I'm going to try and be as frank as possible about things, a lot of the things I mention may not be accurate and there may be different opinions about a lot of them. Some of my opinions may come off strong or biased but keep in mind this is just to bring some discussion forth and not meant to bring down any prior or future attempts at onboarding or ways to go about it.
I've done my fair share of onboarding, from bringing real friends from the past to the chain to inviting people I interact and have build relationships outside of this ecosystem (though not as much of the latter since Hive has pretty much taken most of my attention and focus the past few years). Retention rate isn't great and a big reason to that has felt are these things:
- Not a great selection of content
This one is a hard pill to swallow but it's just what it is, in a mix of discouraging just sharing posts and headlines of what's trending all over the internet right now and enforcing longer form content if you do talk about such news/trends, it discourages consumption of such longer content in a day and age where attention spans are becoming shorter and shorter and everyone wants the next fix of dopamine through consuming content as fast and often as possible. The other mix is that original content can't always be great from the same people over and over and with a low userbase it is hard to come by. We see this on Reddit every now and then where a user has something interesting happen to them or something interesting to share that's considered original content, but even there with millions and millions of accounts and lurkers these original posts don't occur often, it's mostly just sharing other things that have happened around the world and engagement being the forefront of entertainment in the comment sections. This isn't to be misunderstood with good authors and their content, that can occur consistently but it's not what is driving social media attention and hype these days, it's sensationalism and uniqueness of events and occurrances. As much as I love authors like @tarazkp and the content he often writes about, the way he brings it forward and the comment sections of his posts, compared to the rest of the internet you can say his day to day life is pretty tame and so is everyone else's. That's the content I believe lacks on Hive and the determination to keep content original may take away from sharing/writing about these stories because people using other socials will consume them 10x faster there. Once consumed they're not going to re-read the same story/event but they may check the comment section about discussions of it which often is quite lacking unless you're someone with stake, a long consistent history of activity or have some kind of influence outside of Hive which we have close to no such authors currently.
I believe that's also a reason why Reddit never pushed Original content much because they know it's not what keeps people around and coming back. That said Hive doesn't need to be Reddit or other social platforms and there is a different kind of value in the way things work here which I personally really like but I don't think it's something that's going to interest the younger generations or older ones that have gotten used to how social media is these days as it may also be a reason why blogging has taken a downturn the past decade. Anyway, without making this post about that, let's move on to some other points.
- Getting started
While we really put value into people owning their own content and value and making sure they'll save their keys upon creating an account a majority of them, especially those coming from #web2 will ignore you no matter what. They're too used to the "I forgot my password" lifeline but even if they save the keys most of the time they're not going to save them properly resulting in issues in the future.
Getting started with your Hive journey by yourself is also difficult which brings me to many onboarding attempts even if/after you manage to easily get a free account/pay for one through the various account creation sites with their random outages, bugs, and roadblocks/restrictions. Not everyone uses Reddit as they mostly lurk on there and I'm comparing it to that because I believe the majory Hive front-ends compare to it best as to how similar they work, especially with communities in the form of subreddits. Just bringing people to hive.io or the account creation pages is not enough, even simpler front-end websites on web2 have simple tutorials and often times even force people to follow or subscribe to certain communities before you can even like or upvote something. This is something that's really lacking on Hive front-ends, simple short time tutorials showing you the basics and giving you a taste of what your feed could look like by recommending you communities based on your interests or consistent authors writing about the same interests. To many they're going to need to spend quite a lot of time on here browsing before they get to that stage of starting to subscribe to communities after finding them and authors after consuming some of their content on their own. I know this by personal experience by using Reddit wrong in the early days and only checking the front-page and my friends doing the same mistakes after not bothering to take my subreddit recommendations to make their feeds better. Another thing that Reddit does well now which it didn't before and our front-ends don't at all, is recommending you random subreddits and authors in your feed based on history. It's one of the best ways to get the user introduced to other communities and authors but we're too afraid to start tracking their activities even though most of them are fully public on this database we call a blockchain to make sure retention rates go higher.
