Good evening Hive,
I thought I'd share my thoughts on how to spread the word about Inkito and the Hive blockchain.
You can read more about the Inkito project in the Hive proposal in which I explain all of it.
But what is Inkito ?
Inkito is a new platform based on the Hive blockchain build specifically for the long form episodic content like comics or novels. It makes the reading experience better with an infinite loop and organises content as series throughout the site.
So what have I done this week?
It really feels like I haven't accomplished much this week. I have focused on networking to have feedback and more content on the site. I reached out to artists on Tapas, the famous webcomic platform and to the Comic Fury forum. Those two places are where I felt I'd be the most trusted as I used the platform before.
- Feedback
An overall very positive feedback! Artists are impressed by the site and intrigued by the crypto currency rewards. Some recurring critism goes to the site having too much "empty space". But that is mainly due to the lack of content.
Even tough I had such positive feedback no one took the time to give it a try. I soon realized that the hardest thing would not be development of the site but getting authors to use it!
- Possible obstacles
Here I'd like to enumerate reasons that an author could have not to post content on Inkito, in order to elaborate my strategy.- Not enough readers.
- Not enough content.
- No community to engage with.
- Does not trust the website.
- Looks unprofessional.
- Knows nothing about crypto currency.
- Hard to cash out.
- Solutions
Here are possible solutions to those issues:Not enough readers:
- Inform users that the content is shared on the Hive networks therefore is visible to a large community already.
Not enough content.
- Contact Hive content creators so their work can be displayed on Inkito. They can continue posting through Hive and so would not change posting habits except for the series id tag.
No community to engage with.
- Being able to redirect the Inkito users to the Hive blogging platform (@bryan-imhoff 's comic creating community maybe?) or a discord forum in order to engage. I see this point as a long term goal as community building takes time.
Does not trust the website.
- Trust could come from other creators actively using the platform.
- From Inkito itself by launching a youtube channel presenting the project, making tutorials and information.
Looks unprofessional.
- Ask for more feedback in order to locate improvement areas. Redesign the home page to add more structure. (From the feedback I received so far, design seems to be okay.)
- Add new core functionalites, such as the user feed, reading list, author micro blog (wall)...
Knows nothing about crypto currency.
- Add information in the FAQ to make things clearer.
- Tutorials through the youtube channel to show it's not that difficult.
Hard to cash out.
- Provide a list of solutions to cash out.
- Make or refer to tutorials on how to do.
- Find smooth solution to cash out. (I've been using coinsbee to buy gift cards with bitcoin. If they offered Hive support it would be super easy!)
So I have a solution to everything. But I need a way to pass the message to users. Social media will definitely have a big role in building trust and educating people about the blockchain. However it does take time to build an audience.
Here are possible solutions to boost communication around the project.
- Launch a social media giveaway.
- A chance to win 100$ in Hive by posting your story on Inkito?
- Share for a chance to win a gift?
- Character design contest paid in Hive.
- Pay an influencer/author to post exclusive content on Inkito.
- I'm thinking Jason Brubaker who actually used Steemit a couple years back...
- Buy ads on specialized websites.
- Topwebcomics has a skyscraper ad space at 6.5 $ per day and is very specialized but would attract readers as well. I could probably do a week with my current budget but the project might not be mature enough.
- Buy ads on specialized podcasts.
- No specific podcast in mind. I used to listen to the gutter talk by making comics. Like the previous point, I think this alpha version of the project is not ready for big paid ads but more for a smaller group of creators.
- Launch a Kickstarter.
- Wait but for what? Kickstarter is known for being a huge advertisement boost. I can do a campaign to ask funds for the development of the platform. It would be a good opportunity to present the concept and bring people on board. Rewards could be exclusive art from Inkito artists, ad space when the site grows enough ...
- Go to a comic/novel convention.
- Best way to convince people would probably be to meet them in person. A costly communication boost but an effective at building trust and network.
Now is your time to share your thoughts. Which solutions has the best potential? What is the best way to reach out to content creators and convince them to use the platform?
In the mean time, I'll continue to share the word to my connections and elaborate the strategy.
For any interested Hive creator out there!
You can already add your content to the platform using the right tags.
Adding the series id on all corresponding posts, writing it as follows "author-seriesname" (example: "jrej-shadesofmen") The series name is for you to choose but must be the same for all episodes.
