I've been paying a lot of attention to social media metrics in general as of late. YouTube, X, Facebook, TikTok and so on -- and one thing I'm noticing that every other chain has that has ever existed has some kind of high influence key players. Like their accounts have a good hundred thousand followers, or even over a million.
Hive lacks this. We're very lacking in this aspect.
I've never thought about it much as of late because I've always been busy doing my own thing; trying to keep my guys in the community happy and networking with lots of people, but since my attention has been on X lately I'm noticing we're lacking the sort of opinion leaders that all the rest of them have.
Now hear me out before you roll your eyes because this is important.
One thing that Hive suffers badly from is that we have a superiority complex. We think we are better than every other platform out there because we offer monetary rewards AND influence -- it's like a marriage made in heaven. Don't worry, I feel this superiority too. If I was pointing any fingers I would have to point to myself as well. Because I feel it. I think we're faster, more robust, and superior in every aspect.
HOWEVER,
And this is where we all seem to fall short (even me) is that we need to go to where the people are, because they aren't on hive. If we look at ourselves realistically we're a small community with a few thousand dedicated fans. Most of us have made a home for ourselves here and we're more or less married to the platform.
So where are the people? Well, they're everywhere else but here.
That's not our fault of course. Could Hive be better? Well, yes, I guess it could, but for that we'd need a lot of devs building cool new apps and projects for people to invest in -- but if the people aren't here then it's not really attractive for devs to come here. They go where the money is.
Sure, I mean there's Splinterlands, but I dare say that is where Hive's best devs are all huddled in; they go where the money is, and on hive -- that's where the gold is if you want to build something for people to buy into.
So what do we do?
I'm honestly not too sure.
I'd love to tell everyone to get out there and start doing stuff, however not everyone's cut out for that sort of thing. In the last 2 weeks my content has seen 1.5 Million views and I've had all sorts of interactions. From good, to bad, to downright ugly. Most of it makes me laugh though; not many people can change the picture I have of myself in my own head.
But then I've been doing this sort of thing for years. I don't mind the heat. Seeing this stuff just makes me want to challenge myself more. And I know how to handle myself in front of an audience.
Maybe on my travels I can inspire some more people to find hive and fall in love with it like I have done. Maybe one of them will have a big audience. I don't know. I'm still a smelly 1000 follower account. I have nowhere near enough people to send anywhere..
Yet.
Hoping this will come though. Really hoping.
Some other hive accounts have been seeing what I've been getting up to and have come along for the ride in some cases. @thelogicaldude has been hitting me up from time to time, but isn't interested in the traction. Only the "lols"
Which is fair. I have been creating quite a stir on some accounts, and there is a lot of lol's to have.
I am going for the subtle approach. Rather than getting right in their faces and going - TRY HIVE DUDE IT'S THE BEST THING EVER - I'm just commenting and creating conversations around popular topics and if people like what I say then they can check out what I'm about on my profile.
Which seems to be working in some respects -- I've had 4.1K profile visits this week. That number will need to be a lot higher to get any real positive traction though. Time will tell!
But, that's it for now.
Anyone else have any thoughts on our influencer problem? Or is it just me that thinks this way?
I am very conscious that Hive is under the radar. The biggest accounts may get hundreds of views if they are lucky. It does seem that some get exposure elsewhere and get a few hits. We only have a few thousand active users overall.
An 'influencer' on the big platforms would be looking to have many thousands of active followers and that might well make them more than they could currently make on Hive. So Hive cannot offer either of the things they might be looking for (for now).
People will tend to go where the audience is. I think the potential of Hive is for people and communities that may be niche. A musician with a few hundred fans may not meet the criteria to earn elsewhere, but anyone can earn on Hive and if those fans come here then they can earn too. That is something you do not get elsewhere. The same applies for niche communities what may never be massive.
I do not know how many Hivers have a huge following on other platforms. There have been a few over the years, but many gave up for various reasons. It may have been the lack of audience, but some may have been chased away as some big account took against them. We ought to be welcoming to those who could be good for Hive even if we are not into what they do. We cannot afford to be too choosy.
I think a good start is to support people who could help bring in more. That could be musicians, artists, photographers etc who will talk to others in their field and may suggest Hive as an option. I see plenty of talented (some professional) people here who get little attention as they are not part of the 'in crowd' of Hive. We should not fool ourselves about how big we are.
Yes, I do have thousands of followers, but most are inactive and I do not see myself as an influencer. I am just a guy having fun with blogging, which I was doing for no reward before. I believe in Hive and do what I can to support it.
