Are you Smaug, the dragon from the J.R.R Tolkien story, The Hobbit?
Smaug, lives in a vast cavern under a rocky mountain called The Lonely Mountain, and his sole purpose is to guard the treasure that lies within. He rarely leaves his dark, dank lair to venture out into the world. There he sleeps upon his mountain of treasure alone in the dark. When he leaves his cavern under the rock it's to gather treasure and he terrorises the nearby folk for it, getting very angry if he doesn't receive that treasure...It sounds like a lonely, isolated and sad existence to me.
I think some parallels could be drawn to some users on hive. Ok, we're not dragons however cool that may be, but many behave in a similar hide under a rock way. src
Simply throwing out a post or two and expecting to be rewarded with some treasure, upvotes and follows, is not enough though.
I've noticed a few onboarding initiatives lately, the most recent of which is the Hive People Project by @stellabelle. This is exactly what we need, among other things, to get this community pumping, but what does it mean for us here as new people onboard to hive?
Firstly, I feel it is critical that we onboard more users so I'm not suggesting it's a bad thing but...It will mean more competition for those already here...It may make it more difficult for people to get noticed, myself included.
So what's the answer? Get noticed as quickly as you can right now of course!
You see, as new people come onboard established users, like myself, are going to rally around them, help them along and hopefully help them survive and thrive as that's what we need here. In my mind it just makes sense to place yourself in a position to be one of those people who gets supported.
Also, all these new users, the newly-onboarded, are going to be looking for people to connect with...There's another opportunity for some of the younger accounts here to capitalise on. I certainly will be.
As the platform grows it would make sense for a user to want to grow with it. Of course there'll always be those who are happy to sit where they are, work within their own little group, or not create content at all and it is those people I'm not talking about here. But to those who want to grow and build along with the platform...
...You can't sit under a rock
You need to get out there and let people know who you are, that you're around and that you're willing and able to engage with others. If you stay under that rock no one will know where you are, no one will see you, and certainly few, or none, will engage with you.
Just a word on engagement...It means: To interact (comment and reply) with others on their posts. Effective engagement means interacting with interest, relevance and some effort. One or two word replies like nice post will earn what they deserve - Nothing.
Emerging from beneath the rock
This is done in several ways.
If you are Smaug, you awkwardly kick off with your legs, flap your powerful wings, run along and then when your air-speed reaches the right speed you spring-forth into the air to wing gracefully away to pillage and plunder the poor-unsuspecting village-folk.
But you're not Smaug, or any other type of dragon...You're a hive user. So...
You post and engage instead. You crawl out from beneath the rock and show yourself to the community.
Commenting on other people's posts, I suggest reading them first or you may look a bit silly, and continuing a comment-ethos with users is a really fast way to get going, and to build your account. But you need to have something of value for those users you're engaging with to see when they come to your profile page to check you out. This is where your awesome posts come into play!
Through your posting you have the chance to demonstrate who you are, what you're about, your diversity, your hobbies, skills, thoughts, opinions, family, education, sports, likes and dislikes. It's essentially you in a nutshell. You don't have to be an amazing writer, you just need to apply three simple elements, in my opinion anyway:
Passion, personality and effort
If you do this people will see it and you will have a greater chance of capturing their attention, provided you've done the engagement-groundwork as well.
Messaging users like me on Discord to draw my attention to your post will get you nowhere...Especially if I have no idea who you are. In fact that's a fast-track to getting muted. Tagging larger accounts in all your posts is also the antithesis of legit. (That means the opposite of legitimate.) Just engage and post as above...Everything will come together if you do that with consistency; Not over night of course, it takes effort and persistence over time.
G-dog's top ten tips for emerging from beneath a rock
- Take part in the hive posting initiative (See below)
- Join the engagement league (See below)
- Set a daily reply/comment goal
- Engage on other people's posts
- Post with passion, personality and effort
- Post and comment with interest and relevance
- Be respectful, personable, kind and good-mannered
- Remove the reward-value as the reward - Make it about enjoyment instead
- Exit your comfort-zone and expand your paradigm
- If you're a dragon get video of you flying and post it; It will be cool!
