We Can't Hope to Attract a Bunch of New Users by Posting About Hive!
These days, it seems like we have lots of discussions about how to increase Hive's user base.
And that is definitely a worthy endeavor. This place desperately needs more active people and fresh voices!
But how do we get more people to show up and become interested in this community?
The more I consider it, I feel pretty sure that publishing a bunch of posts about Hive is not the answer to get more people to come to Hive.
Let's think about that, for a moment. Why do people join something? Why did you join Facebook? Why did you join twitter? Why have you joined anything else?
More specifically, have you ever joined anything because somebody was advertising the venue? Or did you join it because somebody you knew, or an article you read recommended something you could actually do on that particular venue or read on that particular venue?
I think back to when I joined Facebook, it wasn't because I wanted to "join Facebook," it was because somebody told me they had found a site that had a really good way to store and share photos, and to keep in touch with friends and family. It had nothing whatsoever to do with "Facebook, the venue" and everything to do with what you could do there.
Now, let's fast forward to many years later and a look at why I joined Hive's predecessor.
Again, it had nothing to do with anybody saying "Hive is cool." It was a fairly random accident that didn't involve Hive at all.
Somebody recommended an article about a topic I was interested in, and it just so happened that that particular article was published by somebody writing on Hive.
Of course, the "problem" with that is that it is an extremely difficult way to market.
Your target group is rather scattered and they have a vast range of different interests and motivations. And perhaps there is a lesson there: Marketing Hive might be best done by reaching out to narrowly defined interest groups, rather than "people, in general."
Ultimately, even though it may be a slow way to go... and perhaps the best we can really do is to create interesting content about things that interest us and simply publicize that content without paying much attention to Hive itself; as in Hive the venue.
I think that's also one of the reasons why our layer two communities are really important. Get people to come and join you on Hive because there are lots of cool articles about gardening and homesteading. Or because there are lots of good articles about pets so you market to pet lovers. Or if you happen to be LeoFinance, you market to people who are interested in finance and investment, particularly in crypto.
Of course, it is very early days yet... even if we are seven years in. But I think the growth of Hive is going to be more of a gradual organic process, rather than something that's going to come as a result of some grand drive for membership.
In the end, though, I guess only time will tell.
Thanks for stopping by and have a great Friday!
How about you? How do we attract new users to Hive? What matters most? What Hive IS, or what you can DO here?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!
Greetings bloggers and social content creators! This article was created via PeakD, a blogging application that's part of the Hive Social Content Experience. If you're a blogger, writer, poet, artist, vlogger, musician or other creative content wizard, come join us! Hive is a little "different" because it's not run by a "company;" it operates via the consensus of its users and your content can't be banned, censored, taken down or demonetized. And that COUNTS for something, in these uncertain times! So if you're ready for the next generation of social content where YOU retain ownership and control, come by and learn about Hive and make an account!
(As usual, all text and images by the author, unless otherwise credited. This is original content, created expressly and uniquely for this platform — NOT posted anywhere else!)
Created at 2023-08-11 01:50 PDT
0915/2170
I like this and I hear you. It brought me back to why I joined Steemit back in 2017 (and that was after a year of lurking starting in 2016). I joined because I was tired of my articles being stolen over on Blogger where I'd been writing for a few years.
They would scrape my website, copy my posts, and then publish them under their own byline.
So when I saw this little experiment in blogging+crypto, I was hesitant after being burned so recently, so I hung back for a year or so and watched to make sure it wasn't a scam (and to learn best practices), before jumping in in July, 2017.
You're right, but I also weave pro-Hive posts in with my original content once in awhile, because I'm genuinely happy to have found this place. I take the long view on Hive and honestly feel that our best days are ahead of us; one new user at a time. :)
It took me a while to realize that those of us who came here as previous bloggers on other platforms are actually a tiny minority. The whole "earn crypto" thing was really not part of my consideration because I had been burned repeatedly by sites promising compensation for content... but it attracted a lot of people.
I also had that annoying experience of having my content scraped and published elsewhere.
You know how I found out my content was being stolen? I was learning SEO back then, and was trying to build backlinks to my site by following mentions of my blog online and then interacting with them in order to build my readership.