- User acquisition
Aside from word of mouth, I see a lot of numbers thrown around that it should be okay to spend 20-30$ per user we bring to the front-ends comparing it to the rest of web2's different genre's as this picture was used recently in some discussions. (Keep in mind this post is still just about my general feelings and opinions on this matter and shouldn't be used to sway anyone into any actions)
Hive is a bit too unique in many aspects to be considered for any of these I believe as it can be any of them in the same time even if some of them are completely lacking as activity on here at this point in time. I also believe that just bringing people here in one way or another does not do much and if anything will just make them not wanna return later if the ecosystem is brought up again cause they'll remember how difficult it was to either get an account, understand what's going on (how people are earning, what these points on certain front-ends mean, that it's immutable text-based content, account ownership etc) or find something interesting at first glance to want to stick around for the content. For Hive this cost should be considered first after they've already had an account and gotten to perform basic actions that many would early on in their journey, such as writing their first post, following a few accounts, dropping a few comments and votes and seeing how it works, a lot of this isn't obvious in the beginning and many will never know any better after trying it out real quick and leaving never to return.
How can it be done better?
Okay, so this is the part where I might become a bit biased because I've been running certain initiatives and trying to improve upon them for some time now. I've talked about these in the past but they've yet to properly scale from interested eligible parties willing to participate and even those that do, retention is good and better than your general new accounts but it's still far from being great or something I'd wanna throw real money at to see scale aside from the little rewards we can direct from the pool towards these activities.
Also keep in mind that these are just my opinions but I'll try to explain why I believe so.
The first part I wanna discuss is user acquisiton with a guiding hand at the current infrastructure.
This one is a bit unique and won't affect a majority of users that come to our front-ends in one way or another but it has seemed to work rather well with minimal rewards/inflation directed towards it. What I mean by this is some of the onboarding initiatives we've been running through @ocd for over a year now, currently with 33 active onboarders having onboarded over 400 accounts and former onboarders having onboarded over 200 accounts have shown a good retention rate of those users due to the way they're brought to the ecosystem. Either through private discussions or small events and conventions discussing hive and afterwards getting them their Hive accounts. This involves teaching them the basics of account creation, why passwords are important, etc. The common "do nots" of hive and guiding them towards communities they may be interested in either due to the genre's or people along with curating their posts for the first few months and answering questions along the way. This is quite a lot of work with each case being unique and requiring different methods and the cost behind this has been on average $5-10 one time post rewards and a potential 3% beneficiary rewards from the onboarded users that can be removed at any time.
So, you may already notice I'm being biased but I believe I have reason to be in this case. While @ocd hasn't asked for outside funding it has taken matters in its own hand to make use of the reward pool to minimally fund these initiatives and activities as long as they bring value to Hive as a whole. I have great appreciation for those who put in the work and are part of this program because many of them don't do it for the small rewards but because like many others here they want to see this place grow and they want to empower people with what Hive offers them. This is also a reason why I think if we're going to fund marketing for onboarding I don't think that the general conventional ways are right for Hive because Hive isn't like other platforms and even though we have a lot of things to improve to make retention easier for the "randoms" that stumble upon our front-ends in one way or another, they'll still struggle seeing the bigger picture or understand why they should stick around.
Okay, let me now stop talking about our onboarding program and why I think that's something we could at some point try to see how it would develop and scale with some extra funding, and let me talk about an intiative I've talked about before a lot because I've personally been behind it doing the groundwork and growing a community from 0 to hundreds of active users in a matter of days.
Onboarding people already experienced with #web3 and active in platforms similar to Hive should be massively better than targeting random #web2 users.
Let me preface this by saying, yes, the market was at an all time high, the community that was "targeted" had a lot of hype around that time and Hive was close or nearing its ATH as well. With this in mind take note that I am sure this had a lot of effect and why it felt so easy at the time and I'm not going to get into the whole "this experiment is tainted due to rewards and monetary incentives" because it is what it is. Hive will always have rewards attached to it but also a lot more amazing things that web2 will never have.
The idea I had was that I should try grow a community based on the interest of one of my own interests, a "web3" game outside of the Hive ecosystem with users posting, commenting and curating content and discussions around it on Hive because this game and close to literally all other web3 projects don't have something like Hive. I liked the idea so much that I put $1k+ of my own money in assets towards giveaways and contests along with some help from @lordbutterfly and @guiltyparties who were running valueplan and some other marketing project at the time but all in all it wasn't more than potentially $2k worth of rewards to go out.
