Proposal Context
Several months ago, Hilarious Agency was contacted by @arcange, one of the top 20 witnesses and most active developers on Hive, to set up a marketing campaign aimed at promoting Hive and whose main target would be application developers.
Many members of the community no longer wish to promote "blog and earn". Previous promotional campaigns to "grow the community" have clearly demonstrated that this does not work! And a marketing approach aimed at the tokenomics of HIVE and HBD would be drowned in the plethora of proposals already available.
@arcange spent a lot of time explaining all the basics of Hive and its different components (social, financial, technical). He also explained how Hive funds projects through the DHF and the inherent risks.
Together, we agreed to comply and start the project by putting our skin in the game. Concretely, this means that:
- we have already started our work.
- we will go to HiveFest to present and explain the marketing campaign we have built.
We have done an important work of preliminary reflection which is now complete. The content of the communication and the main baseline of the campaign have also been defined. The next phase is therefore the definition of the most effective communication strategy and the planning of the campaign.
UPDATE:
If you missed our presentation at HiveFest (thank you @arcange for introducing it), don't worry! It's been recorded and you can watch it on YouTube.
Proposal Details
This proposal aims to fund a strategy & concept campaign targeted to external devs in order to make them want to join the Hive community, with end goal of making the number of projects and applications developed on Hive grow.
WHO?
@behilarious - Hilarious Agency. Well-known for gamification & high standards designs.
@arcange - A well-known Hive witness and developer, who has an excellent reputation within the Hive community and who will act as the custodian of the proposal funds.
WHY?
Because HIVE needs to see its number of projects growing, and it needs to be attractive for external devs.
To make it short, we want to replicate cases like Splinterlands which made the Hive ecosystem grow both in terms of users but also in terms of visibility for the Hive blockchain and its tokens.
PHASE 1 - STRATEGY & CONCEPT
When briefing the agency on the topic, Hilarious Agency rapidly came back with the feedback that the Hive ecosystem is way too complex. We have several websites and information is hard to find. Furthermore, a recent study internal to Hive shows that the resources and tutorials are not optimal for now to jump on Hive and comprehend Hive’s concepts.
The consequence is that potential new devs might quit trying to find the info they’re looking for and will join another community. If we keep things as they are, we will have huge trouble attracting new developers, and thus, staying competitive.
After much research, strategies, and conception time, Hilarious Agency came up with a new concept, named Hivefive, to overcome the spotted issues.
Hivefive’s main goal is to connect people, mainly devs, and to make the building of dApps on Hive more fun and easy.
The Hivefive platform will be composed of 3 sections:
1. The hunt
The hunt is a matching tool, based on dating apps system.
It will allow devs to quickly see what projects are being developed on Hive – and their status, and their info
Interactions can be undertaken:
- I want in: I want to join the project and contribute
- More info pls: I’m interested but I have some questions
- AWESOME : I love the project!
- I have doubts: I don’t see the added value of the project
Projects are swiped through, and in the lively and direct manner of Fruitz, some interactions can be undertaken. It is important to make the experience as simple as possible.
Potential contributors can fill in their profiles with their skills, experiences, availability, time-zone, … and an algorithm will show them projects based on their profiles and preferences.
2. The feed
On this page, there is a dashboard of activity on the Hive blockchain. It is important to show any user the dynamism of Hive.
This is where users can create a project:
- Share project ideas in order to get feedback
- Upload presentation sheets of existing projects, allowing to have a synthesized view of the development, the roadmap, and the evolution of the project
- Upload community funding requests
- Upload job opportunities, missions, and volunteer contributions within the projects
This is where users can also create Hive Improvement Proposals:
- Sharing of ideas for improvements and/or new initiatives
- List of possible volunteer contributions
- Community voting and funding
3. The Library
Aimed at new developers to get started properly on Hive.
Building a consolidated information directory of what you need to know about: developpers.hive.io, hivedapps.com, peakd.com, hive.blog, hivebuzz.me, whyhive.io, hiveprojects.io, others...
Building a database of documents, masterclasses & tutorials, help, and advice from the community for using Hive:
- How to get started with Hive
- Using the Hive Wallet (hivewallet.app)
- Exploring the Hive blockchain (hiveblocks.com)
- How Hive governance works
- How to vote and/or fund initiatives
- more...
Total budget for this phase: $25,000
PHASE 2 - DESIGN
With their expertise in User Experience & User Interface, Hilarious Agency will take care of designing the Hivefive platform. This will include:
- wireframing of all the pages
- user interface and interactions
- prototyping & handing over the design to Hive developers that will take care of the development.
