Hey Hive
This is going to be long but has a few suggestions on potential directions our community could explore based on my experiment later explained in the second half. Please be patient. Most of it might be shit but there might be a couple of gold nuggets buried in there...Then again, maybe not.
I come to everyone with a serious mater and I propose that we re-adjust our focus slightly via onboarding and a direction we could take Hive if we change our perspective and approach slightly while continuing the current efforts already taking place. It's no secret we have been losing users and are not attracting new ones to keep a healthy consistent growth to the platform. Now the future looks promising and there is growth on the horizon but we need solutions right meow and this is a suggestion and I have been pondering and experimenting with mildly for a few months and observing trends. Once we could blame stinc for the environment but not anymore, we are on our own, we get what we put in. There is talk of a marketing team and strategy being put in place but this could also become a strategy of it's own with community effort and a change of mindset to consider to make this place lit for free with a little effort from everyone. And a proposal on potential lost income for the platform that could benefit in various ways with the strategy I am proposing if you are willing to read this.
There is great development taking place behind the scene but hive is still a diamond in the rough being in early stages and is treated like this secret club we don't talk about because we hate mainstream media and fakebook yet wonder why nobody is getting the message about the beautiful community we have created together. I understand the logic of hating fakebook but understand this, the content is also decided by the users that post and share including ourselves with our friends and family for those still connected, for those who hopefully I can have you at least entertain the thought for the sake of the growth and sustainability of our platform. To put it in a different way, we have created a store with our handcrafted goods, filled the shelves but keep the door locked to the store and wonder why our product isn't flying off the shelf. Another perspective, creating a movie not advertising it and expecting to fill theater seats. We can all admit what we are doing now isn't working and needs to change. No blame anywhere, none of us are marketers.
First I would like to address bringing up the controversial topic of ads. Sharing the profit between the platform and users could have several benefits long term if employed properly by community members including attracting potential professional bloggers (or wannabes like me) to help promote hive to the real world instead of limiting ourselves to the niche crypto world and attract more competitive content creation on the platform. A professional marketing team will likely prefer to be paid in fiat so receiving revenue in fiat could be beneficial to pay an official professional marketing team and not another bandfield loser (sorry not sorry, couldn't help myself).
A portion could be turned into HIVE or HBD and shared with the content producer who attracted the views to the platform via a counter, perhaps a hidden code similar to the #haveyoubeenhere coordinates except it would contain an account ID instead for payment to hive wallet. This would create a market and a usecase for our token along with incentive for everyday users to create and share quality content consumable outside of the platform and attract views to their content aka our platform.
The world of social media is a fickle beast and yes we value decentralization, censorship resistance, the fact that we own our data, bla bla bla but lets face it, the rest of the world don't give a fuck, they don't care they could earn a few cents by giving a few cents at no cost to them. they just want content in their face ready to consume all day long as they scroll down their facebook or twitter feed or looking for something to entertain them while they sit in the shitter for half hour hiding from their boss or the mom hiding from her kids...not judging either scenario, we all need a micro break to gather our thoughts.
The average content consumers we have been looking for will never join the platform and probably never care about crypto either but they might like to read articles written here by our own members therefore their action of viewing and consuming currently brings absolutely no benefit to the writer or the platform besides a pat on the back and a handful facebook like. Why are we missing out on revenue from an action as important as an indirect consumer viewing our content outside the platform? For free? Why? This action should add value to our network if we really wanted to do things properly. I feel we are loosing a lot of potential long term revenue. Along with adding traffic to the network and free advertisement as each user share their content using traditional methods of social media that most of society is comfortable with already and will most likely continue using despite it's flaws the same way we continue using this place. Get them to use hive without even needing to shill or even tell them they are...They don't need to know if we do this right!
If we invite everyone and their grandmas, they gonna get jelly at others earnings and it creates resentment and excessive shitposting and comment farming. Do we really want to appeal the masses to join by having them all shitposting here than whining about being flagged for shitposting not understanding how this place works (Humm...2017)? Also the average social media userbase tends to shit post or repost already prepared content. What if we attract content creators and amateurs alike by offering a way to monetize both in platform and off platform and leaving bandwidth and posting to those wanting to put effort into understanding the community and participating accordingly. By us bringing our content to them, we don't need to shill and we don't need sign ups to cash in and excel in our field at revolutionizing the social media world and the sharing/monetizing of data making us competitive in our domain thus more attractive to investors that may not be into crypto but may value the social aspects of the platform and potential community led business.