In 2 days with a simple Reddit post and an announcement of the contest on their Discord I had players dm'ing me on both platforms for an account invite, many of them already on @splinterlands without knowing that their spl account was already a Hive account. I managed to invite over 650 people in those two days through our unique 1 time use hiveonboard links provided by our dev @lemony-cricket. All these players had to do was create an account, save the keys, and leave a comment to enter the contest and a majority of them did and very few of them had issues saving the keys, understanding how Hive keychain works and figuring out how to drop a comment under the post. Why? Because Gods Unchained had already laid out the ground work for them to understand ETH, metamask and how crypto in general works, even if they had just arrived from web2 to their game, the next step to do the same/something similar with Hive was a lot easier than it is for the general onboarding/marketing attempts we've done in the past.
While the community now had dwindled down and isn't showing a lot of activity, a majority of these players may still play GU, may still have their keys saved somewhere and can return at any time to check this place out again. On top of that a lot of the players that joined got involved with Hive in different ways, some stayed active curating the community for OCD, some got involved with threespeak and many of them started playing splinterlands because they found out about it here.
The value of those couple days and those couple thousand $ (not counting curation of the community) had tremendous value for Hive and potential value for returning users in the future. Majority of that funding was sponsored by myself while at the same time doing all of the work, I can't imagine what we could muster if we had more constant funding and a bigger team taking care of not just the onboarding process but to also help them out with any questions they may have. Of course bear market arrived and is staying around for a long time now so I don't disagree that we're not going to see the same influx of users again in the same way but I think with a little bit of funding and activity doing this on a more consistent basis would bring in people with way higher retention rate, way better understanding of crypto and learning Hive faster and potentially even better holders/buyers of the token because a majority of these players/people quite simply don't know Hive exists and that they're missing out on something.
Web2 makes it insanely difficult to share legitimate projects, the coinmarketcaps and gecko's are filled with garbage high marketcap copycat projects that many never even go past the 2nd page to even scroll through Hive. We have something insane to offer those lacking it and already being knowledgable about the space yet it seems for some reason we keep focusing on brandnew people to crypto and blogging/reddit-like websites and thinking they'll stay if they just get pushed this way.
Alright this post again got pretty long so out of the risk of losing a lot of readers checking the wordcount I'm going to stop writing here. Point is, I think we really ought to focus on making Hive and communities a place where projects can not only ensure they're being transparent by allowing any and all discussions to exist and be readable if readers so choose, but at the same time showing people that their activity is worth something and that making some money in crypto doesn't always have to be "how to buy my memetoken on xxx" then go around shilling it because you invested into it. I'm not saying make the earning aspect the forefront of onboarding, but since it already exists and has improved a ton from the early days, we shouldn't make it taboo or never mention that it is possible if you put energy and time into it. We clearly have tons of success stories and good examples already so there's nothing wrong with sharing some of that inflation with the rest of the crypto space as long as they're here and using Hive for their own interests.
While we still have a lot of things to fix as mentioned in the beginning of the post, I think there's value to put some marketing effort and funds not just on bringing the users here but also on people who take the time to welcome and guide them and make sure to target those that have an edge over retention compared to those completely oblivious to how crypto works.
Anyway, got pretty tired writing all this so will take a break before I may reply to comments, thanks for reading those who did.
This is a great post and you bring up some really great points. I've always thought that Hive needs a front end that uses engagement algorithms similar to those used by other socials. Though we started off with a focus on content, I think the other socials have more or less proven that interactions and connections are more important to
consumerspeople.I think front end reliance on inflation to fund their projects is a detriment here. I get excited whenever I see a hive-based product offering ads because that shows me that they have an incentive to increase their own user base. I'm not saying that inflation based platforms are an overall negative (they're not), but being reliant on inflation creates different incentives which are less likely to yield greater user retention and engagement IMO.
I didn't have any issues when I joined, but then again, I spent a year lurking before signing up in order to get "the lay of the land" and learn best practices. When I try to share the good news about Hive here locally, I find that people need something to compare it to. "Reddit+Crypto" seems to click with them, but pushing for that "last mile" is where things get tough.
So for now, I'm at the point where if I can get them to take a look and just lurk for awile as I did, Hive may just grow on them over time. We do need more long-form content here, if only for people like me who enjoy such posts.
This post didn't "read" long at all, and I was surprised it ended just as things were getting nice and meaty. It could've been twice as long and I still would've read to the end. Someone should start a thousand-words-and-up community to see how "sticky" it could become. Long-form content such as those written by both tarazkp and taskmaster can be interesting reads because they are written in such a way as to keep you coming back for more. More well-written content like that would be welcome on Hive.
I fear you're the minority who can consume such long content on a daily basis unfortunately but you're right that Hive can be for many things and this is the one thing I'm always going to like about it and will hopefully make it clear to others why it's the best place for that.