Adding the tag "inkito-comics" or "inkito-novels" on your most recent post for ranking.
Optionally you can add categories as tags in your first episode. The categories could be any of the following. "action, comedy, drama, fantasy, horror, mystery, romance, scifi, sliceoflife"
The first post would include some of the main series info. The first image would be your series cover image and the title, the series title. Hope to see some of you over there.
Thanks for your support.
You can now check out the alpha version of Inkito at www.inkito.io
Now is your time to shine. Please share your thoughts so we can spread the word about the Hive blockchain! Let's get some people on board!
See you on the other side.
Jrej
Looks interesting? Please consider approving the project to help me spread the word to story tellers and develop some new feature for the Inkito platform. Click here to Approve the proposal
I keep meaning to circle back here and leave more detailed feedback. But briefly... I’ve been slacking on my community lately but could absolutely see it as an “affiliate” of Inkito. However I do think Inkito should have a community of its own. The main reason being the need to encourage and reward readers & content consumers just as much as the creators, which my group admittedly skews toward. I think a space for the reader community is critical, be it totally on site or ancillary.
And when you feel ready to do some advertising please let me know. I’d be happy to dip into my Hive a little to chip in a bit of funding as well.
Yes you are right. Community building is a must. I'm focusing on getting a small group of testers for now but community will be a huge focus going forward!
I might start with a few simple ads on creator websites. The site Comicad seems to be a good replacement for project wonderful which closed earlier. I'll let you know if I run out of funds. Thanks for your support!
I appreciate what you are doing. I'll try to get my webcomics up and loaded onto Inkito Alpha. I think I'll need to repost my old comic strips onto Hive (with appropriate tags so that they can be compiled into Inkito), but I don't want to double post all my old strips and get spam flagged. I was thinking I might be able to just create a community page for my strips and just post them there with the proper tags so I don't bomb the blog feeds with hundreds of old comics? Would that be the way to go?
Thanks for the support. Your pages will definitely stand out on Inkito! You don't have to repost to include them, you could just modify existing tags. I added my old comics this way. There should be one post with the tags "inkito-comics" and "sidekickmatt-seriesname" within the first 5 tags then any added episode should have "sidekickmatt-seriesname". Let me know if I can help more.
The website is not unprofessional, it looks like an arty fun thing which is probably want you want (unless you're a novelist that takes yourself too seriously I guess XD). Only thing I would recommend is maybe making the mouseover a really subtle "glow" or something around the entire image rather than the grey overlay on the actual image as it looks slightly odd to me but given I'm using a bunch of stuff to stop arbitrary script execution it could just be that I'm inadvertently blocking some cool eye candy in which case ignore me go about your business XD
I am in love with the loading swirl.
Ahh this makes me kind of wish I had stuck with doing comics instead of moving into animation XD
I've dropped the link to my sister, hopefully she'll use it when she gets to that stage of her project/s.
Thanks for the input. Nothing wrong with your browser, the grey overlap is the effect I was looking for. I was inspired by Tapas' hover effect. I reduced the darkness by 10% so it should be more subtle now. I'll think of ways to improve that.
In case you're interested, the site does accept gif files if they are smaller than 2mb. I saw some interesting animated comics online. That could be a thing.
Thanks for sharing with your sister. She can even post in Hive and use the tags to show on Inkito. ;-)
She's spinning out slightly over how many front ends there are as is XD her project is still a way off so hopefully she'll be used to posting at least by then so it will be less of a curve :)
Your project should receive at least 1 million hp delegation! This is a really awesome project. Your website is really creative and certainly funky (it's different genre than professional). Very well thought. You might wanna involve some manga author maybe? some content similar to bleach, one piece and naruto? this is really interesting case usage!
Oh yeah you should definitely incentivize people by asking for more delegation on dlease? Then when you award them with big money it wil attract people?
Your so kind! Thanks for the support. You can approve the proposal for funding if you wish to! I'll try my best to improve the site in order to have it look both fun and professional at the same time! There is actually a huge trend for independent manga online, the Webtoons site is huge for that, so I'll be sure to on board some of them as well!
About delegation request, I didn't know about dlease. Thanks for pointing that out. Once I get active users, I think that's will definitely be the way to go. They'll want support for joining in early in the project. I think a system of referral could also help the site grow. Bring a friend, win 5 Hive tokens! What do you think?