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<h1>The First Minutes Determine the Article's Fate</h1>
<p>When an article is first posted on Steemit, it can be found in the 'new' category. Here, users often look through recently posted content and up vote articles that they find interesting or useful. Maybe they even upvote content that they don't necessarily enjoy or find useful, but that they believe will be upvoted more by other users. Being one of the first few people to up vote something that later becomes very popular will give much greater rewards per vote than will adding a vote to a giant pile of already existing votes on already popular content. Articles in the new section are sorted by time, so if an article is good or "valuable" people will discover the content here and it will become active. Comments will be made, and many votes will be added here. If an article does not perform well in the beginning of it's existence it will likely fall to the bottom of it's section and lay buried in the pile of spam, MMO schemes and dead memes to decompose. If however it gains some traction in the first few minutes it will probably survive at least a few more hours.</p>
<h1>The Top of the Trending</h1>
<p>If an article makes it to the top of the 'trending' section, it is given a great advantage. Articles in the trending section will gain votes from real users who enjoy the content, but also from new users who have just joined or who know little about the platform and up vote the first things they see. I have never made it too far into trending, however I have done some research and it seems that it is hit or miss. Some users have only a few articles published, some valued at hundreds of dollars and others at zero. One reason for this may be that the 'feed' section where articles by those that a user is following appear is hidden under the profile tab in the 'blog' section. Because many new users do not check the feed these users do not see everything that their favorite authors post, therefore authors do not see consistent results on their articles.</p>
<h1>The Power of Buzz Words</h1>
<p>Content pertaining to Steemit itself is often very popular because it is a growing platform seeing many new users each day. This is logical and makes perfect sense, however articles about Steemit should not be very valueable for long. This should resolve itself for two reasons. The first is that as more users join and visit the platform daily they will have less questions and will understand the platform better. This is why posts about how to use Facebook aren't popular on Facebook. Secondly the user interface is going to improve with time. As we know, Steemit is still in beta. Steemit is currently the number one topic or tag. For this reason articles about Steemit and related topics will continue to do well. </p>
<h1>Using Tags</h1>
<p>Tags are important, and many fail to use them to their full potential. If an article is about a specific niche topic and tagged accordingly, it is not as likely to be discovered. The search feature on the Steemit website currently isn't great. Hopefully this will improve. Many of the current trending topics relate to making money online, Steemit itself and crypto. These are important topics, bu in order to build a better user base, Steemit needs more quality content in news, sports, general information and niche markets. Maybe one day it will be bigger than reddit or other social networks.</p>
<p><img src="https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/iX1o4pFBP6Kbqcdy7JFk6k0m-gbwLA-7rrxkYz50B3On1KEon2RJduBjxL-RBvqnmg=w170" width="170" height="170"/> Timing is key!</p>
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<p>I'm sure there are a million ways that Steemit can be improved so feel free to share your opinion. This article is just my opinion. I've heard that people want a save for later button which would solve some of the time issues. Anyway, thanks for reading!</p>
<p>--Aaron</p>
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