You're likely right, but you might agree that Hive would benefit by having a thousand more people like me (who's been here since 2016) versus 5,000 who would setup an account, and then bail as soon as the token price drops. Either way, I look forward to a successful future of Hive with much hope. We have a lot of work to do. The structure is in place for that success. With time, a little tweaking, and a dollop of luck, we'll be on our way. :)
I didn't find this long or too long because I'm interested in how we respond to this challenge and I welcome the in-depth discussion provided in the post. That actually helps me to think about it.
I read some posts of some other long-form writers, but not every post, for the same reason. What marks out the long form posts that I read is that they are by people who do or have done a lot of other things on Hive.
I think the main reason that people want to come to Hive is to make some money. Once they discover that they have to put time and effort into it to be successful, many give up, the same as in real life. OCD seem to do the best job of supporting and onboarding users so far as I can see and it shows this is not an easy task, even with many people working with a lot of passion.
You're right. I feel that when monetization is involved, a lot of narrative will be tipped over. Look at Twitter now. People are going Gaga because they want to earn, I just feel.a large population will go away when they realize it takes a lot. When it comes to monetization, effort is needed and this we might think this is peculiar to hive, but immediately we see web2 adopt monetization, we'd see these problems in web2 as well.
Yeah, I think a lot of people think it's a get-rich-quick thing. I've onboarded a few folks who loose interest because they only made a few cents. I wonder how much they made from The Book, X and the Gram 🤔
Yeah exactly. I can only say that those social media companies are making mega profits and the employees also have a life of luxury with lots of benefits and free stuff at the content creators expense.
Amen brother! I’m lucky to have been brought in and shown the ropes by quochuy and yourself. Between you two helping explain things over the course of my first year, I was able to grow and change the style of my content (compared to what I was formerly doing on Reddit) to be more aligned with the Hive way of doing things - and growing to fill those shoes was tremendously rewarding! I mean, it pays out occasionally on my posts, but in truth I mean it has expanded my writing skills, my organizational prowess, and even given me an outlet for more detailed project descriptions and stuff.
I think about the on onboarding issue quite a bit, especially now that I’m passing out business cards with my hive account and join link QRs, and this makes a lot of sense. When I originally laid it out, it just had a link to my channel, but I though, there might be a lot of people who see the dollar values showing under the videos and get curious about how they too can earn crypto for content…so I added the join link QR.
I’m excited to someday see local events being advertised on Hive, but until then I’m happy to see posts like this, discussing ways that we can make that a more likely reality.
You nailed it right : we shouldn't make it taboo or never mention that it is possible. It should be all spontaneous. That's the kind of apps we need on hive, that would bring people automatically. As you said, a gaming review, or a product review or services review. And a real app that is working : https://www.mouthshut.com/contest
We need something similar, and even may make it more authentic, by validating the users by their real identity and supporting their reviews by photos or videos.
The longer I've been here the more I feel like I'm the weirdo who knew bupkis about crypto before Hive (coughThatOtherNameAtTheBeginningcough), had a friend make a random fb post about it, hopped on and immediately started posting and commenting all over the place. Read up and researched crypto and how it works, tho I am totally a normie and not tech-minded. Am a leftist and relate to Hive as a co-op because that's essentially how it works and how I explain it to people (as opposed to so many here who are more of the libertarian bent). Really, I explain this place to leftie friends who were bashing crypto based on how Bitcoin works (or some hit piece they read online about it), and they're like, "Ok, that actually sounds not bad," so like, it can be done. But yet, of the few friends I managed to convince to give it a try, they gave up pretty quickly. The number one thing they all said (and why others don't even start) is, "I don't know what I would write about."
Even though I tell them there are other things to do, Hive is seen as being a "content creator" and apparently doesn't read as friendly to consumers?
We are definitely the weirdos who went out of their way to stick around after landing here but I really think this place is starting to become a place where even non-weirdos can enjoy after some time spent learning more about it.
I read somewhere that the secret sauce to why TikTok is so addictive is that the algorithm gives one a higher chance to go viral when they're a new user. That initial dopamine hit keeps the creators coming back for more.
On the consumer side, having a good search and recommendation algorithm go a long way. I tried searching for posts / topics and it's quite hard to find relevant posts.
