Last year I began using D.Buzz together with Hive Blog. This is the most important lesson I've learned during this year.
Cover image made using MS Paint. Icons come from Hive.io.
On 2021-June-5 I published a post titled "Advice Needed: Best Way To Use D.Buzz with Hive.Blog"; the post is short enough that I can quote it in its entirety here (typos and all):
8 years ago I abandoned social media from what we call today Big Tech. I cancelled my accouns[sic] at MySpace and Facebook. At the time I never had a Twitter account, and even after Instagram went live I never bothered with it.
Now I'm posting to the Blog on Hive, mainly using Ecency but also the main pages for LeoFinance and Proof of Brain. Recently I discovered D.Buzz, Hive's version of Twitter.
I know that people use Twitter and Instagram to promote their other social media, and some of those are far better than most others at doing that.
Using social media is one thing, but using social media well is something else. I should be able to do something similar using D.Buzz and other Hive dApps, even if my gains are modest. Are there any rules or strategies I should follow to get better at using social media? I need a clue!
💡 I Have That Clue Now!
One word: Engagement.
This is one key point stressed by 
It's not enough to use D.Buzz to announce that I have a new post at LeoFinance, or at Proof of Brain, or even at Hive Business Center.
Yes, I have a new post; who cares?
Give People a Reason To Care
If all I did was use D.Buzz to announce my new postings, maybe Buzzers click through to reach the post after seeing my name 50 times on their D.Buzz feed. Maybe. It can happen, but that can take a while.
Then I made buzzes about problems I had to situations I found myself in. I was using D.Buzz as poor man's tech support, and that proved more effective in getting more feedback to my buzzes. The drawback with this approach was that it was hit-or-miss, and even then it was unpredictable. Also, the topic was too limiting: While we all have our tech troubles, that's not why we signed up to use D.Buzz.
Buzzers (as any other kind of people) care mainly about themselves, and why not? So I needed to interact with them on their own terms:
- I upvoted many blockchain gaming buzzes as a show of support, even though I was clueless on the games;
- I replied to topics where I could add value or at least learn more;
- In recent months, I began to reblog buzzes.
In short, I engaged.
Once I began to engage, my fellow Buzzers got a better idea of who I am. Eventually my account for using D.Buzz picked up followers at a steady pace. Some of those followers also became followers of mine at my main account.
My Routine at D.Buzz
It should work the same way at LeoFinance or any other place where I spend my time, but for some reason it works best for me with D.Buzz:
- I view the last 24-hours' worth of buzzes, or at least buzzes in between my own.
After a few days of doing this regularly, I was able to learn more about
some of my fellow Buzzers. They were also able to learn more about me.
This two-way engagement showed me that I was on to something in my use of D.Buzz. While I don't have the followings or earnings of more established Buzzers, I know I've done enough to make the dApp work in my favor.
Engagement is an All-Around, All-the-Time Thing
This isn't like the old days where we set up a web page at GeoCities or AngelFire or Xoom and expect people to visit our page "just because." (Many times, people didn't visit those pages.) That was a passive approach, and on its own is not enough to help us or Hive grow.
Engagement is active, and it needs to go in both directions as often as possible. No matter how many accounts we have or which front-ends we use, we need to engage with our fellow Hivers of all kinds.
Just My Two Sats
It's not enough to use a microblogging platform to promote our own content. We all do that.
What not all of us do is engage with our fellow Buzzers (or Tweeters, or Blankers once Project BLANK goes live). Engagement is engagement, and it works no matter which platform we use.
If we can succeed with D.Buzz in this way, we can succeed with any other microbloggig platform; only the numbers and the scale change.
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