Holy shitballs Batman! Seven years blogging and engaging here on Hive and the unnamed and unhinged previous incarnation which will remain unnamed! Moving swiftly on...
Seven years people. That's 364 weeks or 2,548 sleeps. Were one to live till the tender old age of one hundred, they'd enjoy 365,000 sleeps, so 2,548 is a fair auld chunk, 7% all in. Wow, seven years is indeed a long time.
I only realised it was seven years, when this popped up below one of my recent posts.
This post will look back on some highlights, key learnings and biggest regrets. Although, I don't like talking about regrets, as all decsions good or bad have led us to where we are today, I do have a Hive regret or maybe two. I'll definitely tell you more about this later in my post, so read on to learn more.
Who should read this?
Well, for sure any newbies, it's amazing how much you can pick up from old hands like me, who've been around the blockchain. Any of my regular readers and friends might enjoy looking back too. Right then, the scene is set, let's start with some Hive Highlights.
There's been a few over the years. I'll cover a few in the bullet points below.
Meeting cool heads from around the world - There's loads of sound heads on Hive, I won't start naming people, but if yiu look back over my comments, the ones I tend to have meaningful conversations with are the ones I'm referring to and all the regulars on Three Tune Tuesday. I regularly catch up with people across six continents, which is pretty cool and reading their posts keeps me abreast of happenings across the globe.
Featuring on the trending page - It's funny. When you first happen upon Hive and see the payouts for posts, you think that you've happened upon a goldmine. You signup, diligently write the Pullizer prize winning opening post and sit back and wait for the dollars to roll in and roll in, they do not! In fact you'll be lucky if anybody reads it at all. That was especially true in those early days on our predecessor chain. At least now, many newbie first posts are found, rewarded and celebrated. I think my first ever post got $0.01 which was a little disappointing. I'm a determined type of a fella though, I guess 192 Three Tune Tuesday posts without break attests to that fact! So I kept on trucking and eventually I found followers, got engagement and on a few occasions even made it to the top five trending page. They were proud moments for me and took years to achieve.
Learning - I've learned so much here on Hive about myself, about my creativity, about others, about finance, about sport, about friendship. The list goes on and on. Once you identify the knowledgeable and interesting people here on chain, you can certainly learn a lot across diverse areas.
Earning - I admire honesty, so let me be honest and say another highlight is earning Hive and HBD for blogging, commenting and simply sharing things about myself here. Who know, some day I might point my children towards this to learn more about me or even my grand children or great grand children if I'm lucky enough to have them and see them. You leave a legacy of sorts begind here I suppose.
As I said in the intro above, I'm not big into regrets overall, as I believe the road that has brought you to where you are now was influenced by all of your decisions, behaviours and happenings along the way. So in a sense, if you're happy with your lot, then there is no place for regrets.
However, when it comes to Hive, I definitely have got one regret. That is that my head got turned when the in fighting kicked off here back in the days of big bots and bullshit.
Around the same time, I heard about an up and coming Sports blogging project called Scorum and I went all in on that with my blogging and time and all but ignored this chain for over one year. In hindsight, had I stuck around and kept my growth steadily rising, I could conceivably and realistically be a 100K HP or more poster, instead I'm languishing on around 14K HP, which isn't bad but a zero after the 14 would be so much sweeter!
What's done is done however, and there's no reason why I can't get to 100K HP over the coming years, if I continue to turn up every day, engage and add value.
If you are just starting out your Hive journey or if you've been here a while, and just don't get the support that you believe you deserve, then the below points are for you. I've seen plenty of similar posts from others on chain too, some of us learn from them and others chose to ignore them. Guess who grows more?
So what have been my key learnings that enable growth?
Engagement - You've already heard about my super lucrative first ever Hive post which gained a grand total of $0.01 in upvotes. Why did it perform so badly? Was it well written? Yes it was. However, what I failed to realise was that it just disappeared into the ether. There have been thoudands of posts written today that I didn't see and may never see, especially from newcomers who haven't built up a following yet. How do you build up a following? Engagement my friends. What does that mean? It means reading others posts and commenting. It means joining communities. It means replying to people when they comment on your posts. Engagement is the single most important thing to do in order to be successful.
Add Value - If you're new, maybe don't over post to begin with. Think quality over quantity. Post about something you're passionate about or something you have a unique perspective on. Don't retell the news. We all have news sources already and they have well paid journalists who are great at telling stories in an engaging manner, so instead of reinventing a Ferrari wheel as a battered Lada wheel, try coming up with something unique and interesting. Add value. Create content which people want to consume. The same goes for comments, don't just leave them for the sake of it. Make sure they add value or ask a pertinent question which others may be also wondering about.
Actually Read Posts - There are few more annoying things on Hive than people who blanket bomb thoughtless comments like "nice post" "great post" or similar. You may as well post "I didn't read your post and I'm fishing for some upvotes". So if you want to piss people off, don't read their posts and leave generic useless comments like these. If on the other hand you want to gain followers and engagement then read posts that you're genuinely interested in and leave intelligent comments that show that you read the post and have a genuine interest in the subject matter.
Understand the Eco system - If one wants to grow and prosper in any eco system, one must understand the eco system in the first instance. A good first step would be to read the Hive White Paper which explains what Hive is and how it operates. Here's a link for anyone who hasn't already read it.
https://hive.io/whitepaper.pdf
Create your own brand - I don't mean you become the next Hugo Boss lads. No, but I do mean, try and have something that makes your posts unique to you, it could be a sign off on all your posts for example. Your writing style can also make your posts uniquely yours.
Invest some FIAT - This is something I didn't do and in hindsight, had I invested €1000 in the early days, my progress would have been so much quicker in those early days. Even just 1000HP would have made such a difference, as that first 1000 HP seems to take forever to accumulate. If you could fast track that journey to 1000HP with an injection of FIAT, then do it. This will also mean that you have some skin in the game meaning you will be more likely to stick with Hive in those sometimes challenging early days.
So there you have it.
7 years.
364 weeks.
8,736 hours.
524,160 minutes.
It's been some craic. Here's to the next 524,160 minutes 🍻
These photos are all my own taken on my Samsung Smartphone.
