Helpful Tips for New Steemians to Cut OUT the Spam!

In this blog, I will be focusing on three spam methods that I am noticing to be more and more prevalent on this platform:

1. Spam Comments
2. Spam Private Messages
3. Miscategorization of Content & issues with photo authenticity

I will ensure readers understand WHY these actions are NOT GOOD for the Steemit platform. If any newcomers have questions on something I did not make clear, please comment.

So, we shall start with spam comments. What are spam comments? Let's delve into it. The biggest type of spam comments I see are when users leave "comments" consistent of link drops in attempt to direct the author of the blog to their post. THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE BEHAVIOR. Myself & many other Steemians have said it simply - Steemit is NOT a get rich quick platform. Newsflash - it was not designed to be!!

If you are frustrated that your posts aren't making much or feel you aren't getting visibility, placing links in other's posts is NOT going to help you one bit. You're likely to get flagged and deservedly so. Doing this makes YOU LOOK BAD. It makes you look very disrespectful as well. You are not entitled to the author reading your blog just because you upvoted their post. It takes TIME & PATIENCE to gain a followership on steemit. Some ways to get your links out there that are okay:

• Join discord! There are plenty of places there you can promote your links to include the minnow support group as one example. There's a plethora of discord groups you can get involved in.
• Join a Facebook steemit group. There are also a plethora of those. I have one actually called Steemit Dreamit.
• When joining said groups be careful to avoid SPAMMING in them by ensuring you don't post the same link over and over. In my group that gets deleted. Accidents happen obviously. The same applies within FB groups regarding commenting do not spam your link into someone else's post. That's strictly forbidden in my group as well.
• There are rare times that it is "okay" to put a link in someone's post & that would be accompanied with a thoughtful explanation as to WHY your link was at all relavent.

Plopping your links in other's comments is a backhanded "upvote for upvote" because, that's basically what you are doing. SO DON'T! Another way to get more people looking at your blogs is by simply being a good follower!! You can start by actually reading what your commenting on instead of saying "nice post." That isn't memorable. I can tell you right now the users who simply say "nice" or other equivalent phrases that show me they didn't really read it, don't grab my attention and therefore, I'll probably NEVER end up following them. If you are being genuine on my blogs on a consistent basis I will usually end up following you & checking out your content. I think I speak for most established Steemians when I say that.

Next, we will discuss another common spammy thing I am noticing which is spam private messages. I will not spend as much time on this one. This is when one sends a PM to another Steemian with, you guessed it - a link drop! This happens more often than you might think. In fact, between Facebook & Discord, this happens to me multiple times a week & usually from complete strangers. DON'T DO IT!! It is rude & uncalled for. I don't know of many people who'd actually check out your post after such an action.

Besides link dropping, I personally have had completely random strangers PM with other strange requests, comments, or questions - to include: am I single? Guess what, if I don't know you will not be getting a response and depending on the nature of your message, you might not enjoy what response you do get. In short, if you don't know the Steemian & don't have a damn good question, DON'T private message them!!

My last topic has to deal with miscategorization of content & photo authenticity. A lot of what I am seeing in regards to this essentially equates to laziness on behalf of the author.

We all notice "trendy" tags like, for example, the seven day black and white photo challenge or the #celestialchallenge. There are MANY popular photo challenges here on Steemit. If you are going to participate, at least be smart enough to LEARN about what you are participating in. Most of these challenges were initiated by SPECIFIC Steemians. For example @dswigle initiated #marketfriday. So, it might (read: would) be a great idea for me to mention that in my post. That is giving her the credit she deserves for coming up with the idea.

It might also be a good idea to know what the challenge actually entails. The #celestialchallenge doesn't mean you can just plop down photos of the sun and moon everyday. Do your research & find out what the challenge is all about!!

As for photos, please consider watermarking them IF YOU TOOK THE PHOTO. You don't have to but it does help with authenticity. Consider also letting us know a little backstory to your photo & what you took it with.

I can't tell you how many times I have seen photo plops with absolutely no explanation of where it came from. You really should not be using ANY images that aren't yours, period! Especially without sourcing it, & even then it's a big GRAY area. Sourcing is not enough many times. I doubt you took the time to get permission to use it. Speaking of which I'll just go ahead and let you guys know, I created the header image you see in this post MYSELF using the Sketch app.

Using someone else's material in your post without permission is theft & has resulted in lawsuits on other platforms. So, I wouldn't be surprised if that could happen here & that wouldn't be good for Steemit or YOU, now would it? Yeah that's right, I didn't think so.

---

With the explosion of new Steemians, I thought this would be a good time to share this post. Many of you are awesome. Some of you may not understand what you are doing is spam. If someone is NICE enough to let you know you are spamming, getting defensive & acting a fool makes YOU look bad and even, unintelligent. You're lucky someone tried to explain it to you versus just outright flagging, although it would be acceptable if they did. I would hope you'd learn from it. I would say maybe 1 out of every 20 people I try to educate that what they're doing is spam respond well. For those that do - good you just showed me & others you're a mature adult and an individual who is receptive and willing to improve.

Down the line, I wouldn't be surprised if more harsh penalties for spamming were instituted. I was chatting with my friend @ilovedietcoke recently. She had an idea that say, after three flags you get a temporary ban from posting. Her intents with this were based on users flagging for the RIGHT REASONS. I'm unsure if this would work on Steemit currently since there is unfortunately a lot of people in petty flag wars NOT related to what I have discussed in this post.

Alright that will wrap things up for this blog. If you are interested in learning more about being successful on this platform, feel free to check out my post on gaining an organic following:
https://steemit.com/steemit/@chelsea88/organic-following-on-steemit-what-it-is-and-why-it-is-important

Thanks for visiting my blog!