What other potential benefits could ads bring? Unfortunately, our content dies after 7 days within our ranks although many works written on Hive still have relevance past it's expiry date and outside of the platform. With ad revenue it would give incentive to promote their work on traditional social networks past it's expiry and continue earning if they have a network already in place or in the works instead of consistently reposting expired content because to them it maybe still relevant and useful. (not discussing who's right or wrong just we know it happens and it can be a dicey game to play). The high turnover of popular social media pages make this model viable as the content is always "fresh-ish" to somebody without spamming the blockchain or having to face undesirable disputes meanwhile still feeling their work valued in other means eliminating costly conflict and potentially satisfying both sides of the equation with a neutral solution.
It's no secret that most content producers on the hive blockchain are at the mercy of whales, orcas and curation teams for earnings so fair to say if content isn't appealing to any of the three, it will mostly get ignored. This dynamic works currently with a low active users but what if we get a flood of users like 2017 where many talented users get ignored because there is just too much content for anyone with stake to keep up with leading to a poor user experience from users including big names in the real world with over a million followers on traditional media that could have brought some of their fans to the platform if their experience would have been more pleasant. One could say my stake and their content stinks fair enough, someone out there is probably saying the same about your (my) content too, we can't please everyone.
With the above said, these content creators were creating their content here and bringing it to their facebook page getting tons of views and free low-key advertising for the platform just by using our tool for their journey, except, they can't earn from those external views yet they bring value both to the author and Hive indirectly, bridging that gap with ads could bring financial value to both parties enhancing user experience for indirect positive publicity of mainstream influential figures that struggle to adapt to our community values and we don't have to vote on their shitty content to get them to stay and shill this place meanwhile offering them the means to earn elsewhere on their own in their already established environment and communities via ad count. While this content produced in the community of Hive circles around covertly like ninjas we would by default pick up the curious mind wanting to know more about our eco-system and develop a slow trickle of organic new sign-ups or willing to temp their fate at social networking.
Many social influencers on traditional media make a living networking thus removing their ability to earn from an already established network or expecting them to even attempt to move their million followers onto a different network is pretty unrealistic and unlikely to happen as it's not a attractive offer at all for anyone with 5 cents of common sense so they will continue earning and producing via already established means with proven results. Offering a dual earning incentive via in platform with our up-votes as a free lancer and the potential ad revenue could create a more attractive environment for users with blogging experience in return with the revenue brought to further development and other improvements to the eco-system and cover other costs associated. In the oilfield, we have this one liner, work smarter, not harder. If we can get the passive income in fiat to cover fiat expenses and help support the network to reduce the rate of token sales to advance our goals, isn't that a good thing for reducing selling pressure as a side effect?
Offering us as a service like a publishing tool along with social network may give new life to our cause diversifying our purpose to a wider audience of freelancers unrelated to crypto by gaining the interest those with already established social circles elsewhere as a means to write their page news letter or any free lance work they desire to pursue meanwhile indirectly introducing them to the world of crypto currency without having anyone glaze over as they slowly adapt to the future. We adapt to them and their needs now to introduce them first and then perhaps as our environment grows they slowly get hooked and become more active as they learn to adapt to our ideals eventually taming the mainstream fear of the word "crypto" or "blockchain". Nobody needs to hear or feel pressured by the word to consume our content do they? Do they even need to know for us to benefit? By the time they even figure it out they will have been using it unknowingly for a while. Why aren't we cashing in on that? Thus also solving the problem of why we are not on facebook, the content sucks, yeah you bet it does. What if it was our content produced on hive numbingly being shared over and over again on those facebook and twitter feeds along with the other crap kids find cool these days?