I heard the same. Specialists say they have the best social algorithm out there. It's much better than Instagram's, YouTube and others, according to them
They also fake a lot of the views so I assume a lot of that hope for the dopamine effect is built upon fake engagement.
The "I lost my keys bro" is the no 1 excuse I hear from those who I helped to onboard here. When a person sees the rewards the site offer they sometimes make an impulsive decision to make an account here and expect the same results from the beginning itself. When it doesn't happen most will likely leave to never return or do even worse like discouraging others as well.
One other thing I noticed after helping them make an account here is the part where I explain how hive works. I usually give them some guides I got from a dear friend here when I was starting here cluelessly but one can see how overwhelming hive can be from the table of contents itself. It was too much information to swallow even for someone with some experience in crypto. I personally would love to see a guide which is more user friendly, perhaps a lite version with the basics only would be great for newbies would be great. I believe if hive improves in these factors I'm sure retention rate will follow.
One another thing I faced while make an account here is that I was one of those users who wasn't very lucky enough to make a free account here. Back then I was convinced that it was worth it because I knew a lot of people already in here who were doing well. I lurked around the site for 3 months before creating an account here until then all the free account creation methods ends up with some IP error. This is also a hurdle sometimes when I try to interest someone about investing in hive community. Some are even willing to make an account and invest here just for the apr.
Since you mentioned reddit I have to say this because some posts are just too long to read. There is a very high chance that most people will skip it so adding a short summary of the post at the end would definitely help them engage better with the author. That's my take on it.
Adding this comment to read tonight.
We really need a bot reminder that we can call and tell it to remind me at 9pm about this.
Can devs do something pls ser?
I have been thinking about the exact same thing lately: a decentralized bot alarm on Hive. Unfortunately not a dev here either.
If we have this, then I am even willing pay to get such a service. Since I check Hive quite a few times everyday, it can even serve as a calendar/secretary for many things in my life, not just things relating to Hive.
A bit off the topic 😅. Just feel excited to see the same thought.
Not a bad idea. @acidyo gave me a heads up.
Hey @fridaybot remind me about this in 5 minutes.
Hey @deathwing! You told me to remind you here about 5 minutes ago (August 12th 2023, 8:39:27 pm UTC) so here is your reminder!
Hey @fridaybot remind me to downvote @deathwing in 2 minutes.
Hey @acidyo! You told me to remind you here about 2 minutes ago (August 14th 2023, 5:38:42 pm UTC) so here is your reminder!
I would also like to remind you to join our Discord server in case you haven't yet. You can access to more of my features!
Hey @acidyo! I will remind you about this post in 2 minutes (August 14th 2023, 5:40:42 pm UTC)
Make sure you join our Discord server by clicking here to get a Discord notification when I mention you!
Thanks, nearly forgot!
Hey @deathwing! I will remind you about this post in 5 minutes (August 12th 2023, 8:44:27 pm UTC)!
so for replying late. Wow, does it mean fridaybot can do it now? I need to spend some time to look into how it works! Thanks! Cool stuff! 👍👍
Maybe something @deathwing could add to FRIDAY
https://leofinance.io/threads/acidyo/re-leothreads-2hn26advc
The rewards earned on this comment will go directly to the people ( acidyo ) sharing the post on LeoThreads,LikeTu,dBuzz.
Hmm. This is nice.
@tarazkp is a great author and I love the fact that he writes interesting basically on what happens in his family and all. I think we just need to be more creative in our writings. We gotta make it more real, encouraging and entertaining instead of working on almost the same topics almost all the time
Nice post!
I have created some accounts, here for several family and friends using the blocktraded service, do you know how much 6 hives cost, right, well friends and family are hard to convince or are very busy, I currently have a small project in development for El Salvador onboarding but between you and taskmaster with your post yesterday they state that this is not the correct path and it seems that they are right, I already started it by giving them the keys directly and explaining to them, but nothing seems that I am an alien here that I learned everything on my own, it's complicated some would seem to want me to create the post for them. and everyone asks how much you earn and where you get paid and how much I have earned, things like that make incorporations difficult but even so we are still here despite having behind me some abandoned accounts for not being able to convince the benefits of this place. but friend when the bull market comes you will see how our participation increases, by the way you will have a business card model that you can show me to advertise hand in hand with that here in my country, maybe it will help a little or they will end up in the dump.
Why do people use search engines? Usually to find answers for their questions. Where will they visit when looking for those answers? The sites that best match their search inquiry, probably on the first page, but certainly within the first 5.
