I have been reading a lot of the posts about getting more people, Nigerians especially, to join the hive blockchain. In this post, i will share my onboarding experience and possible solutions.
I have been on the hive blockchain for quite some time now. During this time i have tried to onboard a couple of people with little success and for obvious reasons, one of them being the poor social experience.
It is difficult navigating the hive ecosystem as a newbie. Most of the people I have onboarded quitted in the first two weeks. These are some of the reasons I get when I ask why:
“I cannot write long articles”
“It is difficult to understand.”
“I don’t get upvotes”
“I don’t have the time”
These are valid excuses because everyone who joined this platform at some point encountered similar problems. Things were a lot difficult when i signed up 3 years ago. Most of the tools you use today weren't available then. However, i was able to stay consistent and over time things changed. Unfortunately, not everyone has that stamina.
Now, with that being said i think there is a lot of work needed to improve the social experience on hive. It is the key to the growth of the chain and if we continue to act like it doesn't matter the project will remain in the shadows.
I was having a conversation with my friend @lizzblue2, who i onboarded last year. She is a Nigerian in Ukraine and one of the most talented people i know and i have been trying to get her active on hive.
She mentioned to me during our conversation that she would be keener to post on hive if the user experience was better and i think for most people this covers functioning and moderns interfaces with engaging content.
On hive Naija, the goal is to create a safe and fun space for Nigerians to interact. To be honest, we aren’t doing so great on the fun side of things. The dilemma for me is that i am not used to the type of content Nigerians find entertaining, so that is a challenge for me as a mod.
Also, i have noticed that there are a lot of fractions in the Nigerian community. During one of the live sessions on hivenaija discord channel, someone revealed to me that a certain friend of his who introduced him to hive refused to join the hivenaija community because he did not like certain people in the community.
So there is the case of jealousy and bad blood between Nigerians on hive, and to be fair it is understandable. There are certain individuals here i dont like, however, it doesn’t matter in the grand scheme of things because at the end of the day we would all benefit from having a robust and active community.
HOW DO WE CREATE AN ENTERTAINING AND ENGAGING AMTOSTPHERE FOR NIGERIANS ON HIVE?
I think it all starts with the community we already have. If we want people to jump on the hive train, we must organize ourselves better and put out better content.
Also, we have to work together. One of the major reasons i stayed on hive during my early days was because of the airhawk community. They gave me all the support and information I needed to thrive. We had strong communities back then. Unfortunately, we are yet to replicate the glory days of 2018, maybe we can, but it will take a lot of effort.
I will do my best to lead by example. I dont think i have been much of a great leader/mod lately. There is so much i can do actually but notwithstanding i believe hivenaija can be the home of Nigerians on the hive blockchain. Once we get to that point, onboarding and user retention would improve significantly.