Went to Steemit but don't have any idea what to do next

A couple of days ago I have created a Steem profile for my friend, @deinocheirus. As everyone knows the beginning journey is complicated in here, here's what he wrote to me:

Thank you so very much, maestro.
Went to the site but don't have any idea what to do next. Tried to post an comment, upload my song/a pic of mine as well, but to no avail. What's the procedure please?

So I guess many new Steemians are lost when they start their journey on this blockchain. Yes, they can read Quick Start Guide on the Welcome page when they first login but it could be difficult to understand and maybe you need someone to hold your hand at first.

The reason he couldn't do anything on the site is that when I have created a free account to him, @deinocheirus didn't have any Steem Power (SP) which is Steem currency staked on the blockchain.

The more SP you have, the more influence you have in here and the more Resource Credits (RC) you have. You need RC to operate on this platform - to post, comment, transfer, or upvote a post by another Steemian. Virtually any action needs some RC and some actions costs more than others.

So what he needs to do is to power up some Steem. After the blockchain was upgraded with Hard Fork 20 (HF20) a few months ago, it appears that Steemians with little SP are very much limited how many times they can post, comment or upvote on the blockchain. I've read that they need at least 50 SP to transact normally as you would do on other social media sites.

That's one of the reasons many new Steemians quit when they first start their journey. Imagine to be able to comment just 3 times a day and then have to wait until your RC replenish.

It's a severe limitation.

Knowing this, I transferred 50 Steem to his account and said he should power them up.

When he wrote this question that he can't do anything on the site, I checked his account on > > steemd.com and it appears that he hadn't powered up yet. That's the reason he was stuck.

Here's how to power up some Steem and be able to do more actions on the blockchain:

You can use www.steemit.com or www.steemworld.org. I recommend Steemworld because you will not be dependent on Steemit Inc. Here add just @yourusername at the end of steemworld.org url and you will be taken to your profile page with your data on the blockchain.
Click on Balances and go to the column Vesting Shares.
Click Power Up.
You can specify which percentage of your Steem holdings you want to power up or to simply select the exact amount.
Click OK and enter your Private Active Key.
For this you have to go back to www.steemit.com and click on Wallet.
Locate Permissions and click on it. There you will see 4 keys: Posting, Active, Owner and Memo. They are public keys. In order to get a Private Active Key, you will have to login to show it.
Second key is Active key. On the right side click Login To Show.
In the new pop up window enter your master password to login.
Now click Show Private Key.
Copy it and go back to Steemworld.com.
Paste it into the field that asks for your Active key to power up and click OK.

That's it. Now your Steem account is powered up and you are ready to post, comment, upvote and do other actions on the blockchain provided that you have enough Resource Credits. If not, you will have to buy some Steem and power it up.

Now the first thing you may want to do is to upload your profile picture and add a little info about yourself etc. Then write your first post. Ideally it should be #introduceyourself post with this tag. Then more Steemians may find you and welcome you onboard. And of course thoughtfully comment on other people's posts as much as you can. This you will probably even get your first few followers.

My preferred application for posting on the Steem blockchain from a laptop is Busy.org, not Steemit.com. It has a far better interface and user experience than Steemit and you won't be dependent on Steemit Inc, as I mentioned before. If I post from the phone, then I use @partiko app. It has versions for Android and iOS and rewards me with Partiko points for every action I do on the app. I also use @actifit to post my fitness activity on Steem. It counts my steps and Actifit rewards me with AFIT tokens and upvotes on my posts.

Back up your Private Posting, Active, Owner and Memo keys in a safe place offline. Don't show them to anyone because they might be able to access your account and your funds.

If you have any other questions about your journey as Steemian, please leave a comment.

Hope this helps!

Vidas Pinkevicius
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