- Have a lot of fun because that's what it takes
- Welcome and support new users
There's other things of course, but these are a few good ones to start off with. (Yes, I know there's 12 tips in that list - You see, I added some of my quirky personality to it.)
It's all about community here on hive; Relationships. Build good ones and you'll have more enjoyment, build them not and...Well, you'll not have them and the rewards that come along with them.
There's plenty of people around who will help you...I could list many for you, but I won't. What I will do is make myself available to answer your questions about this post, or anything else I can assist you with and direct you to others as required, so feel free to post them below in the comments.
If you're under a rock and want to stay there that's fine, that's where you'll be. If you are there but want a little more then that's fine too...Do it!
If you are a dragon and can fly I'd like a ride and will pay in crypto for the privilege.
Design and create your ideal life, don't live it by default - Tomorrow isn't promised.
Be well
Discord: galenkp#9209
Engagement League:
This tracks your personal engagement on hive through a weekly post that comes out on Sunday. @abh12345 does all the work, you just need to engage. It's a great way to track your engagement goals and a good way to get your name up there with the best engagers on hive!
CLICK HERE TO JOIN THE ENGAGEMENT LEAGUE
Hive posting initiative:
This is an opportunity to showcase yourself to the hive community and win a 2000HP delegation at the same time. See the post below for details.
Long post but contains a whole lot of truth. I spoke to @belemo and told him i needed mentoring on how to make it on hive. He told me to try to comment everyday at least ten comments a day. At first it was so hard to get ten comments a day . Gradually it got to 10. Now i have to power up so i could even comment . For the past 3 days i think i have made up to 20 comments per day. I was tempted to look at your comment section because i joined the engagement league and i counted your comments for yesterday. I think it was 100. I just concluded that i was going to engage more. I love the healthy competition too.
On a final note, i think people should not under rate the power of community participation if you are not established at this early stage.
I've never actually taken out time to count the number of comments I post daily. 20 is awesome, more so because all your comments are relevant.
I can only thank you bro...
Yep, I think I made about 103 comments yesterday or something around that. I comment a lot because I understand the value of it. I hope you are on track to meet your commenting goals and I look forward to seeing you in the top ten on the Engagement League.
Thats my aim ...lets see the next table
103? Holy shit 😄. I make around 50 and that's on good days. No wonder you're always topping the engagement league. Gotta up may game
Yeah, it's a few I guess. I also write a lot of characters too, mainly because I sometimes I have a lot to say. One word answers are not my thing. I don't like receiving them, or leaving them.
Ughh. One word replies. Personally, I assume that the person is either disinterested or just tired of the conversation. I tend to wear people out with my...antics, so I don't get mad
So fucking annoying right? Even a couple words...
Thanks
OK
Nice
Nice post
And my fucking worst nightmare...
Nice post dear
Hate that.
Lmao I'm a little guilty here because I give out "dears" to ladies by accident.
I mean, sometimes the post is jus a bunch of pictures, and they're nice pictures so "Nice picture dear", sort of works 😄
Feeling Smaugish at moment, but only coz Dragons don't have wifi. Back on it.. Feeling super guilty for dropping engagement game. Just haven't had chance.
I like Smaug, don't get me wrong...But I think old-mate Smaug has the wrong idea and too many follow his lead. We all get Smaugish at times, don't be hard on yourself...Just do what you can, when you can and peep out from under the rock now and then...Don't burn the villagers though.
I must tell you that the image of the dragon imprinted in my mind and I can already imagine some cool bodypainting with it🐲😂 I think it would be so cool to be a dragon, imagine making barbecue, one hot shot of fiery dragon flames and steak is ready🔥😂😂 Jokes aside, I agree with you.Unless we want rocks as pets, there is no use to sit under them. I am sure that quality friendly creative little dragons will start to fly in hive together with the bees. A dragon bee? How would that look? You got my imagination going🐝🐲🤔👀
Hmm, a dragongirl paint scheme sounds legit! I can tell, even from here, your cogs are turning...I can't see the smoke coming out of your ears, but I'm sure it's there...I'll wait to see what eventuates.
