How To Get Better Results On Sola
Hey everyone,
I've been asked to share some tips as to how I've done so well on SOLA so I'd like to list of a few technical tips and share some advice.
Note that I am doing this from a computer not a mobile device so it will slightly differ for you. Before we dive in I'd like to ask a question that you can answer now and see what generally everyone feels and then another poll at the end to gauge what you thought was the most important thing you learned or agree with and are already implementing.
Why Even Listen To Me?
Well in September when I really started to get serious with SOLA I went from 51,363 upvotes to over 3 million as of 4 days ago. I was able to do this in essentially 5 months. Recently someone asked I share some tips and I wanted to write this all out.
Unfortunately, we don't have analytics on SOLA so I've had to do this manually so it's not perfect, but it's pretty accurate. It gets confusing when your account for revived posts so it could very well be skewed, but nonetheless I've gotten to 3 million upvotes in 5 months. It wasn't from spamming posts, no. It was from creating content that I enjoyed and that I felt would bring value to those who would read it, hence this post now.
Profile Quality
Your profile is where you should start. Having a great picture of yourself and a great bio to share who you are what you are all about will show that you took the effort to do so as well as you want to present yourself well. In my about section I also give my contact details, social information and some of the topics I cover. Feel free to write it in the way that best highlights yourself. Remember there are no link sections or anything like that so you can include your links and social information at the bottom. To ensure my summary was as best as I could get it I consulted someone on Fiverr which is an amazing resource for quick cheap simple jobs and had them rework my summary for me for $15. So even if you aren't totally sure, you can put all your information into a document and have someone help you summarize it. This will help for all your social channels and even your resume or Linkedin.
Something I think that is also worth mentioning is that you should try to respond to as many commentators as possible. Interestingly enough, I've gotten flack for this as people have accused me of indulging spammers, though I give the benefit of the doubt. If someone posts blatant spam like links or some obvious I will delete it or not engage, but I'll still drop a "thanks" if someone says something as simple as "Hi, nice."
I think you're much better off accidentally indulging some spammers than you are ignoring and neglecting your audience, but you tell me in the comments below! I've also been accused of only being successful because of a wave of spam that affected the entire platform, so it would seem interesting to me that somehow I have been the largest beneficiary of this spam and it's not just the fact that I put a lot of effort and work into my content, but hey people will try to discredit anything you do these days.
Media Quality
Since I do my own graphic design I've gradually gotten better and near the beginning of the year I redid all of my graphic design templates and styles and revamped everything with new photos with a higher resolution too. It makes a difference and when you can create nice quality high resolution graphics people will notice and appreciate it too. It's not required, but it shows the extra effort. Same goes with video editing and time spent with descriptions or writing which we will cover next. If you want better results, make better quality content and that definitely includes visuals. Like I said before again for this if you don't have the capabilities or don't want to invest in learning you can use Fiverr and get very inexpensive graphic design done. Obviously it's less affordable to do this for every post so it's best to think long term. You can also negotiate with them for bulk deals etc. Let me know if this is something you need.
Post Structure
It is important for your posts to be structured well. This is much more crucial when it comes to blogs utilizing bold, italics, headers, and having a title for your card caption and URL slug which I explain here: https://sola.ai/scottcbusiness/is-the-first-sentence-the-url-slug-on-sola-NjAxNGNhuant
For sharing a video, I have typically just shared the description I had used and then drop the video link into the post and hit space after the URL. In doing so, SOLA takes the link and embeds it into the post as a video. I've only been able to do this with YouTube so far, but when other sites work I will definitely try it out. Below is a picture of me attempting to embed with BitTube and BitChute:
Keep in mind, most of my posts are in fact videos and I have some blogs. The reason is simple. It takes less effort to record the vlog than it does to write it all out plus it's faster for other people to digest it. The time crunch is with editing and that's why I tend to do uncut video for 5-20 minutes and keep it to the point and then have discussion in the comments. When we are talking about blogs though, whether you prefer writing or want to change it up a bit as I suggest you should, you must be more conscious of post structure to be successful.
Now look I expect this post to perform well because I put a lot of effort and it will provide a lot of value. When you wonder how you can do the same, there is no shortcut to success, it take effort, dedication, and more importantly, consistency.
For post structure as I said before it's about your use of the features available to you which are titles for URL slugs which I explained, headers for emphasis and to help people navigate, bold and italics to help emphasize key information, linking where possible, and including media. Also be aware that your first image or YouTube embed / link preview is the one that will display on your card so ensure your banner image or link is at the top of your post just under the title. I realized this is especially important for mobile because if I wrote say a small paragraph before including my YouTube link in the card preview it would just show the title and then a white background which isn't very interesting. So you have to make sure that your image or link is at the top (I only noticed this very recently). Outside of post structure, but somewhat relevant to this section is using polls. You want to utilize different features you have available if you can, that's why I put two polls in here. It encourages engagement and helps gauge relevance and see the opinions of others in real time.
Post Publishing
After hitting publish you should see the screen below
If you've bought SOL or earned SOL you can then spend up to 50 to boost your post in intervals of 10 for 100 views. This means 1 token is worth 10 views via their advertisement system which isn't bad when you consider the value of SOL. I rarely do challenges (I see a lot of span there) or broadcast to channels (most I've seen have little to no usage).
What I do focus on though is what I put for my topics. You want to start off by being well known in your topic category. For me that was crypto, blockchain, politics, news, and philosophy. A lot of my top posts are top posts within those categories, then I had a broader focus on how my posts could apply to the major categories. The way the topics break down are there are 5 major categories and you must use one.
Also note that if you go back to edit your post as I have done, it resets the votes for polls which is super unfortunate so be aware of that!
Those are:
Daily moments
Stories
Community
Made by me
Opinions
In a way you could utilize all of these categories over a series of 5 posts if it makes sense. For me, because I had opinions, shared stories, daily moments, made community posts like this, or shared content made by me I was able to become a top content creator in these categories.
We also have regular tags which are just topics that are created via your using them so they aren't official and could have a lot of very little content there and thus it might not give you much visibility. There are many popular and official topics that when used you will see which are coloured versus made up tags which just appear white. You can see above that "Politics", the official topic is coloured while the made-up tags are white and likely very unused. If you wanted to know, you could go through each tag to find out how popular they are and if they're being used and searched.
Let me know if this was helpful for you and let everyone else know with this poll below what you felt was the most important takeaway or comment below if it's not there. I will keep reviving this post to get it to the top plus help you get to the top with me.
So the rather funny little pair. Boo, our few month old Cornish giant that tried to take off the top half of her head. And prickles, our ancient leghorn who has been beaten up by nearly every other chicken we own.