Steemit Success Strategies #1 - The Law of Requisite Variety

To succeed in Steemit, and generally in life, you'll need to adopt a few winning mindset. In this series, I will explore and share with you powerful psychological principles and success strategies, and hope that it will elevate your success on the platform, and who knows, in life too.

This is a cumulation of my experience in marketing and also decade long interest and practice in social and organisational psychology. Enjoy!

DEFINITION & ORIGIN | THE LAW OF REQUISITE VARIETY

I first heard about the Law of Requisite Variety from my time promoting Neuro Linguistics Prorgamming, or in short NLP. There are many definitions to NLP, but if you ask me, it's this:

The instruction manual of your mind that wasn't included in the package you came in this world with. :)

If you look at successful people like World's #1 Success Coach Tony Robbins and Celebrity TV Host & Entrepreneur Oprah Winfrey, they credit their success to NLP. Hey, if it's good enough for them, it's good enough for the rest of us.

But we're not gonna be talking much about NLP today. It's one of the "presupposition", or principles of it, and of the many mindset strategies, one that I find more facinating - and lacking among new Steemians - is the Law of Requisite Variety.

The law states that the person with the most behavioural flexibility will be able to control the outcome. In a language that both you and I can understand, it simply means that while you need to be firm with the goals you want to achieve in life, when it comes to the how (method, plan, path, strategy), be flexible.

Interestingly, this is also the first law of Cybernetics.

LIFE EXAMPLES

Say you ARE in Singapore now, and want to head to Bangkok, Thailand. Bangkok, thus, is the goal.

And you know there are so many ways to get there from Singapore.

• You can just head to Skyscanner and look for the cheapest flight there. Or,
• You can pamper yourself with a business class ticket from Singapore Airlines, complete with the lobster thermidor and 5-star service. Or,
• You can take a slow drive up through Malaysia, stopping for great food along the way, making it an epic road trip. Or,
• If you're the adventurous kind, go by bicycle! Or,
• No one's gonna stop you, but you can totally walk all the way too!

Each option can potentially bring you to Bangkok, but the transportation and path you choose, will determine your level of success. Sure, while the flight is the fastest, you may miss out the thrills of a road trip. And the XXXKM walk is a great bar story, but there's also a chance (touch wood) that you got knocked down by a reckless driver or bitten by a poisonous snake (which also adds to the great bar stories:p)

Notice that I say potentially? While all those methods makes perfect sense, and others may have even used them, it doesn't mean it will work for you. Heck, if there are guarantees in life, no one is gonna be on Steemit; they'll be at the casinos! You just need to find the method that serves you best.

Ok, so now you see how this principle works, time to roll up your sleeves and apply it to your Steemit career.

HOW CAN YOU APPLY THIS MINDSET STRATEGY FOR YOUR STEEMIT SUCCESS?

If you'd been on Steemit for a while, and are not happy with the results you're getting, it means you're simply not using the right methods to build your success.

And the Law of Requisite Variety means you just need to find other methods to achieve your goals.

Ok, for most "motivational speakers", they are gonna stop here. Because they've given you the Law - the theory, the concept - and its now your job to go figure it out on your own.

But lucky for you, I hate those speakers who dangle the possibilities and sprinkle false hope all over it, and just leave me hanging.

So, for the rest of the post, I've gonna show you a few tips and hacks to expand your toolbox of methods, and perhaps you'll find one that works for you, spearheading your success to become a Successful Steemian!

And for that to happen, firstly, we need an evaluation, because:

What you can measure, you can improve.

EVALUATION: POINT A TO POINT B

For you to evaluate your progress successfully, and also to know if you methods are working, you need to know where you are (Point A), and where you wanna go (Point B).

Start by filling up your info in the table below:

	Present State	Goal/Target
Number of Followers
Quality of Followers* (scale of 1 to 5)
Steem Power
Average Payout/Post**
Total Payout Since Day 1***

* Do note that the number of followers is a quantitative approach. Frankly, it's the quality of the followers that will determine your success. Use a scale of 1 to 5 for this one. You can check out the quality of your followers at https://steemdb.com/@your-steemit-ID/followers/whales. Hint: Purple trumps Blue. :)

* Head over to www.steem.supply/@your-steemit-ID, click on Content Insights, and scroll all the way to be bottom. You'll be able to see details such as posts per day, average revenue per post, average votes per post etc.

** Head over to www.steemdb.com/@your-steemit-ID/posts, and looked at TOTAL PAYOUTS. Do know that it's not real time, as the snapshot is taken usually a few hours ago.*

So, when you look the table of info, and you are quite happy with your progress, then stop here. I mean, you've achieved your goals, right?

But if you're unhappy with data, here are a few tips that may give you some ideas on those key areas. Remember, the Law of Requisite Variety means that you need to be flexible with your approach, so testing out is the best way to know what works and what doesn't.