Ahhahahha caught me so right with this. I already had flashes in my imagination of how it will look. Stay around, dragon girl is in the making🐉
Yay!
These are the things I pretty much need to print out and post on my wall.
I can’t agree more enthusiastically!
Hey dude, thanks for saying that. Did you see the post about the posting initiative I did? You should enter mate, a few times, as your posts meet the criteria and are always good. Anyway, I hope you do but if you don't want to that's cool too.
I’ll take a look man. Thank you very much. 💚🙏🏻
@galenkp it is very important for us as a community to look beyond the rewards and see it just as a social media where we can interact, make friends and also engage in a respectful manner. I was encourage by you to put in more efforts in engaging in hive which I have been trying for some weeks now. Also the big names on hive should also support the initiative and let's onboard people and push hive forward. I talk about hive to everyone I see and I have onboarded my neighbors 3 of them @dejoke, @tyfamz and @helentee . I am planning to onboard as many as I can. I believe the Hive engagement league is a good one to join. This will enable us to be more engaged and see the results every week.
I really love this write-up and it's a great encouragement to many of us who are just coming up. Also, it's important to support the new comers because many of them are new and do not know how to connect with other members, we can always support them.
Thank you mate. It's good to hear you're looking to onboard some new people too. It's important to support them as well so I hope you have some plans around doing so.
You mention big names on hive and how they should support the initiative...There are many doing a lot of work behind the scenes that we all benefit from, it's just that a lot of that work isn't really publicised. I think we can all do more to support new people, and the community as a whole, however each an everyone of us have to also take the ownership and responsibility to help ourselves. Agree?
I agree. You are right. Its true some of the big names efforts are not publicise and we all are benefitting from it. I have heard about @theycallmedan and @acidyo and @galenkp and have seen their efforts and some others too. We will keep getting stronger and I have been supportive to the new members I onboarded but I will keep doing more.
A big Thanks to you for your support!
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I agree we all need to get more involved, engagement is key here. I struggle sometimes to comment as much as I would like, life is so darn busy some days, but I do try and reach out to new users at times and engage with them. Thanks for this reminder and timely kick up the bum.
I hear you...Time is the most precious commodity is it not?
I think we could all engage a little more but often life gets in the way and we have to split our focus, or send it down some rabbit-hole altogether.
Engagement is critically important, for those who want to build their brand, their account I guess I mean. I did it a lot, from the moment I arrived three years ago...It's all on the blockchain for anyone to find...There's few shortcuts really.
I feel a bit wrong to kick you in the ass...But...
Take that!
And I'll see you engaging around the place I'm sure.
Don't worry, I didn't have my boots on...Lol
Hey, @galenkp.
I've been thinking about this a lot lately. We seem to encourage the posting part as a whole more than we do virtually anything else. And yet, engagement and curation are actually how people get noticed sooner. And the system actually rewards both of those—curation has rewards built in, while comments, like posts, need to be seen and rewarded. But both can happen, and both can be used to create stake.
But when we talk about attracting people here, we're generally talking about how people earn rewards through posting, when there are certainly other means that will ultimately help them if they go on to do any kind of serious posting.
We don't really distinguish between creators, engagers and curators (or I would prefer to call them readers or consumers). We just all tend to do all of it. But the reality is, not all of us want to or are even really have time for posting, but we do have time to read, comment and upvote, or variations thereof. I think we need to say that's okay to do, too. I just don't know how that gets communicated in a meaningful way.
It's no different to the real world, some will do things others will not, or cannot. Same on hive. I agree with you and think a balance needs to be found. A platform full of readers and curators, with nothing to read or curate won't much satisfaction, as will a million content creators with only one curator or reader. So, balance is what we need. Therefore a balanced method of onboarding needs to be devised.
Trying to attract people by dangling reward-money in front of them is one way of course, but I think there's other benefits here and I think others feel the same, or would if they knew of those benefits.
