The Follow for Follow Issue
Stop Asking People To Follow You In Exchange For You Following Them.
I'm referring specifically to the people who don't even look at post content, and just say something like "FOLLOW ME I FOLLOW YOU, UPVOTE ME I UPVOTE YOU!"
Reason 1: You don't want people who don't care about your content following you!
Think about it! You want people to follow you so that your content gets more views right? Well, those "empty" follows are not going to support your content. Do you look at their content when you follow them back? Didn't think so.
Reason 2: You will lose respect of people who genuinely want to follow you!
If I am following someone, and I notice them trading follows, I won't be too happy about following them. I will feel like they are cheap salesmen trying to make a quick buck rather than provide me with quality content.
Reason 3: You are destroying what you are trying to build.
At the end of the day, when you do this, you are destroying the quality of the network on which you are trying to build your following. This is just counter-productive.
Recommendation 1: Upvote people who post stuff that is cool.
Don't expect anything back. Just upvote the things you find cool and leave a remark. This way people might get curious and check out your stuff too! If not, oh well, you upvoted material you like.
Recommendation 2: Join communities.
It's nice to have a bigger following, I don't fault anyone for wanting that, especially on platform that let's you earn money. So do it the good old fashioned way by networking. Join minnowsupport or go to steem chat. @mk40 introduced me to minnowsupport and it's a nice place to get help.
FWIW, I write some amateur science-fiction stuff, and I found that minnowsupport has a fiction workshop. There, @rhondak helped me by critiquing and improving the quality of my work. Everyone was super helpful. Also a great place to ask super noob questions.
Basically, just be reasonable, and you will benefit more
All the stuff I said is super obvious, and should be self-evident. Don't spam the community. Sure expand your follow base, but be subtle about it. I think you will benefit more in the long run.
***Keep in mind, I have a tiny follower base, but this is just my 2 cents...
Thanks for reading.
@unprovoked
Images Sources
Thank you for your good advice. It is really useless to have followers who don't care about one's content.
Irony, thy name is SteemIt. Look at all those F4F comments already. You are popular.
I am going to follow you, because I like your content. Looking forward to more.
You mean they don't love my content!?
lol I'm gonna upvote you to fight off the bots.
Papa pepper was posting about this earlier. It's a bit worrying as more and more users join the site; I'd hate Steemit to fill up with spam. It's really indicative of the shallowness, desperation and selfishness of society. We have to be the examples and create meaningful, heartfelt interactions, and hopefully others will see that it is a more rewarding way to behave than the types of comments you just listed.
Ironically, there are already a lot of these comments on this post hahaha...
Yeah, the bots reacted in under 10 seconds. Impressively, my views were still at 1 and I had 3 comments form them.
lmaoo!! That's fantastic.
I always enjoy reading original, direct, to the point communication instead of copy and pasted content!
K
Yeah, it would suck for such a great platform to get destroyed by people using bots that don't benefit ANYONE.
Yes, would be really nice to see folks more focused on their real interest threads and not just the $$ making from some of the obvious trolls and copied content. I think best way would be for higher level peer or moderator reward for original material!
K
Well detecting non-approved bots and blocking them would be easy. Especially if they make a paragraph long comment in under 10 seconds lol.
Some bots are good. Those bots should get verified or w.e, while the rest are temp banned or something.
Here's hoping that behaviour can be discouraged into oblivion (by which I mean, to a point where it's seen as a waste of effort).
I stumbled across the Minnow Support Project yesterday and it's brilliant. Definitely recommended for newbies. Also, @rhondak is a superstar! I've never been so excited for feedback on my work. ^_^;
I just made a post a couple days ago saying the same thing in a different way. Not many saw it, but I still got two f4f comments!
Surprisingly this is the first time I got 3 in a row. I guess it's my new record?
Imma whale and I just put a huge 3 cent vote up for you. Let me know what colour lambo you buy :-)
Dear Whale,
I would sincerely like to thank you for your large donation (sum unnamed for security). My Lamborghini will be a deep dark blue, so people can drown in its beauty.
Im sorry steemit i have to admit im guilty of this i was a new member 1 day on this site when i did it i seen quite a few people with the follow i follow back and i thought it to be something normal it was brought to my attention the day i did it and i havent do it since. Im here to let everyone know im willing to work hard and go hard for what i want im not the take a handout type of person i wanted to admit my guilt i was wrong and i will admit that but by no means does that say im not serious about what type of impact i would like to have within this site. Im sorry once again and i hope i can be forgiven for a rookie mistake sorry again.
Your 2 cents gonna get you some ;).. BTW good content and people follow the advice plz.
Lol, I'm trying to upvote all the humans above the bots, but my upvote power is low.
I always bust this move when I see a F4F comment:
hahaha