The goal is to have a fresh and bold design that will make Hive attractive to new developers. 3D Design is not excluded.
Total budget for this phase: $30,000 USD
PHASE 3 - COMMUNICATION MATERIALS
Once the platform is done, we need to advertise to make sure our communication tool Hivefive is seen by our target: developers.
To do that, we need to work on the messages we will get across, and advertise where devs are. Campaign materials such as videos, animations and others will need to be produced, following the specifications of each channel.
Paid campaigning has to be supported by a content strategy. On sites like Medium, Dev.to, awwwards or learnweb3, we can find content about ‘Developing on Ethereum’ or others. Hive needs to position itself as an expert in web3 and tackle topics around that on those channels. This is owned media, as we cannot pay for such placements but the whole community will need to share the content to make it seen by potential newbies.
Hilarious Agency can help by drafting 3 months of content calendars and publishing the articles/tutorials on the channels themselves. However, they will need the help of the community to properly write and review the articles.
Total budget for this phase: $15,000
PHASE 4 - MEDIA PLANNING & MEDIA BUYING
Hilarious Agency takes care of media planning and media buying.
Channels that were chosen for paid campaigning are currently Twitter & LinkedIn. Other ad placements will also be made on web3carreers, dev.to, …
A more specific media package will be published at a later stage.
Total budget for resources: $20,000
Total budget for media buying: $70,000
Budget and funding
As mentioned in the Proposal Context section, a significant preliminary work of analysis and creation has already been carried out.
On the other hand, Hilarious Agency is and remains a traditional communication agency with people on its payroll. That does not allow them to commit to such a long-term project without any guarantee of funding.
We, @arcange and @behilarious, have agreed on the following funding scheme:
- total budget: $160,000 (cf. supra)
- banking fees 2% (conversion from HBD to FIAT + transfers)
budget: 5400 HBD
This budget is to cover services as a project coordinator during the next 4 months. It does not include the last months of work done or the expenses incurred so far.
Services are:
- Close monitoring of the progress of the campaign, making sure that the defined objectives and planning are respected.
- Regular meetings with Hilarious Agency.
- Regular reports to the community on the results of the work and campaign
Request for funding
Due to the way the DHF works, the possibility that stakeholders stop voting on the proposal and in order not to have to wait months to collect the funds, the daily payment will be set at 16860 HBD per day for 10 days.
Funds will be held in the dedicated @behilarious.dhf account.
@arcange will be the sole owner of the keys to this account and will act as custodian.
Funds will be released according to the following schedule:
- 50% once the entire budget has been collected.
- 30% 2 month later
- 20% once the Hivefive portal is delivered
If the proposal is not funded or partially funded, our work will be put on hold and a new proposal to collect the missing funds will be issued, taking into account any comments from the community.
FINAL WORD
Hive is sorely lacking in outward-facing marketing and a well-organized developer information hub.
We are convinced that it is by attracting new developers to use the Hive blockchain for their projects and applications that we will grow our entire ecosystem sustainably. We have already had several demonstrations of this.
Support This Proposal:
- Vote for this proposal on Peakd.com
- Vote for this proposal on Ecency.com
- Vote for this Proposal on Hive.blog / https://wallet.hive.blog/proposals
- Vote for this Proposal using HiveSigner
Thank you for your support!
I will be upfront with my feedback and say that I do not support this proposal.
For starters, it doesn't take into account any of the work and massive hours invested by community members into this very project. A large amount of work has already been done to present Hive as a space to develop on. We have secured multiple AMAs, speaking opportunities, sponsorships, provided materials, and presented to and in conjunction with multiple platforms. To pretend that nothing has been done is frankly insulting to those of us who manage these functions.
We already had a marketing company involved with Hive once and despite all their efforts, the impact was minimal. The impact of how much time managing and guiding them took, however, was unprecedented. We learned through experience that no external company can come in and treat Hive as a regular client, allocating hours to Hive as per their budget. The company we ended up working with emerged at a loss because the learning curve to market Hive while correctly representing it is very high. Everything had to be written and rewritten many times over, numerous people were assigned to the project and replaced, and in general it was far more hands-on than any other client, to my understanding. That relationship was not prolonged for the benefit of Hive and everyone else.
It is a fact that any marketing efforts will require the use of established Hive social media accounts. For security reasons, those accounts will always stay in-house and will never be passed on to external teams for management purposes. This means that they require the cooperation of account managers. This proposal does not even hint at the fact that other individuals on Hive will have to dedicate their time and effort to make the proposal a success.