I don't really know much about it all, but sometimes throw my two cents worth in, like with this post...Really I'm a bit of a novice and uninformed.
If I had the answers, I feel like I would be elsewhere, making millions. :)
However, all your points in the post are solid, and make sense, and with each new wave of users to HIVE, need to be reiterated by someone.
re: balance
Very true, we do. It seems, though, we've got plenty of content creators. We may not have as wide a range of topics as we might want, or enough of what we do want, but posts, there are a plenty.
What there doesn't appear to be as many of are engagers. People might be reading more than I think they are, but then don't leave a comment. And, since it's the least likely thing to be rewarded, that's not much of an incentive for them to do it. They need to have something meaningful to say, and they need to want to interact because they enjoy it.
If rewards are the main thing, it's much easier to autovote in some fashion, set the time, the vote weight, and move on. Unfortunately, engagement is networking and demonstrating your writing abilities on a smaller scale, leading to more interaction on the posts one might actually publish. So, it's pretty important for future rewards, but most seem to fail to see that, maybe because the rewards aren't immediate?
I like your last paragraph. Good points. (Doesn't mean I don't like the first two though.)
Immediate rewards...Hmm, we are certainly in an instant-gratification society for sure. Maybe an issue, but if someone was instantly rewarded for a comment would there be subsequent ones? The auto vote thing is interesting too. I have a few, and yet, in the last 48 hours have made 260+ comments...And not short ones either. Still, I guess many are reward-focused and don't find different meanings for the word reward. I agree that commenting shows one's ability...Maybe because there's so much plagiarism people are afraid to engage in real-time commenting? I don't know.
More balance though, that's what's needed...A more balanced approach to onboarding, newbie-retention (and support) and in the content-consume-curate process.
None of us are spectacular writers...If we were we would not be here...We're just all normal and average people playing out our lives here. I think it's time for people to stop trying to be the smartest person in the room and all start pulling in the same direction...Oh hang on, we're humans and in the last 45,000 haven't been able to achieve that.
I just post and vote though, no one special, not smart, not dumb, just average. So, what do I know?
I'm trying to come out of my rock Galen. Hopefully, I'll succeed. I've been working hard on other things (which are finally starting to pay off). So, now I actually get to enjoy this community without tripping on the rewards at all - which is a very good thing. I'm going to be very busy soon, but I'm going to work on it. I miss you guys.
Hey mate, good to hear things are going well and coming together. I haven't seen you for a while and figured you'd dropped off like so many do.
Tripping over the rewards is something many do...Push them aside and make the reward the enjoyment of being here though, and things tend to start looking up.
Anyway, all the best with what you are doing and take care.
Thank you. The same to you. Be seeing you.
Thanks for the mention. As far as what will happen as more users come onboard, it's really a matter of new users and retention, if new people feel welcome and stay, that means there will be more people using the Hive token, and with that growth, more and more entrepreneurs will come too. Everything relies on human attention, so the value will follow. But we need a good way to onboard and then retain people. So, all of us can do something simple: go to the introduceyourself page and provide support to new people.
There are many things the existing members of this community should do, all of them, and yet they don't. It's human nature I think, to live in hope without taking action.
I'm not the live in hope guy and so take an active role in my own account here, promoting others when I can in my own, possibly ineffective, way knowing that onboarding and retaining new people is the way forward.
I don't know if what I do, the several hundred comments I leave and the 13-14 posts each week, mean anything at all to anyone but me, but what I know is that if all of us, everyone, left 10 comments a week over two new users the blockchain would be in better shape. But alas, many would prefer others to do the heavy lifting.
But I'm a small fish so what do I know? I just do my thing and hope that it has some positive affect for others.
Thanks for your reply, I greatly appreciate it.
I was more than half-tempted to post a one-two word reply right here. But I won't be able to live with myself if I did 😆. These are some pretty great tips for those getting started, or those that might struggle to gain some exposure on Hive. Compared to creating quality content, engagement is second to none when it comes to building a great energy around the platform.
That said, I wouldn't mind being Smaug. I think it might be neat to be a dragon.
Good post.