I mention this because many communities want users to write about or in a way that's not already available online. Because of this we get a lot of people's personal photo albums, but very little useful information explaining what we are seeing in those travel or gardening pics.
Youtube is an invaluable resource because of the Tutorials and this makes them king. We need that here and we did have that for a little while, but those people sharing their useful DIY content have long left. Why? Because their efforts weren't appreciated.
We need the everyday useful information that people search for being published here, because that's what people are looking for. It's free advertising and on top of that we need users to learn basic SEO Formatting for their blogs. This will bring people here over the long term and the earnings with the fact we don't expect perfection will help to retain more of them.
We need to be an information hub and we need to compete with those Web2 travel, plant identification, survival/bushcraft teacher, user review of every single topic imaginable and whatever else is popular if we want to make it. If we keep trying to compete with Facebook we will lose, but compete with YT and the average blogger and we can make some headway.
By the way, @leofinance's goal with working towards evergreening content can do all those things I mention above and if we do better teaching people how use SEO in their blogs, like we do for teaching Markdown Formatting, then we'll get the ball rolling.
Oh, and we need to improve the 'Search' feature big time, because they all pretty much suck.
Anyway, just my opinion.
Saludos desde venezuela, yo apenas en hive llevo poco tiempo, y sin decirte mentria ingrese com un mecanismo de generar entrada de dinero (ya sabes como esta la situacion de inflacion), te puedo decir que no he logrado nada!!!, ahora publico para desestresarme...y esperando que venga una ballena y vote por mi publicacion, y aun sigo buscando otras alternativas aca dentro del ecosistema de hive, yo soy uno de ls que republicaba en twitter y ultimamernte en redditi (pero no volvieron a sumarme mas nada), aun sigo esperando tu nuevo proyecto!!! y sugerencia para sacar alguna ganancia.
Even the tiniest barriers at signup will prevent a huge number of people from completing it. When I joined because of the Gods Unchained competition, I remember the pain of learning about hive keychain, need a code, etc. I was highly motivated because of the competition, but I would never have jumped through those hoops otherwise (I’m glad I did!).
Is it possible to have a web2 front end experience? Free account with the usual captcha bot prevention. Keys associated with the account that can be exported when the user is ready for that? Maybe X free sign ups per day paid for by some endowment of HP.
This next part might get a bit controversial, but content is heavily skewed to crypto/finance. At least it feels like that. What seems missing is controversial topics. Politics/relgion/etc. Posting controversial content/opinions feels like a great way to downvote town and never being able to earn anything. Much safer to post about the next moon token or game you’re playing. People don’t farm engagement on Twitter with safe statements.
It’s also a little odd because hive bills itself as uncensored. This is where you’d want to be able to post something that might currently be out of favor with the majority, and if you don’t care about earning hive, you can. Its just too risky. Ocd won’t curate it. Etc.
I also agree with you that we reward long content and don’t give enough love to short content. We could scale down rewards to match effort, but encouraging short posts sounds like a good idea.
Quite the coincidence, but I'm just watching a "how to get started" vid on splinterlands. They offer the exact web2 experience I was describing. Username/password + captcha account creation. Then you can request your keys and they send you an email.
Ocd onboarders do a whole lot with retaining newbies, hive is so broad, and if you can’t figure it out on time you either get lost in the mix or give up without even trying.
One thing my onboarder did was to tell me the dos and don’ts making sure these rules sank, even when I started getting tired of Hive at some point the friends I made here made me want to show up.
To make these newbies stick around for long we have to engage them not just just crowding their introduction posts and vanishing into thin air but by constantly making them fill that they are valued.
The first set of people newbies follow here are the people who welcome them, writing and seeing nobody turn up can be discouraging especially for someone who writing isn’t their hobby.
Hive can be pretty overwhelming most times, I just onboarded two people and sometimes I see them catching the Hive spirit then the next they are losing it and then I’d have to step in to tell them how great Hive is, now it’s easier for them to stay longer because they have me what about others who stumble on Hive on their own who aren’t on the ocd initiative or other retention schemes? Of course, they get weary and leave when they aren’t seen.
In conclusion, RETENTION and engagement are very important.
Hi, I really liked your post. I'm just a very committed user as a creator, but I often wonder the same thing regarding the length of the content. There are some communities or dynamics that ask for 500 words for example, or there is a tendency to value the length of the article, which doesn't bother me at all because I love to write, but I wonder if someone outside of Hive will really read it someday, since really every time the content is faster, shorter, more concrete and more impactful.
