A few days ago, my oldest blog had its 20th Anniversary. As you can probably figure out, it has nothing to do with Hive... I have been part of this particular "rodeo" for a very long time.
20 years is pretty much "ancient," in web terms. The blog that just had the anniversary isn't even my first; just the oldest that's still current and active, rather than archived and forgotten.
All in all, I have probably had some 30-odd blogs, some of them quite long lived... and quite a few that died untimely deaths because the hosting venue went belly up. The longevity (lack of) of venues has always been a sore point with me.
Indeed, this early type of content creation wasn't something we got rewarded for, although every now and then Google does send me an Adsense payment. Woo-hoo! I think I might have made $1,200 in 20 years. I've also made a buck here and there from pointing people to relevant books on Amazon.
I say this because (A) I have a lot of gratitude for the existence of Hive and (B) sometimes I think we take rather a lot for granted, around here.
If course, my "HSP Notes" blog is a specialty niche publication — much of the conventional blogging world is a little different from what we do here.
It's also "different" in the sense of the size of its readership. A 20-year old blog with a niche focus enjoys being visited by somewhere on the order of 10,000-15,000 unique sets of eyeballs every month. Imagine being able to pull that sort of readership to your Hive blog! That's going to take a while, alas...
In the end, it's just an example that it takes a lot of time and patience to gain a substantial readership. Why do I do it? Mostly just for the love of writing, and exploring topics I am interested in... in writing.
So why am I even writing about this, here?
Well, in part because I am delving into finding and exploring ways of bringing some of that readership to Hive, in the not too distant future. But it's quite difficult to get people from outside venues to show up for Hive... even if they are dedicated writers, and dedicated followers.
Is Hive a cool deal? Absolutely! The issue at hand is rarely Hive, it's that so many people already are overloaded on social media, so there's a certain amount of resistance to not only taking on one more venue, but to actively keep up with that venue.
In other words, gaining new people is contingent on offering something people really want, not just something we think is super cool. Never forget that YOUR perspective is centered on years of exploring and building the benefits of our community... but that doesn't mean anything to someone else, unless the "catch" is something they really want.
Let me use myself as an example: I am only on Hive (and its predecessor) because I was actively fed up with Facebook at the end of 2016, and I was also waxing nostalgic for the kind of "social blogging" we used to do, some 20 years ago... and what I found here reminded me a lot of just that!
So, getting back to that "pitch" I might make to my old blogging followers, Hive makes no sense unless I can come up with an offer that is both relevant and makes sense to them. Otherwise, I'm "just another greasy marketer with a pitch." And most of us are sick to death of that...
Time will tell what I can come up with.
Thanks for reading... I know this is a bit of a departure from my norm.
How about YOU? Do you create content elsewhere? Were you doing so, before Hive even existed? Comments, feedback and other interaction is invited and welcomed! Because — after all — SOCIAL content is about interacting, right? Leave a comment — share your experiences — be part of the conversation!
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Created at 20220929 23:59 PDT
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