How Often do You Read "Marketing Pitches" for Entertainment?

If your first reaction was "What? Is he nuts? I DON'T read such things for FUN!" then we're on the right track here!

I don't, either.

What's Your Point?

Which brings me to the point of this post: These days, there are a lot of posts being written about the efforts to "promote Hive," and for our community to gain a broader following... and — basically — some new users.

What does that have to do with the title of this post?

In my opinion — based on having been an online content creator since about 1996 — people are barking up the wrong tree when they write long pieces of prose singing the praises of everything that's fabulous about Hive.

Not denying there are "fabulous things" about Hive, just suggesting that the approach might be missing the mark.

I've told this story before, but I'll briefly recap:

I ended up on Hive's "old chain" because somebody sent me a link to an article about something I happened to be researching, at the time.

• There was no marketing.
• There was no mention of blockchain.
• There was no mention of crypto.
• There was no mention of decentralization.
• There was no mention of of getting rewards for content creation.
• In fact, there was not even a mention of the name of the host site.

I ended up here because someone sent me a message on Facebook that said "here's an interesting take on what we were talking about the other day!" with a link.

Not directly related, I ended up writing on Medium for a while through an almost identical path.

Starting Point: Interest and Perceived Utility

Couple of related points of interest: Two people I know of ended up having Hive accounts because I was telling them about Splinterlands, and they were intrigued, as long-time MTG players. It wasn't "about Hive," it was "about Splinterlands."

The only other person I successfully referred here gave it a try on the basis that he had been a fellow blogger with me, back during the early days (1998-2005) of what was then known as "social blogging."

"I've been writing in a community that reminds me a lot of Xanga," I told him, "you might like it."

I expect he would have used it, were it not for some personal level life tragedies that knocked him out of all social media for a couple of years, shortly after he made the account.

What's the "Product?"

I think we have had a fair number of well-intentioned attempts at promoting Hive to a wider audience, but it seems like they have missed the mark a bit by lacking on a few marketing fundamentals that need to be very clearly defined before you even take a first step.

1. What is the "product" you're pitching?
2. Who's your target audience for that product?
3. How is your product differentiated in the market?

If you can't answer those accurately and succinctly, you're already sort of hosed!

Does anybody even know what Hive is, as a "product?"

I bet you could ask 100 different Hive community members, and get close 100 different answers. Along with that, likely almost as many perceptions of target audiences.

Which is usually a strong indication that what's needed is niche marketing, rather than general marketing. Meaning, it isn't HIVE we need to pitch, but individual aspects of Hive that have meaning to different subsets of existing Hive users.

Ironically, that's both the drawback and benefit of a decentralized structure. Hive is not "a company."

Differentiation

One of the single greatest "features" Hive has — that's also an important point of differentiation — is the fact that it's crypto with simple and intuitive addressing. I'm @denmarkguy, and my wife is @cosmictriage. We're NOT Cx7s6Jsl922wxx752H3sS23Tq7pKsk77.

Think about that, for a moment.

Now, let me add some important historical context.

"Way back when" in the earliest days of the Internet, AOL/America Online ended up kicking CompuServe and Prodigy's asses not because they were better but because they had BETTER USABILITY.

Indeed, my first email accounts were [email protected] and something like [email protected]. Guess which one I still had, until AOL became obsolete? Guess which one I still use, albeit at a different domain?

One of Hive's greatest assets is our wallet naming convention. Whether you're trying to remember a user's name, or send them a payment, that is easy... and easy is HUGE in this world.

Returning to "differentiation," there we have a massive built in pitch for "Crypto Made Simple!"

Along the same lines of "easy," we also now have InLeo making it possible for people to create "light" Hive accounts, meaning they don't have to navigate multiple keys and all that stuff right away.

Oh, so you don't think this stuff is technically complicated???

Think again!

I'm gonna bet your mom could probably create a Facebook account or set up online banking without help, but could she set up and get started with a Hive account, without help or mis-stepping?

That's the direction we need to be moving towards!

But to get back to the point here... in order to get to that "gold at the end of the rainbow," we need to meet people where they are, not where we are.

As community members, we're already sold on this," so using the approach we think would appeal to US doesn't matter. What do other people want... that's the key issue!

Thanks for reading, and have a great remainder of your week!

Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation! I do my best to answer comments, even if it sometimes takes a few days!

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Created at 2023-12-04 23:15PST
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