I think user retention is critical, and that as you comment can go hand in hand with a team to guide new users, but I think it's critical to explain to people that they have to maintain their persistence. In the end it's all about that, even in web 2. A creator who publishes one day and returns to any platform the next week, will not see his project grow even in 3 years. And since many users come to Hive as an alternative to an income (then find this universe full of possibilities, of course), you have to let them know that the growth of their account is not going to happen in a month. I've noticed that many people leave for that reason, as if they don't get the immediate profit, they get demotivated and quit, but this is beyond what one can tell them.
Maybe showing them examples is a good option, you have to think of a strategy that allows Hive to show the new user in a quick way, the results of their own commitment with the platform in the medium-long term.
I like what you say here.
Together with another user of Hive we are planning to start a small curation trail aimed to support real quality posts on topics that are currently almost not covered at all.
We have in mind also some forms to increase onboarding, reaching outer writers that may be interested in coming here for specific topics having a dedicated "watch-eye".
And I see your point on the type of posts and length. Much has been consolidated as personal relationships or else overruling the relevance and quality of the content.
So I am 100% on your side thinking that a wiser distribution of the voting should be found, to enhance quality (but underrated) writers AND supporting also new writers to stimulate them and encourage.
My comment got a bit out of hand so I put in a post.
The problem for me is when I get someone who is genuinely interested, they can't sign up, so I end up asking Melinda from Ecency to help get the account sorted.
This post has been manually curated by the VYB curation project
I think this is more than a fair assessment of the situation here. I respect the level of dedication that you've provided for the community and your seemingly eternal optimism.
Bringing in the masses is a really hard problem.
I've noticed in crypto, people like to hop on new shiny things. Also, after some consideration by myself, I'm not sure the blogging aspect of Hive has to be the future. Building infrastructure and making this the ecosystem for devs will go a long way because of the downstream effects. I think the next big moment in Hive will have everything to do with whatever the next big application is built on top of the chain.
Just my two cents.
:) I stumbled upon this while researching reward.app. I have no idea how Hive's search engine works - or UI's? - but it's just terrible. It's almost as hard to find things in it as it is in google. Interesting, but there is no proposal for this. If there is no comprehensive, constantly updated informative and introductory material for beginners that answers all questions, at least the search engine would be good...
Anyway, I found it interesting that in the last six months since I've been using Hive, I haven't seen a single advertisment anywhere. (I'm not aware of the prices.) However, seeing that they fly for $10ks per month, I don't think that 1-1 Brave ads, alternative blog ads (I specifically know that they are cheap) wouldn't fit. It would be for the potential target audiance.
Also, to find the gaps that Hive could fill efficiently and quickly. For example, I haven't seen any action to take advantage of the blog+video+stream trio.
I'm sceptic about the LeoFinance proposal, too. I hope, they can manage it, but they try to break in a totally fullfilled place. The only positive thing what I read: they want to do it through soc media influencers, hope they will pick the right ones, however, I'm sure in their case it will be bloody hard.
Long years ago, I used to write a blog, totally free, I didn't even expect to earn anything, as I supposed, I can't. Max. by participating in some kind of blogging contest. Plenty people (tried to research, the clever guys say between 30-50%) don't earn anything with their blog activity... here, even the smallest one could... huge target audiance, like 10 millions of people or more...
and strange, but not even the 'how to reach them' is the question, but more likely 'how to reach them in the cheapest way', but unfortunately, I don't even see reaching them...
don't understand why nobody does that, when there would be potential fund to cover it, looks like even people who would help them to introduce the Hive (and they know everything else).
also don't understand, why don't they fund some kind of 'update the basic information, FAQ, beginners guide in all frontends with description about everything, links to everything, main dapps description, all in one place'. that's really a small amount and definitely would pay off
especially, that it's more micro-blogging (sometimes just micro, not even blogging), those people are not like the real blog writers, readers, they won't spend hours (or more) to find the quickly necessary basic information.
anyway, good luck with yours! that's still far the best what about i heard.
haha... I suffer this curse, too.
There's just a ton of issues that is just inherent with Hive as you touched on mostly. But there's other things that COULD be done, but others point out since there's no @ned -type figure, there's no individual responsible for marketing the place properly. If you start, say, a dropshipping company, one of the basic requirements to get it off the ground is to start paying facebook and instagram etc to run ads on their platforms. This add has to be switched up and updated frequently with new, high-production videos and such to keep fresh eyes on it until a small percentage click and and even smaller percentage actually buy a product.