I very much think this is the way to go -- one of hive's strongest points is the community element. We are going through turbulence right now, yet 80% still hold through it rigidly. That always impresses me. There is nothing like it anywhere else you go -- community is one of our fiercest selling points.
Plus people here are willing to get behind something new and exciting.
Also, when I started out writing it took me at least a year of writing daily before I earned anything at all. Then of course after my domain grew and Google was throwing my writing out there because of my link juice and big places I was writing on -- I could charge $100-$200 for a spot. Hive is brilliant for starters. You could earn $10 on your very first day if you're half decent.
There's a lot of good points to us -- but I wish we had more people.
Our community and the interaction are things that other blockchains lack as they are just about money.
The only significant money I have made online is from Hive.
It's very true. It's why I've always said there is way more money in cultivating people rather than just watching the money.
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I have told it several times as well - we need to sell ourselves better to people who have not discovered us yet.
We have big influencers or so called whales, but unfortunately most of them are anonymous or don't want to speak for the chain, only few have stepped forward. We need real people talking out there, that is when trust is built.
Aren't whales influencers just on Hive and not outside? Not really influencing then... but maybe I'm wrong
This is proper influence sir. I must have got 30 followers from that comment alone :)
If 99k people read a post about Hive, I think at least a couple of them would like to join, right?
I doesn't work like that I'm afraid -- this is what people miss. I only get those views because people are interested in the conversation, they liked what I said, interacted with it.
You can't just post about hive - people would mark it spam and irrelevant.
Marketing is a tricky game. You have to appeal to narratives, people then are interested to see what you are all about.
Like.. hey, I like what this guy said -- who is he?
Then with that I receive 4.3K profile views this week and my hive stuff is all over it:
That's where you get them.
Think of it this way -- if you were to post about coffee, and underneath I commented - come to my warpcast - you wouldn't care.
If I was a BIG account, yeah, then I could post about hive, but I'm not lol. Just a 1k follower account.
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It's weird that we are an influencers chain yet we don't have anyone influencing on the outside.
Yes, I don't know why our whales prefer to wait instead, for the world to discover us.
It's actually a lot of grind getting yourself out there. A lot. It takes a good year of grind, maybe even two to make a noticeable dent.
The influencers that managed 100k followers overnight are flukes. Don't judge them by metrics.
It's a slow process you learn through grind and what works versus what doesn't work through studying your audience.
Most of our whales are nobodies on social media. That would change though of course if they tried -- the link juice from all of us plebs would help.
Why do that when you can just be here, make a few upvotes, and bam -- that's your money made for the day.
You are speaking about a thing I’ve been saying for a bit.
I personally would like to see a value plan trial of onboarding a target group of niche creators and influencers.
I think the magic number is 100,000 followers. As that means not so big that its massive costs. But big enough that they are hungry to take a promotional crossover deal.
We have a lot to offer without a lot of loss.
Imagine a trial program of targeting 20 niche creators and influencers from insta, tic toc, facebook and YouTube. Look for this 100,000 follower or close to mark. Look for a cross over and niche’s that fit to hive.
Offer each a large delegation, and many free invites for there followed to join via their link. They could be offered there own community and thus new users could start in a pool of familiar users with a common interest in that niche or specifically in that creator.
Look, this idea could be developed better. I’m just saying a quick example of how we could pull some up and coming niche creators into the chain, to try our tools and find a more direct way to engage with their followers.
It could have little cost and very traceable metrics to utilize and iterate from.
That's something I'd be up for. We'd need a way to track it though - just giving a shit ton to a rally car with no tracking figures of how we're onboarding is not the way.
If we were going to do it then I'd suggest at least a trackable way to onboard. Find out how many users are coming here and then we could adjust it if necessary depending on the rise and fall of numbers.
Yes, what I am saying is a delegation, not directly paid. And the user would ideally reward people he/she onboards with that delegation…
All via free invite links… which would be trackable to that creators invite link. So yes, I’m saying it would all be traceable metrics… and thus, if it’s clear the user is doing dodgy stuff with delegation or doing nothing… poof, it’s gone.
I do feel that is a problem in that we can get a lot of views over this way but to convert them to hive community is a challenge in itself
If we can break that barrier then nothing would stop hive's rise
It would, but we would need more people willing to throw themselves out there.
We've had influencers here. The whales and "Hive police" have chased them away every single time for one reason or another.
I mean, even @jerrybanfield, weird as he was, had a huge following outside Hive, but everyone here seemed in such a hurry to push him off.
