![Posting Strategy.jpg](https://steemitimages.com/DQmSidVGcJn15DXceTLMo3nvWPdG7VUuuysSw4KYFNpc1pN/Posting%20Strategy.jpg)
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It's not complicated, we're all here to earn Steem while getting the content we are sharing viewed by others and contribute in a meaningful way to the Steemit community. Okay, some of us are just here for  the steem but we all know who they are. Cheetah and his friends over at Steem Cleaners spank them down to a 0 rep and they wander off wondering what happen. 

For those of you here for a more balanced give/receive relationship with the Steemit community I'm writing this post to help you maximize that relationship in both directions. I'm even going to start off with the two very best, top secret pieces of advice I have.
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BEST ADVICE PART 1

Don't Beg.

Simple right? Yet I see so many people begging for upvotes, views, and followers. This happens most often in the comment section of a post but I've seen it in post titles as well. It invariably looks something like this:

“I upvoted you, Follow and upvote me.”

Yeah, NO! The people that do this deserve every flag and down vote they get. Don't be like them. If you are one of these people stop before your account is completely worthless.
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BEST ADVICE PART 2

Create useful, engaging, original content.

Again, Simple. I know that may sound hard but you may be over complicating it in your mind. Create posts about what you know. I'm an experienced photographer so if you browse my feed you are going to find a lot of photoblogs and photography how to's. Everyone has something they are good at – cooking, working on cars, drawing, gaming, and so on. Just be honest and keep posting. The more you post the better you'll get at it. 
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IF YOU ARE JUST GETTING STARTED

TALK IT UP

Until you have some Steem Backed Dollars(SBD) on your steemit account this is really the only way to promote yourself. You can go on https://steemit.chat/channel/postpromotion and share the link to your post. You should join @minnowsupport as soon as possible. They have a postpromotion channel on https://discordapp.com where you can share your post. You can also request an upvote for one of your posts from minnowsupport every 12 hours in the upvote channel. In addition to the postpromotion channels making good quality comments on other people's posts is a great way to get some SBD and followers when you are just starting out on steemit(and after you've been around for that matter). 

TAGS

Picking the five Tags for your post is one of most important things you can do. It determines how much competition you post will face for getting on the hot and trending lists as well as the amount of traffic (people) that might possibly see your post. The best approach is a balanced one where you pick some high traffic tags and some lower traffic tags. The higher traffic ones will give you a shot at more potential viewers and the lower traffic tags will let you stay on their hot and trending lists longer. I've written a post on how to pick your tags. Here's a link to it: 
https://steemit.com/newbie/@randystiefer/tags-for-noobs-by-a-noob
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MAXING ROI AND VIEWS AT THE SAME TIME

I have no firm data but casual observation on my part suggests that some sort of velocity algorithm based on upvote rewards, upvotes, views, and the speed at which those are received is used to determined how high a post lands on the hot list for a tag. This is good news from a ROI standpoint. The quicker after a post's creation a upvote reward is received the more of that reward goes to the post author and the less of that reward goes to the curation pool. 

Knowing this, we can develop a step by step posting procedure that allows us to max out both our ROI and our position on the Hot list. 
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STEP 1:
Use the Steem Upvote Bot Tracker Tool to know when @randowhale is going to wake up next and then 1 hour before it says he's going to wake get a post ready to go(he can and does wake up early). DO NOT hit the post button till @randowhale is awake. When the whale wakes hit post then send the whale 1SBD with your posts URL in the memo to get your upvote. Here's the link to the Bot Tracker:
https://s3.amazonaws.com/yabapmatt/bottracker/bottracker.html
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STEP 2:
Use the Bot tracker tool above and check to make sure @minnowbooster is at or above 51% and then send them 3-6SBD with your post's URL in the memo to get an upvote from them. The more you send the higher your potential listing but you need to balance this with the fact that minnowbooster has a weekly limit of 20SBD. Personally I send 3SBD for 4 posts a week and 4SBD for 2 posts a week to spread out the love. 

EDIT: In between the time I wrote this post and the time I was going to post it @minnowbooster changed there posting limits again. THey are now 5 min SBD per post, 5 max SBD per day and 15 max SBD per week. So I've upvote 4 posts @ 3SBD per this week already so that completely screws me up. *Sigh* I may use one of the bid bots as a sub. 
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Step 3:
Go to Steem follower and upvote some posts so you'll get some upvotes in return. If you are going to post once today then upvote 10 posts(assuming you are voting at 100%). If you are going to post twice a day then upvote 5 posts. If you aren't signed up on Steem follower yet you can check it out here: 
https://steemfollower.com/?r=4476
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Step 4:
Go to Discord after your post has been up at least 21 minutes and ask for an upvote in the upvote room of PAL from minnowsupport. If you haven't signed up with @minnowsupport yet you can follow the steps in this post to do so:
https://steemit.com/minnowsunite/@hypexals-spiral/minnow-support-project-how-to
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THAT's IT

That's pretty much all I do after each post. After that your post will sink or swim based on it's quality and usefulness to the community. Does it work? I'll let the following images give you an idea. In the first you see two posts I made earlier this week still on the trending page of the tag “upvote”. They aren't at the top but you can still see the tag list to the right. The second capture shows one of the posts still near the top of the trending page for the tag “bots”. Now granted this isn't the Steemit tag but it shows you that using these techniques you can get some exposure even as a little minnow. 
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![Capture.JPG](https://steemitimages.com/DQmQ5bGcUe6dx2a8JRvHHArmRE7fWSx5casyQwrZgr6uW9F/Capture.JPG)
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![Capture2.JPG](https://steemitimages.com/DQmW5mu1s291BW4LQEu8tqAqktFiYhujxvM3PwJxtUfF87U/Capture2.JPG)
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![U5drB7pLCQz1fp2R5bgzDPsHGVyomvo.gif](https://steemitimages.com/DQmY51imq4fuAUAtgT7hxPhpWQV193EmWgSVw9YbMXV5Dxu/U5drB7pLCQz1fp2R5bgzDPsHGVyomvo.gif)
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