RE: Why is it important to follow and upvote small accounts? - The key to a healthy community growth.
Exactly! I mean, I think we all do this, myself included. I think It is something it develops through time and with the people i do it it is like an unspoken agreement as long as both accounts keep posting wuality content.
I like how you think. The thing is, if we engage in that same "realtionship" with other accounts no matter if they are similar in steem power or followers and we focus on the sole content maybe it will help some smaller accounts to become bigger. It might not sound like a "fair trade" if we do this with a really small account but also I think we (I include myself) should see the upvote as a tradeable coin in which where you upvote me I will to you.
And yes, I consider myself lower middle class hehe and that kind of thought trully is what makes us not so dependable of whales, let´s just share the love with the new and smaller accounts :)
I agree that helping build up small accounts is an important thing to focus on as well (for the higher SP accounts), because it's the minnow accounts that make up the highest percentage of Steemit users, BY FAR.
It's important to keep them interested in using Steemit, because they make up the majority of people who will advertise for and on-board new users to the platform.
That's why I make a special effort to find quality content by new users and upvote it at 100% (even though I usually upvote people that I follow at 50% to extend my voting power to include more content). But I can't do it too much or I wouldn't have any voting power left to support the middleclass followers who support me.
So, there's a balance that we need to meet, if we both want to grow our own accounts and help to grow Steemit.