole lot of people are going to see your blog. Even if it's the very best blog post ever that gives away the secret to eternal life and all the money in the world. Save the good stuff for once you have a few followers. Just focus on commenting and commenting alot. Like 20+ times per day or more if you have the time and interest. I still leave a comment on any blog that I read and still try to comment around 20 times to day. Of course comment on your favorite authors and friends but also comment on as many different people that you can. And hey if someone you comment on gives you a nice upvote be sure to comment and check out their new posts, you have your first steemit friend.

I've even heard people suggest don't bother blogging until you have 300 followers. I'd say blog whenever you feel like you want too and are ready too but don't over think it and don't pour your entire being and all your energy into those first few blogs. You will likely be very disappointed. Don't be surprised if you make less than $1 for your first month, it will come.

4. Write an introduce yourself post

I know I just said don't blog, but at least do this. It acts as an introduction and gives your profile some validity. You've taken that step to prove your a real person. It will be there for anyone who wants to double check if your a real person or learn more about you. Just write some simple stuff, you can get as deep as your want or keep it light. Tell people about yourself, what your interested in, what content you'll likely be reading or blogging about. It's also a good idea to include a photo of yourself holding some sign of piece of paper with your steemit name and date. That way people feel comfortable you didn't just steal some images of some attractive girl from the internet and trying to pull one over on them. When you do make this blog, be sure to use the introduceyourself tag. Plus 4 other tags, you get a max of 5 so may as well use them all.

Just like this smiling fool, You can even see my introduction post here. As you can see, it doesn't have any fancy HTML markdown or anything special.

Keep it Simple

I'm going to put this out there right now, Steemit is confusing, actually very confusing.

Between the voting power and weights. The way curation and rewards are distributed, heck even where the rewards come from. What's the difference between SP, Steem and SBD. The whale wars, autovoters and voting bots, and don't get me starting on HTML markdown and post formatting. Really that's just the start, what's a blockchain or cryptocurrency, and what's with all these others way to interact and navigate the blockchain.

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For real, it's freaking magic, like the microwave!

You can do fine here not even understanding most of those things and if your curious they will come along the way. It's just going to frustrate and complicate things. Start learning about them when your ready and if you decide to care about them. By then you'll likely have friends that can just walk you through it all.

Just try to have fun, learn and make friends. Don't worry or focus on the rewards, they come slow but they will come over time.

Hope this helps! Once again just try to have fun and enjoy your time, if you don't enjoy it, they go back to watching TV or whatever you used to do with your free time!

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