We also already have several proposals out towards this end. One is @valueplan which is allocated to Hive promotional and marketing initiatives as well as sponsorships. $160k is about what @valueplan spent this year so far and as many know it's been an incredible amount of high-impact work and global representation. Next year we'll boost it further (this was our first year with such an account).
We have the capability to put together a portal/website in-house and due to our decentralized nature we should use that. There are more than enough frontend and backend developer, UX experts and designers. For anyone who wants proof, simply take a look at our dapps. Most of those teams were sourced from Hive itself.
Lastly, there are gaps in Hive marketing and I will be the first to admit them. The main gap right now is social media ads. The gap isn't because we don't know how to create them and set them but is a direct result of Hive being decentralized and not a company; we do not have a corporate credit card. It is a very simple gap to rectify and we have been working towards that and simply waiting for the bear market to end to launch the ads.
It is my position that any developer-focused marketing should be done in-house without (with due respect to your agency) hiring any marketing firms. We have the budget for it via @valueplan and we already have much of the work completed. I believe any engagement by your firm should be done at a hourly rate in a consultation capacity, if such engagement is warranted, and only for select segments of the proposed plan.
This feedback is not to diminish the credibility of your agency nor to insult your work. It's the honest feedback of someone who provided significant contributions towards growing the marketing function on Hive over the last two years.
Its a pity you weren't at HiveFest to see the presentation. Just because it didn't work to use an external agency before does not mean it can't be done.
Thank you for your comment @guiltyparties. We appreciate that you took the time to write to us at length.
As @arcange has already provided answers and as we are on the same page, we will not repeat.
We are open to any collaboration and even actively count on it. After HiveFest, @arcange told us about your role in the community regarding promotion. Maybe we could arrange a meeting so that you can share your experience and concerns with us.
Let's speak after Arcange is feeling better. One of the issues I didn't mention before is the fact that major campaigns have to be timed with the market turns. Right now it would be a loss but if we launch something on the upswing then we can ride the wave up. A Discord or Telegram group can be set up to discuss as preferred.
Voting to counter the downvotes, the discussion is interesting and deserves to not be buried.
yeah marketing campaign was 100% waste. But what do we expect? It was run by someone that has no experience in marketing.
"Top agency" is a sales word. The strategy was also bad in the proposal.
A working marketing strategy will become itself the marketing tool.
Outreach and post about hive on other sites ( private ones like blogs) is the most efficient strategy into sharing videos from hive users that have some solutions for some problems.
That would be network neutral and beneficial for all.
But will also never happen, because that includes SEO and nobody here understands online marketing or seo.
The marketing campaign was 0% waste. Thats utter nonsense. We accumulated millions of impressions and hundreds of thousands of views...
The budget didnt allow for much more. 60k HBD is literally nothing. Thats 2 mentions by top crypto influencers.
Yeah, it was a waste but doesn't matter.
Thinking more money is more result is a huge Timmy mindset in marketing.
Special because huge news outlets also accept paid content.
I think the "top agency" was a waste. The result is bad and impressions are with nothing.
Articles stay, Influencer shoutouts not.
I think the plan from the start was very bad, special because it was not bonded on a result.
This will always end up in waste.
And before you cry, its not critics about you, I know you tried your best and fall for the typical marketing of an agency.
But my old comments exactly said this long time ago.
Edit: and i saw the points, 100% overpriced for the results.
I mean for that "low 60k" hive could hire a person for full time reach out, lmao.
Its was big waste.
That is exactly the case 100%. Ads cost money, articles cost money, coverage costs money, crypto advertising costs money, influencers cost money, PRs cost money, sponsorships cost money.
Hive isnt Dogecoin that it has Elon Musk whose 1 tweet is worth more than 10 marketing budgets.
The agency worked for 3 months I worked for the next 9. So the marketing campaign in most part wasnt the agency.
For 60k you could hire 1 marketing agent, pay his wages to literally achieve nothing as he has no budget whatsover to work with.
I did that work for free and spent it all on reach.
Just on that merit alone this campaign, with the budget available achieved significantly more than could have if anyone was hired for the full lenght and budget.
One of the reasons I moved away from the agency was that people doing work want to be paid.
Im the idiot not getting paid and having to listen to this type of stupid shit youre writing. Completely clueless of the fact that I made 1 dollar spent be worth 2.
Without a defined goal marketing is worthless. It is what it is.
And reaching out means letting people know about it. That's the most efficient ( and time-consuming) strategy in marketing.
You are only proof of what I say.
Talking to tech sites blogs, and interviews and letting the marketing be viral.
It is what it is 100% waste.
But you are IMO was also the wrong person from the experience to it ( that's no personal offense).
Marketing at the end needs to result in a lead.