Also, do note that I borrowed a lot of strategies and hacks I used in my digital marketing work, on mature platforms and channels like Facebook, LinkedIn, Google and email marketing. Due to Steemit being at the infant stage still (less than 2 years old, but feels so long!), it's not gonna be a 100% guarantee. Just treat these hacks as suggestions and try them out yourself.

Oh yeah, before I forgot. Depending on your active time and goals on Steemit, you may want to check on those figures in the table above every week or two. Remember, the more frequent your check-in points:

• It will be easier for you to make course corrections
• But it will also mean you may not be allowing enough time for your strategy to take effect before any course corrections

APPLYING THE 80/20 RULE

I realise when it comes to increasing your payouts, applying the 80/20 Rule (identifying the 20% of input that generates 80% of the output, full post here) tell us this:

By focusing on the quality of your followers and the view count of your posts, we will be able to generate better results.

So, let's work on these two areas for today.

1. Improve the Quality of Followers
2. Increase the View Count of your Posts

Note: This is assuming you have quality posts. If you don't, focusing on these 2 areas ain't gonna work.

Hacking the Quality of Your Followers:

1. Check the "quality" of your followers (https://steemdb.com/@your-steemit-ID/followers/whales). Let's call the Purple ones your Class-A Followers.

2. Identify the Top 20 Performing Tags of your Class-A Followers. This will give you a hint of the their areas of interest. You can view this info at https://http://steem.supply/@their-steemit-ID, then click on Content Insights.

   
   Image Source

3. Using the simply principle of "birds of the feather flocks together", you can start following the followers of your Class-A Followers (try saying that fast 3 times).

4. Additionally, you can also comment of some of the recent posts of your Class-A Followers, because this essentially will allow you to expose yourself to their followers too.

5. With reference on the same principle, you can also start scrolling through the posts under those categories of interest.

   

6. Look for Steemians with decent reputation and followers, and comment on their posts.

7. Because of the total transparency model of Steemit, you can also apply the same strategies to "stalk" other Steemians (who are not following you yet) in your category too. Due to similar interests, their followers, or even themselves, may potentially follow your posts too.

8. NEVER BEG FOR VOTES OR FOLLOWS. Instead, comment something Honest, Helpful or Humble, and end with something like "Man, I just found our that your previous posts are interesting too, so I'm just gonna follow you so I don't miss the new ones."

9. BONUS TIP: You can also go to Steemstats.com, then enter your Steemit ID. Click on Posts, click on the icon highlighted below, and go through the list of people who upvoted you. Look got Class-A and Class-B Supporters. Hint: Orange > Purple > Blue

   

Hacking the View Counts of your Posts:

1. Because of the Law of Reciprocity - when you do something nice to someone, you will deep-root a psychological urge in them to do something nice in return - using the above methods may drive some new traffic to your posts.

2. Which is why you constantly need to produce good, value-adding contents, because your feed is gonna serve as a snapshot of you to your visitors.

3. If you have some SBD to spare, you can try out Resteeming Services as well. A few that you can check out are like @ebargains, @carlobelgado, @hottopic, @steemvote and more.

   I usually set aside 30% of the SBD payout of each article for resteeming services. I.e. if your current payout is $10, 30% of it will be SBD1.125 (37.5% of $10 is SBD3.75, and 30% of that is SBD1.125).

   Tip: A quick estimate is 12% of your total payout.

4. Participating in Discord Groups like whaleshares, buildawhale, steemgigs (freelancers) and writersblog. Make friends there.

   
   Image source

5. If you have a local support group, like us in teammalaysia (yay!), reach out and make friends too!

6. Volunteer as a curator or moderator in some of the groups. Get yourself noticed!

7. Note on vote buying: I see some Steemians use bid bots to raise their payouts per post, so that they can trend well in their respective categories. Truth is, this is a costly move, and a risky one as well. Plus, some Steemians I know will not support posts that had been upvoted by bid bots, so be aware.

   I did a case study on Bid Botting, and you can check it out here.

   

Remember, embracing the Law of Requisite Variety requires you be firm on your goals, and flexible with your methods. From the hacks mentioned above, pick one, implement it for 21 days, lay milestone checks every 7 days. At the end of 21 days, decide if you would like to continue, or try something else to achieve your goals.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, but expecting different results.
~ Albert Einstein

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Wait, why's Mav posting on Steemit nowadays?

Well, unlike other blogging and social media platform, Steemit is the only platform that allows me to earn cryptocurrency when I engage with it. Yup, one Steem is about USD5, and you, too, can earn Steem Dollars every time you:

• Create content (articles, blog posts, podcasts, videos, photos)
• Upvote (like) other people contents
• Comment on other people's posts
• Have discussions, share opinions etc!

Yup, basically it's the very same thing you're doing on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc all along!

The only difference? For once you can earn a nice income on the side!

Sign up for a free Steemit account, and you can thank me by coming back and upvoting this article. And guess what, you will earn Steem too for doing that! #awesome