My Advice for #Hive Growth/Expansion

Advice I give as "newbie" returning after a 3 year hiatus...

This community is an incentives-based community. I would venture to say that everyone here got here to earn money in a new, transformative way. (I learned about Steem via a random YouTube video. I didn't know anything about cryptocurrency beforehand.) In this post, I'll be giving an observation, maybe complaining a little, but giving suggestions on how to grow the #hive

I believe most people in the world who contribute to social media sources are not motivated to post for monetary reward. However, those who produce the largest followings on Twitter, Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok have grown their followings because of groupthink, benefiting greatly by ease of use in the GUI (Graphic User Interface). Case in point, it took too much research for me to find how to comfortably get a HIVE account, even when I had previously been on Steem (which was much easier to get started as I remember). It took dedication for me to get an account here. Why? When you go to hive.io, there are many ways to start an account, but they don't seem like they are legitimate portals at first glance (It seemed to me more like one of those bittorrent sites where you pick your download site and hope it doesn't have a virus...I didn't understand why the different portals wanted different methods of allowing me in the hive system). It's kinda weird that you can't just get a username/password right from the hive.io site instead of going through another portal. I don't know what that's about and haven't asked before... Had this been any other media outlet, like YouTube or Facebook, I would have been able to go directly to the root website and sign up in seconds. I would be able to pick out my own password, etc (I understand why the password is generated for you with Hive, Steem and the like). The barrier to entry for these media sites is extremely low. Hive has a slightly higher barrier to entry, in my opinion. The harder it is, the slower the Hive grows...

For Hive to succeed (greater, active user base...the currency value will happen naturally as the user base expands),

It must be easy to set up an account, so easy a caveman (or dimwit😉 wink to you @lucylin -he knows why I’m winking…it’s not mean) could sign up.
People need to be able to find the Hive with ease. For step 2 to take place, those who are already on Hive need to create content that is valuable to the masses. It needs content that can be scooped up by major search engines. One problem Hive has is that it has poor keywording. People don't search for #howtowriteabookinaday but they may look up "how to write a book in a day." Fortunately, bots are able to search within content...but metadata helps for SEO.
Voting is not "liking" like on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, etc. at least that's not what it was meant for...as I understand it. Voting was meant to be your way of saying, "Hey, this post has value for the community!" Downvoting would mean the direct opposite-"Hey, this should be shoved away in some corner of the dark web to never be seen again!" So what has value? In the YouTube world, a video has value if an advertiser is willing to pay to have their ad shown before, during, on top of, next to, or after the content. I get paid hundreds of dollars per month to have people watch my content. I can tell which videos are valuable and which are not based on how the populace responds to my videos via likes, subscriptions, shares, %-age of view time, etc. If I think that a post on Hive made me think, edified me, taught me something new, or fed my soul in some way, I usually upvote it, because I think that provides value for the community. If you really like one person’s content over another, follow that person. In YouTube, I have thousands of subscribers who do just that.
Content variety. If the only thing that is written in this realm is cryptocurrency, mediocre pictures taken on a hike, mediocre drawings, what someone is about to eat, or pity stories to conjure upvotes, HIVE will most likely never increase in value. Hive is similar to YouTube in theory-content creators get paid for what they do. If you like what they do, they get more money. If you don't like what they do, they get discouraged and leave. The difference, as I see it, is that HIVE is mostly text and picture based, not video based. The portion that is video based is flawed to a degree with the same flaw HIVE has...only 7 days of payout instead of perpetual payout.

Those are the 4 major things I’ve seen. The other flaws, like a limited 7 day payout, are things that Hive can’t really change because it’s bred into its methodology. For me, I make passive income on YouTube of hundreds of dollars a month. This comes from videos I've made over time and channels that gain traction. On HIVE, if you don't get noticed in the first 7 days, your content is then given to the public domain, essentially, and whether or not it gains traction, you lose out on any future residuals. I'm not complaining, but I'm giving reasons why it will be harder to produce content for HIVE vs somewhere else that is perpetuating my income.

I hope this helps someone who reads this to be inspired to post awe-inspiring posts with beautiful pictures that are appealing. I hope that people will tag their posts correctly so that people like my daughter and I don’t see NSFW pictures in our feed when because they didn’t get tagged properly. Building the hive community will build all our bank accounts, but it will also better the world…which should be the ultimate purpose. (by the way, I chose the pic below for the idea that the #hive produces honey...no sensuality intended)

Photo by Catherine Heath on Unsplash

Thank you to @lucylin in part for inspiring this post. This came mostly in part to me writing nearly the same information on many people's posts to realize I just needed to write my own post in one spot. Consider the thoughts spread...