Maybe not the exact same applies here, but essentially, the same thing applies here. Nobody is paying out of their own pocket (except you) to advertise in the way the world has been built to function. I've never seen a peakd or leofinance ad on facebook.
Web2 projects suffer many of the same difficulties here but they just inherently understand that they have to keep going, keep researching, refining their marketing skills until it works, or throw it away and try something new when it doesn't. They look at data via amazon, google, facebook and such, and work on strategies to further refine their products or services to match what they see people's eyes are being caught on. Basic Business, really.
Like, I think if I had any position or ability to do it, I might first start advertising with an exciting video about the term web3 and the concept of free speech, find the right people whose narratives match that poltiics. If it doesn't get clicks, I'd refine the add to focus more on earning money, or community, 'reddit but better', play-to-earn, etc.
I'd also produce a sleek video going through the process. 'First do this swish done? good. Next, go here:' etc with cool music and graphics.
Also it's the age of AI, people aren't gonna care if they get recommendations which they can opt in or out of, especially if it's completely open on the table. Hive has really good tech behind it, sure, but the front ends still feel pretty obsolete: blogs? Ok boomer. No ads? No targeted feeds? Nothing coming to me and spoon-feeding me with everything I want? Pass.
It's so nice that here on hive, we ha e so many contents creators and so many of them are unique and original. While some of which are not meaning repetition of what has happened before now just like what you have rightly said.
We have so many platforms that have packed up just because of low contents creators. A platform normally was supposed to be created for quality, but bringing quantity to it would cause something's else.
Sincerely, I have brought most people to hive whom have one way misplaced their hive keys. Sometimes we take things that matters most for granted. This is something we were supposed to guide jealously instead took things for granted.
You have said it all.
Well, for me, I explore around before understanding how Hive worked, but funny enough I was consistent to date.
While some people have other motives for joining Give, they just want to see the result and not put in the work.
But sure helping newbies to get familiar with Hive is a great idea and the #heyhaveyamet team is also doing a great job concerning that.
I can totally make some tutorials and make the videos free to use. I started dabbling in making some news style videos to see what works:
.
Short tutorials would be quite similar and can include screen captures and visual aids. Will make some soon.
This issue has always been a challenge for Hive: onboarding new users. First, the idea that Hive is not like other platforms is crucial. We can't just copy and paste Web 2.0 marketing strategies and expect them to work here. Hive is unique, and that is both its strength and its challenge.
Targeting people who are familiar with Web3 is a smart strategy. If you already understand how Ethereum or any other crypto project works, understanding Hive is a smaller step than if you're jumping straight from Facebook or Instagram.
Also, the idea that Hive can be a space for projects looking for transparency and open discussion is brilliant. Precisely because from my point of view that's exactly what Hive offers!
Many are joining hive because they heard they can make money here. But, after writing few contents, some dwindle because they didn't receive the expected reward immediately. Also, seeing that they need to make some sacrifices base on time and effort, they give up, forgetting that nothing comes from nothing. That's too bad.
I'd like to divide my comment into a few parts.
1- In a short time I've been able to observe many things here at hive and I confess that I identify with this post on many points. First of all, I have to say that I really admire OCD's work.
2- I miss seeing great content creators here on hive, I'm talking about quality content that we can trust. I hope that, in the future, hive will be able to gather a lot of content and that it will be easier to find it using the search bar on the front-ends (which I find quite limited at the moment).
3- We often create an article giving our opinion on subjects that are already widely discussed on Web2, but just by reading the title the reader doesn't click on it because they think it's repetitive. If it was written by someone "famous", they might click more often, but few are interested in knowing what I think about a subject. Perhaps this is a reflection of traditional social networks, where people are looking for status rather than content.
4- How do I attract more legitimate readers? I don't just want votes, I want people to identify with what I'm trying to write, but that's only possible if they actually read the content. With that in mind, I'm trying to reduce the number of words in my posts (but I'm trying to do it in a way that doesn't lose the essence I want to convey), and I also don't want to scare the reader away with a text that's too long.
5- I understand that more important than bringing in new people is getting them to stay and actively participate.
Finally, given all this, I ask myself: Is the Hive really attractive to the "common public"? Perhaps there will always be this divide.
Here we can create a community of collaboration and real dedication. While out there they develop a community of futility and fake.