Problem: Many here don't like to see ads so we don't want them here. That's fair...Fine then...Have it your way. How about a token sink? This is a freemium but the benefits of holding stake besides governance and token distribution are minimal for the average user. How about gamifying it a bit with a few gimmicks to incentivize staking tokens earned or to purchase for a service rendered. So with 500 tokens staked, we get a slider bar. How about with 1000 HP staked, you don't get to see ads on the platform. Stake 5000 HP, have access to a content classifier to divide and personalize by topic...so on, you get the point increase the incentive further the more tokens staked. Bring the word freemium meaning. Certain users that may not care about how much say they have in governance or token distribution may find enhanced experience and features more appealing worthy of powering up also leading to potential enhanced user retention along with reducing selling pressure.
The experiment and observations that led to this conclusion:
A few months back, I established a business facebook page for my hive blog and photography to keep track of traffic and different actions and an instagram page with a link to my blog here at the top. Noting major nor did I give it much effort since it's more so because it's weird for a blogger to not have neither or and I realized that while I travel around and promote hive via word of mouth and pitch the concept to the youth who work in the tourism industry in the parks and they kind of had a point. I still don't plan on doing much beyond slow organic growth like I do here at my own pace, I'm not looking for fame just experimenting, observing and thinking. It gave me perspective because I have access to additional counters that the average personal account doesn't have.
Once again miss small potatoes nobody that I am managed to pick up 50 followers on my page...lame I know but...wait for it. (believe it or not, I have tons of personality but I'm not very social overall , I pick my crowd and my moments but mostly observant, always thinking, always strategizing something even if it's pointless...Sagittarian feature) Back on topic, facebook is filled with both private and public niche group or communities of strangers that share topic related content. Common with recipe sharing, photography groups, hiking groups...You get the point I'm sure, networking there is no different then here.
I first posted to my page with the 50 followers then shared it to an average of 5 topic related groups with a fairly active community with 1.5 to 5k members that allow sharing, each post including photos a quick snippet and links to my work on Hive appropriate with the pictures without mentioning hive just selling it as my work/hobby/story and I tried just sharing the link alone to compare results. The whole package fared much better, we won't even discuss the results of the other. Using the 5 communities and a dozen tags, I managed to get an eyeball count of 2 000 to 8 000 views per post depending to how many communities the content was relevant to.
Even tho it had minimal interaction on my page without dishing out a dime to promote like other business pages do. Posting 4 times a month with my nothing account could expose between 8000 to a potential of 32 000 pairs of eyes commercially and a few more privately from conversations with my own peers on my personal account reached hive related content per month without really trying or even a mention of the word or shilling, they didn't even know they were consuming a blockchain or crypto related product. That my friends is how you onboard the masses without actually doing it and catering to the average content consumer without asking them to behave a certain way in a strange platform they don't quite grasp.
Did they all click? no but some did and some shared and the content itself did well collecting a good number of views and interactions in the community not reflecting on my actual page or original post, most just scrolled thru because lets face it, my content is probably only popular-ish here now because there isn't that many users competing for the reward pool but what if lets say, 1000 or 2000 of our current active users committed to the same bare minimum I accomplished, you are looking at several millions of views collectively each month of hive related content with a potential #hiveblog tag at the bottom, can it help the algorithms move our way slowly? How about as we gain more content creators along the way?
What if those crazy cat lady pages, inspirational quoters and recipe sistas, top 10 thing no one cares about, life tips for lunatics or whatever other mainstream garbage were doing it using hive as a publishing tool to write their articles to bring to their fans? None of us have to vote on it if they have other means of earning. How many eyeballs do they reach trying? What if we had ad revenue for those indirect eyeballs without even telling them what they are consuming because it doesn't matter to them or us aside they view or content and add value to our network in exchange for something to keep their minds occupied for 5 minutes so they can move on to the next intellectual fast food they prefer without disrupting their regular routine. It's a cash cow waiting to get tapped into if done right. Adding consumer value without all the spam that comes with it by bringing the content to them instead of trying to bring them to us. In time, it will still help with onboarding even if only 1% of viewers actually join.
Anything said in this post is fair game for anybody to use towards the betterment of the Hive platform, you can even claim all the credits as your idea for all I care. Just some thoughts and a suggestions on a business for us to maybe think of tapping into towards some form of growth. I don't have the means or knowledge to implement anything of substance aside from continuing what I have done sharing content in discussion forums and word of mouth.
Share your thoughts!