Before we attract any more influencers, we need to get rid of the greed at the top that wants to keep it all to themselves and chases away anyone they don't like.
True we
mainly get ignored on hive lol even though we got over a billion views outside of hive lol
I think Hive proposals is the right place to improve user engagement and visibility. There are several options to do that:
-Advertising campaigns: This is quite expensive so the target platforms should carefully considered.
-Rewards for new users, with bigger amounts for influencers in other platforms to move to Hive.
-Rewards for publishing content in social networks about Hive, based on number of impressions and new registers.
Those are good suggestions!
We've had this conversation for literal hours upon hours on discord audio. We've brought heavy hitters here before. Some of us brought "influencers" when they were small enough to be reachable, less than 400k subs.
However, they got chased away. They either "made too much money" or, their political opinions were "wrong", etc.
I think about this often bro, I really do. I don't think we are ready to onboard just yet. Why? Because we don't have the culture for massification just yet.
Very soon, possibly monday or tuesday next week, we are going to be hosting a pop up podcast about Reputation on chain. @moeknows has come up with what I think can shift the tides here. Make people care about behaving correctly, feeling pride, creating connections with other people.
Anyways. I hope that as a community of hardheaded passionate idiots, that we are, we take it into consideration and push for this change.
What good would it be that, let's say, you onboard Pompliano for example. And then, people who are angry about tariffs (we all are) decide to downvote him, because he's advocating for them. To him it would be "these Hive high rep accounts attacked me, they hate free speech" and the outward projection of hive goes to shit, yet again.
It needs to matter how kind you are. How tolerant of other people's opinions. How embracing of different cultures.
I should say, in case I'm giving the wrong impression here. I'm not saying we need to declaw people. Downvotes have to exist. What I'm saying it can be the first attack, if you will, to dissuade people from bad behaviors.
Anyways, I rambled for too long.
I was about to write this very thing. You beat me to it. We've had influencers. The powers that be here always chase them away. Every time.
I agree with all that too. I'm not sure how we achieve this though when if you have a million hive it's like a warrant to act as you please. If you can put up with hundreds of people angry at you, then it's never going to matter.
There's a lot of psychology at play here too.
I'll say this much. Nobody wants to be "the bad guy" - Even Magneto thinks he's saving the world.
That's a good point. But remember though, no-one could convince Magneto that he wasn't saving the world haha.
touche! hahahah
To be fair... I used to care about the traction, impressions, etc, but I am so burned out on trying to build that influence with nobody caring, that I also stopped caring. I found ways to earn outside of needing to be some kind of social media influence, so now I just use it.
Hehe. I have felt your indifference on my posts haha. But good that you've found yourself somewhere.
Communities are the same way over on Facebook. I'm in a couple that have literally hundreds of thousands of users. Then I come here and similar communities only have a couple dozen. It's sad.
I'd really wish we had a gameplan for this :)
I think Hive lacks someone (or better, a group of people) who wants to lead the Hive image outside. I mean we don't have some kind of "boss", someone who can plan and make some effective promo. Who's running the Hive blockchain page on X? And Facebook and Instagram? And what about Tiktok? And I see many people on Reddit putting links to their blog, but do we have a Hive account on Reddit representing the blockchain?
And another thing that I think is really important and nobody's talking about it. The influencers world now is made of short video content. Reels and Tiktok. The big audience is not used to read anymore. They wanna watch someone speaking. And big influencers will never come here without a platform that let them upload their short videos. All my social presence as an artist is based on reels and I can't post them here...
Well, I think there are a lot of projects that are trying to bring new people onto our blockchain. I think @poshtoken, for example, does this quite well, but here too, the individual users are ultimately responsible for sharing the posts on Reddit, for example. Everyone can do their bit.
Of course we have a problem as you mentioned. It would be nice to have an influencer with 100,000 followers who promotes something cool on Hive, a new game or a big project, but I don't know who will take on this task. On X @theycallmedan tries to promote Hive as much as possible. By the way, what is your On X account, brofi or personal account? I can contribute to visibility by following and liking.
It would be interesting to actively work as a group on getting a couple of accounts monetized on twitter or youtube.
If we could get the first two accounts monetized then work on the next two and so on and so forth.
Build it up to 20 accounts earning from twitter. That is money that can be used to buy hive from the markets.
It could be a lead in for non hive users to take on the challenge of getting monetized on twitter by following the blog and posting on hive.
Tips and tricks as well as joining a community focused on creating money from social medias like twitter.
Then they earn hive while trying to earn money from twitter or other platforms.