As a newbie here on Hive, you may come to find that there isn't exactly a guide that you'll meet the moment you sign up. You either already have an onboarder that tries to show you around or you have found your way on your own for a while. Hive is an excitingly buzzy place, and it can get a bit muddled up or overwhelmed sometimes. Here are a few tips for a sublime experience on Hive, especially on your first days.
Curiousity. Observation. Enthusiasm.
The easiest and fastest way to learn and grow when starting out with anything is to develop an interest in whatever it may be, get curious, and be observant. Such behaviour tends to make things "make sense" to one quick enough.
For the reason that one may likely have come from the web2 space, there are many concepts about Hive and Web3 that wouldn't make much sense. Things like frontends, tokens, stablecoins, upvotes, and many more may sound like foreign languages. It gets deeper—knowledge to thrive here, mean—and it is usually those that put in a little more effort to learn about those things that get the hang of things earlier and do better with every turn.
It is important to be open to ideas, inquisitive, and willing to adapt to an entirely new space. With or without an onboarder, one is bound to excel by being ready to learn. Read. Explore. Observe. Experiment.
If you see something that piques your interest, don't be hesitant to inquire about it and gain knowledge; markdowns that look pretty stylish and fancy; different frontends and how they interact with one another; HBD, HIVE, layer two tokens, and how they work; Discord and why people use it a lot for Hive-related activities—anything at all, ask! You'd be surprised to find how fast you'd improve over time.
Put Yourself Out There
You will learn over and over that engagement is very important to one's growth. The general idea is to regularly check other creators around, consume their content, and then engage them with thoughtful and intentional comments. That's golden, and it should be taken seriously. However, what I have to say here is a little bit of an extension of this concept.
You see, it is very important to put yourself out there by also making your interactions meaningful and letting people know you for real. There is authenticity in being ourselves. Not everyone is extroverted, which is understandable, but how can you really connect when you keep your personality all to yourself and stay in your shell? Just as much when you're in a gathering of people and you don't really say anything or interact with people and you just feel like a ghost is how it is here.
In your interactions with people on their posts through comments, let in more of your personality if you can. But the idea I present here is mostly directed at off-chain interactions.
Many Hivers connect on social media platforms outside Hive for related and non-related Hive activities. Discord is the most commonly used one. Get on it if you aren't on it yet, and then join servers that you may be interested in.
Many of the community servers on Discord have activities to facilitate activities between members. Participate in some of them if you can, and when you do interact in the way that you can, keep showing up regularly. Soon enough—with being friendly and mutually respectful, of course—you'll endear yourself to people, and you'll make friends that way.
Be Intentional About Your Interests
In your journey here on Hive, you will find a lot of fascinating stuff. Like many of us, you may start out feeling "nicheless." With the power that Hive gives us all, we are free to be just that and more. What is important is to understand what really matters to you and the type of content you want to consume.
You'll find a lot of different people that you might consider interesting. The big ones, in particular, would be very inspiring to you, like the whales or those with way higher reputation numbers. It's all good and nice to want to keep up with these people and possibly connect with them. There's a catch, however.
When you click on the "follow" button for many people without really being intentional about why you want to follow them and have them pop on your feed, you'll have an issue to deal with. You may eventually begin to realise over time that some of those people may not exactly create content that exactly appeals to you all of the time. When there are so many of them, you then find your feed clogged up with things that you are not really interested in. Then you may never really check your feed much, unless you have lists, of course.
Be certain about your reason to follow people, especially that when they do not follow back (as you may expect), it wouldn't hurt. And then, you have your feed look more appealing, as you would see more of what you gave more thought about following up.
There are many more that one would learn about in their journey on Hive from when they are first starting out, but these are a few to mention to help one have their tracks streamlined.