So I used an online service which checked for mentions of my tech review site, and found some guy in Pakistan (??) had scraped article after article and posted them under his own name.
If I publushed a new blog post at 12 noon, it would show up on his site less than 15 minutes later. His readers were actually complimenting him on "his" well-written posts that were actually mine!
I asked him to stop and he refused. I suggested that instead of stealing my work that he list me as a guest blogger and share ad revenue with me, he also refused.
Since we were both in the struggle, I sought to find a way that we could BOTH benefit, by marrying my English writing skills to feed his audience. If he wasn't going to share the revenue with me, I at least wanted the credit and a backlink to my blog which would have helped people find my website in searches.
But he said no to all of my reasonable suggestions that we help each other...
He wanted to steal my work and have all of the benefit for himself.
Blogger was almost no help, and required me to fill out a long complicated form for each of the HUNDREDS of blog posts of mine that he'd copied. But I found a way to get him and good...
I started weaving in mild criticisms of his government and the military into my blog posts. Whatever software he was using just scraped and copied everything over automatically, and he almost never read the posts.
Since he lived under an authoritarian government, his readers started aking him why he was against the leaders and the army! He got into a lot of trouble and it served him right.
That's what you get for stealing content.
Hey @evernoticethat!
Hivepakistan, loved what you did with that person. Not all Pakistanis are the same. Here's some Pakistani love in response to the trouble that some bad actor caused you.
Usually, we don't curate comments, but there are exceptions.
Thanks so much, and you're right of course, there are many good people from Pakistan and some of them live here in my area. That was a long time ago which is why I put question marks next to the country name as I'm reasonably sure he was from there but not 100% without searching through old records and emails from Blogger.
Note: I kept my criticisms MILD, because I didn't want any harm to come to him, I just wanted to get him to stop.
However, I was so despondent, that I left Blogger, and didn't return to blogging again until the arrival of Steemit, and only then after lurking for a year first. Thanks again. :)
What you have done is justified as it was critical to save your content and more occasionally your name. Blogger and other sites don't give us protection, once my content from Uptrennd was stolen and published on noise.cash (even then uptrennd wasn't sold) but other sites don't restrict them from such wrong acts no plagiarism check or identify theft check. But this all is non-existence on Hive. !LUV
@evernoticethat, @ayesha-malik(1/1) sent LUV. | connect | community | HiveWiki | NFT | <>< daily
! help(no space) to get help on Hive. InfoThanks. And indeed Blogger was no help at all. The lady deleted the first blog post he'd copied, and then told me that I'd have to fill out that same long, convoluted form for each of the numerous posts of mine that he'd copied.
It would have taken forever, and each request had to be investigated and approved manually, there was no batch process even though they could see the publication date s of my original posts compaired to his copies.
I was relieved that nothing bad happened to that blogger, as I was very careful not to go too far with my posts.
Thank goodness for Steemit/Hive. They really restored my love of blogging. :)
Hey there!
I'm currently focusing on bringing musicians to the platform through live shows from the studio. I just tell them it's a way to earn money from their music without the middleman. We've even done some metaverse shows in Voxels and Decentraland. You can check out the project here: @recording-box.
9 out of 10 times they don't see the value and end up back on the same social media platforms earning nothing. I guess web 3.0 isn't for everybody, or maybe they just want to be where all their friends are.
But yeah, I agree with you, we need to create and promote content with answers to problems or well made content with lots of discussion. That combined with a quick onboarding process will surely accelerate adoption.
Hmm
I think the quality of our posts matters and even the attitude of we Hivers. A lot of us will want someone to join Hive but won't be active or won't post something interesting for people to see. Why is that?
We should at least make the platform very interesting so that people will want to join instead of just telling people about Hive.
I think punsters should come make puns with me: https://peakd.com/hive-155986/@improv/punday-monday-317
One of the things I liked about
SteemitHive when I joined what that people were writing about ideas and projects instead of just being self-congratulatory about the platform itself. Out selling points are simple: censorship-resistany content ownership with a cryptocurrency market. Any one of those will get interest from different people, and we need to find where any two overlap for someone to get a likely user.