This thought occurred to me last night, typical sloth thoughts, always picking holes in everything.

The question/thought was, how do I use my Hive votes for maximum effectiveness?

At first, I told myself, you READ, then vote! You make sure the quality is there to ensure you're giving the "best" reflection of content on Hive.

But, let's really think about it, how many votes we send are actually based on this concept, the starting concept of Hive? Rewarding quality content creators...

I know from using Hive.vote, it's a lot easier to follow a vote trail, let them do the voting. Or you can join someone's "fanbase", another auto-vote feature.

That's the only auto-voting I do though, everything else is 100% based purely on the quality of the article. Have they put thought, effort and creativity into it or is it merely a few words on a page with not much backbone?

I mean, I guess, occasionally, sometimes, I might just like content because I've been tagged in it, or it's from one of the content creators I know "typically" have decent content, but, this doesn't take away from the fact I only vote for good content....most of the time, other than hive vote auto voting and the occasional vote to a friend.

Well, there's also the issue of the rewards, how to maximise my returns from curation? Sometimes the best content is overlooked by the many, therefore the rewards are going to be minimal, so how to maximise those? I guess we have to vote for content with high upvotes already, that's the point of Hive right? Autovote, the Biggest accounts, EARN loads!!!!

Or, the main Key to Hive...which everyone calls "engagement" is getting your name into the minds of other Hivians so when they see your content one of the above rules applies, and you either get the upvote based on your GREAt content! Or more likely, because they see your name and give you the updoot or are already following a voting trail/fan base to auto-vote you.

I guess, mostly what I'm saying it, new Hivians, don't give up, your content will shine through, eventually. You just need to make your mark on those Hivians with a decent HP to give you the required votes to get started! Keep posting Hivians! I've got voting power to burn!

Well, that's that off my mind, no idea if it makes sense, but, who votes for content, who auto votes and who just chases those big posts for max returns? (And does that actually work?)