There are billions of social media users and ideally we would have millions of them on HIVE. According to statistics posted by @dalz, there are only few thousand users actively being a part of HIVE. The following is the chart for @peakd front end (which is among the most popular front ends).
I consider being a part of HIVE as a positive sum game and make a conscious effort to use multiple DAPPs and front ends everyday. There are many ways to bring in users. Games + microblogging has been my favourite combo to talk about. I don't want to make the conversation completely focused on two niches. We have to improve the user experience of being a content creator on HIVE.
Web 2 Compensates With Audience
These claims are either extreme edge cases or exaggerations. What we can know for sure is that these things are impossible on HIVE. We have not made past the 3 million account milestone yet. @dalz has some statistics on this:
The argument that centralized social media doesn't pay its users does not mean a lot to most users. People want to be popular and they go after the places where there is a large audience they can capture. Making money becomes an secondary thing. This problem is compounded by the difficulty in earning on HIVE.
The New Blogger Experience
Getting started on any type of content creation and building an audience is a very difficult task. I have been blogging since 2017 and even after all these years of work, I have 2,432 followers and make few dollars when I make a long form article such as the one you are reading right now. This is better than most bloggers manage to get in their lifetime. Most of the attention + money goes to a few creators on top. HIVE is not any different.
We Can Be Better Than Everyone Else
Not all traditional business/marketing advice work for a decentralized social media such as HIVE. One thing for sure is that being better than rest of the competition can go a long way. Excelling at only one thing will not make a big difference. That is fine because HIVE is already excelling at many different things.
- We have extremely high censorship resistance.
- Backlinks from multiple front ends can be great for SEO.
- Content is monetized from the very beginning.
- One account; many DAPPs.
- Amazing community.
These are already reasons why some users come and create an account. Then some of them start writing long form content and the struggle begins.
Typical HIVE Advice Works*
The challenge is that it is a massive investment and a time commitment. Most authors think good content should earn them good votes. This is something that hardly ever happens. At times I have seen a some of my best works get overlooked by a poll I made spending 10% of the time get better rewards. I write as a hobby and I financial incentives only make up a part of the picture. This is not the case for everyone.
Replace E-Mail with Discord and many of the advice given for traditional blogs and newsletters will apply to HIVE. Most successful bloggers spend 20% of their time writing and 80% of their time promoting their content. HIVE success will not be that different unless you are a Whale or part of a popular DAPP/project.
HIVE Blogging Needs An Alpha (α)
α is a term used in investing to describe the ability to beat the market. If you cannot beat the overall market; why even bother making individual trades? In the context of this article, what I'm looking at are ideas and strategies that can make HIVE more attractive to anyone looking to write long form content. I will list some of the competition we have.
- Medium
- Substack
- Personal Blogs
- Other Web 3 Social Media
We need to provide some α to make HIVE into the place where content creators thrive. It is possible to get a custodial account in a matter of seconds and write something on blockchain. What we need is a way to keep these users active.
Engagement X Money Makes The Difference
I was going to write the above heading as "Engagement + Money". While writing the article, I came to the realization that it is better to look at this as a multiplication. Consider this a framework to approach author retention. I can go on and add some ideas into the mix of how to onboard authors and keep them active. That would be the opinion of a single Dolphin who has been continuously blogging for 7 years.
There are those with a longer track record. There are those with many different types of experience with different types of content (@threespeak is one of them). I want to know what changes you would like to see to make HIVE gain an α on top of all the other alternative regardless of cryptocurrency aspects.