Thanks for dropping by! I hope things are going well up north for you.
The 100-to-1 rule is what I alluded to in an earlier comment when I said we would need to reach 100 potential shillers in order to bring 1 of them into the fold. It definitely takes a significant amount of work, even if distributed among all Hivers (never mind those eager to go out there to lure the influencers). Still, a distributed effort is likely to be more successful just from numbers alone.
At the moment Splinterlands is essentially marketing itself, but it's also been around for 3 years going back to the Steemit days. Being a game helped, and being a play2earn platform helped even more. It picked up momentum slowly, then it took off. Splinterlands is like the actor who took 20 years to become an overnight star. Hive is the same way, only its different enough that many people don't understand it well enough to market it well.
If Splinterlands can do well as Splinterlands, perhaps we can learn from it and apply those lessons to Rising Star, dCity, dCrops, and the other games which need a Hive account. We could also extend the principles to dApps like Engage, Engrave, DLUX, D.Buzz, Terrive, Inkito, and others. And if we want to land an influencer at the tribal level, that may be easier in some ways than having that influencer shill for Hive as a whole. Layer 2 itself is a marketing tool we can use in ways simply not possible with Layer 1 (Hive).
Marketing has its toils and grinds, like any other activity done daily (including farming and gardening). That doesn't mean we can't make it fun for us as we engage in it. That's another reason I published this post: to generate ideas on whom we can get to shill for Layer 2 so that we can tailor our efforts accordingly.
If we fail, we learn and apply the lessons to the next attempt. If we succeed, we succeed big-time.
My pleasure, great article! And I love that you alluded to it, it's so key, I just wanted to emphasize it since it's one of the major stumbling blocks for most marketing efforts.
Splinterlands has followed the 100-for-1 rule, and 100s of players later, hit another 'viral spike.' I love it. Being a play2earn game doesn't hurt. And you're right about people not understanding Hive, and whether we go for influencers directly or get to them through various dApps, similar concepts apply.
Great point about fun, and I've never seen a successful, sustainable endeavor --marketing or otherwise-- that didn't include fun as a key ingredient.
Of course the recent massive downvote I received on what I consider to be a kind, well-written story doesn't really encourage the 'fun-level' of authors like me, so... we'll see what the future holds, lol.
#TogetherWeRyze 🙏
The best we can do is share with others discoveries we think would benefit them. We can't control what happens after that, and that's OK; we did what we had to do in sharing the discoveries. The people who appreciate the discoveries we share with them (and sometimes you and I are part of "them" either together or separately) will know the reality of the situation.
As we go theough the exercise of figuring out who we can land to shill for Layer 2, we sharpen our pitches, our language, our message, and our delivery. The more ideas and suggestions we get, the greate the chance on landing on a winning idea.
Things are more serious these days all over the world for a number of reasons, but as we liveour day-to-day lives we need whatever laughs and humor we can find. They're the periods after sentences made of grievances and complaints and "woe is me" decalrations. If we want total lack of fun, we can ride the subway after 2:00am.
Yep, I whole-heartedly agree, well said, and not much I can add. Cheers to fun! 🙏
BTW-- rwgarding the word "shill"....
I know in dictionary terms it carries a negative connotation, but does it have a different connotation within the context of modern marketing? For modern marketing I thought it was a neutral word, but I want to confirm that based on your experience.
Words are fairly fluid and mean different things to different people.
The word 'slut' was terrible for a long time but ever since Amber Rose founded the 'slutwalk', the word has been reclaimed and repurposed in a more positive light fairly often. Regardless of how quickly the word is gaining ground as a term of empowerment for proudly sexually-liberated women, using the word 'slut' around my Christian parents still won't go over well and they'll stick with either the traditional dictionary definition, or their own internal definition, no matter what I say.
The word 'shill' is similar, I'd say, though less further along. It began as a negative term, dictionary-wise, marketing-wise, and traditionally so. Lately though, with all the crypto coins and influencers, a lot of millennials are using 'shill' with a more positive spin, similar to what's happening with the word 'slut', but since it's a far newer transition, so you'll likely find most people take issue with the word 'shill', still seeing it as a negative. (And understandably so, since the positive spin is so new.)
On top of all this, people 'read what they want to read', for example, I can easily spot your good intentions, kind heart, and positive aims when you use the word 'shill', but someone else is bound to come along, ignore the massive amount of data pointing to your positive use of the word, get triggered and lash out at your use of the word. (If that hasn't happened yet, please do not be surprised if it does. I write incredibly positive things all the time, but there's always someone with serious mental issues who can't help but get triggered and lash out. I wrote a 6,000 word beautiful story recently and a whale swung by and downvoted it, not because it was a bad piece, but because they have their own neuroses, issues, and triggers and let those things cloud their judgment and cause them to lash out.)
Hope that answers your question. 🙏
Our understanding of the term "shil" is similar. For everyday use it still retains its dictionary meaning and connotation. When applied to marketing-- especially cryptocurrency marketing-- it does not have the baggage associated with its everyday use meaning.
Maybe for us, but personally I'd be careful using it around others because, as I've hopefully emphasized, the new meaning and context is quite new, and likely to be met with far more traditional understandings of the term. Either that or embrace the inevitable backlash if we do choose to use it. :)