Importance of curation
Curation is one of the main reasons why so many of us are here posting and reading posts each day. Curation and Community. We have already proven that Hive has a strong community in the recent weeks as we all have migrated from the Steem blockchain, but now that we are here, I feel it is important for me to do my part in upping my curation game for the blockchain.
I have been a curator within the community for a while now, and have been curating across the Steem blockchain and Hive now for a while. But, I have decided that I am going to put my money where my mouth is and going to be leasing Hive Power in an effort to be able to reward posts even more than my normal voting power allows.
At the time of writing this post, I personally have about 41.4k Hive Power. I put an order in with this morning for an additional 50k Hive Power for 10 weeks and I will be hoping to increase that amount until I have at least 200k to 250k Hive Power to be able to curate the community with.
What will I be curating?
My main focus is going to be the photography and art community. I am a photographer and an artist at heart, so it only makes sense that I am going to be focusing my attention on these types of posts.
I am a member of several different discord communities and communities on the Hive platform, and will be checking through those community feeds as well for posts that catch my eye.
So what are some tips on catching a curators attention?
Starting off, catching the attention of people is one of the hardest things to do on these types of platforms. I have always told people that prior to making posts and just spamming like 5 posts a day and trying to catch votes on one or two of them, it is more important to get your name out there by being a part of the community. You can do this by commenting on posts and making meaningful and engaging comments, showing that you actually read the post and cared about what was said.
If you are new, take a couple weeks to get your name out there just by commenting and reading posts. You will be surprised on the amount of votes that your comments can actually get, most likely more than your posts when you tally all of them up. You will also begin to form relationships with people and become a part of the Hive community, and that is what this place is all about. You will also learn many things about writing posts, formatting, proper techniques and etiquette and so on.
OK, so now onto the tips for catching a curators attention...
- Thumbnail is everything
I cannot stress this enough. Picking the right thumbnail can make or break your post. Most of the time, people will skip right past your post if your thumbnail is boring, blurry, sideways, or all sorts of other issues. Take the time to get the perfect thumbnail for your post and draw your audience in.
- Think of a catchy title
Set that hook in your audience so that you can get them interested on what your post is about and when they click on your post, let the rest of the post reel them in. With the perfect combination of an awesome thumbnail and title, you will begin to get more eyes on your posts.
- Spelling errors
If your post is full of spelling errors, it shows a lack of caring on your part. Think of your this whole blockchain space as an opportunity to build your own brand, and when you present your posts in the most professional way possible, it will begin to pay off because people will begin to take you more serious as a content creator and not someone that is just here to drain the reward pool as much as they can.
- Formatting
Take some time to learn how to use markdown and other techniques to present your content in a nice clean way. It shows when someone takes the extra time to make their post more presentable.
Why am I doing this?
I have thought long and hard about spending the money to lease Hive Power and I know that it will end up as a loss for me, but in the end, the community is more important. Most of my proceeds from my joint witness with is going to go towards funding this curation effort and I am hoping that this will draw more witness votes for our witness, which in turn will make it easier for me to pay for this curation project.
So if you want to vote for my witness, you can go to your Hive Wallet and select the witness to show your support for us. Our goal as a Hive Witness is to not only provide stability for the Hive Blockchain, but to also support the Hive Community with initiatives such as this. We also support several other community initiatives such as the Bro Sports and Gaming Network (
) and others.
Curation and rewarding the content creators is one of the main things that will keep people posting quality content here on the Hive Blockchain and that will differentiate us from the competitors. All votes for the witness go back to help our vision to supporting the content creators of our blockchain.