Or in a strong brand marketing.
Nothing happens, nothing to build on = waste.
This was literally done months before any proposal was made. Defining the goal is the most basic thing without which you cant even start anything.
"Reaching out means letting people know about it." Are you serious with this?
There is a name for every way possible in "letting people know about it". Email marketing, advertising, influencer marketing, PRs, general articles, videos.
Thats "letting them know about it." 😂
Jesus Christ dude. "Letting marketing be viral."😂
Ok, you go try that. Make shit viral. While you are at it, just go cure cancer and make world peace.
Just do it.
Im done here.
"I'm the idiot not getting paid and having to listen to this type of stupid shit you're writing. Completely clueless of the fact that I made 1 dollar spent be worth 2."
I'm sure you would work alone without an agency. Hire 1 web dev for 500$ from Upwork or fiverr for onboarding and build yourself marketing texts,
The result would be better.
"to this type of stupid shit, you're writing"
LMAO, I make a living out of marketing for close to a decade now. So yeah I think my experience is deeper.
It was from day 1 a waste. Wasting time on something stupid doesn't make it good, lol.
Btw the football guy never talked again after it about hive? And was never active since then?
I mean the agency was bad for sure.
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Very impressed by your Hive Fest presentation and the way you understood Hive (@arcange also deserves to be congratulated for briefing you so well.)
Marketing to developers is clearly the correct approach to grow Hive and you seem to have a good strategy to do this.
I have voted for the proposal.
Thank you for your feedback and for your support.
We can indeed confirm that @arcange's teaching skills have helped us a lot!
I thoroughly enjoyed the presentation you guys gave in HiveFest and this proposal gave more details to what is to come.
Looking forward to how it unfolds.
Thank you @kenechukwu97
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sounds good your PR / marketing selection @arcange - still waiting for your reply after your question though - enjoy Hivefest.
Just saw your presentation on the live stream 👏👏👏
I was impressed by your presentation at Hivefest, I've voted for your proposal with my proxy account.
Thank you for your feedback and support @demotruk
Awesome, potentially more dapps in the future for me to fiddle with.
That's what we're working on. Thank you for your comment @noodlypanda
I checked out the website and I like what I see. I think getting this proposal funded will help HIVE a great deal. Most people are simply unaware of HIVE. We are still ahead of most projects in terms of technology. It is marketing aspect that HIVE is lacking the most in.
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Very interesting proposal, thanks @arcange for letting me know about this initiative!
Such a really great proposal @arcange Hive really needs this to take more visibility. I have suggested that dapps devs should launch their product’s on Product Hunt and get supported by the community. You have my support.
Thank you @noakmilo
Sounds appealing. More adoption from the outside seems very lucrative for the growth of Hive.
@behilarious and @archange - I'm sorry I missed this.
Please ping me if I can help with this. Writing is my day job...happy to submit my credentials, too.
All the best with the project.
I'll happily support any cost-effective idea which helps Hive to grow. I've voted to support this proposal 😀
Might I humbly suggest an additional thing that could be done in association with this if the proposal gets accepted ? As a relatively non-technical Hive user (to me at present, it's mainly a social media/blogging outlet, with the added benefit of earing some crypto), something I find confusing is the regular mentions of all kinds of other things lurking in the Hive ecosystem. But I haven't seen a central directory of all of them that is kept up-to-date and includes upcoming projects with a guide to when to expect them to be launched.
Setting up a central directory is (I hope !) something which would be relatively easy to implement, but I appreciate it would need ongoing upkeep as well as needing a strong awareness campaign to bring it to the attention (probably quite regularly...) of Hive users. Perhaps even built into the Home pages of Ecency, LeoFinance etc.
But the upside is that it would show prospective developers that users would be made aware of their projects, they wouldn't just disappear into limbo, thus making it more attractive for them to do the development on Hive in the first place.
Hihi , seems quite hilarious to me , but I know nothing about that topic .
But having developing persons been attractedt to !our #CHAINZ is important ?
Yes it is .
And isn´t there also a lack of ideas what to develope ?
Keep up the Good work I and spread the word Hive is awesome place to be
I vote, but i think guest posts on certain sites and networking has better results.
Its the problem with all marketing around hive, it has no longterm roadmap, maybe because of the decentralized nature.
Most agencies are good enough for local businesses but would fail in e-commerce.
E-commerce is the standard for high-level results, but those cost also more.
So what could be done? Use a high-level strategy for marketing.
But selling marketing on hive is impossible, so yeah this is better than nothing.
Excellent initiative, I am glad that you are supporting the developers, so that the Hive community grows more every day, I congratulate you.