Hi...Greetings to you all. It's been some days off Hive activities now due to my ongoing exams. Most times, it's not easy carrying on our normal daily activities and our regular engagement here on Hive, but what matters the most is striking a balance between the both. So, in this post, I will share my experience so far on Hive and the lessons I have learned from the Newbies Initiative Program.
. It was indeed informative and very engaging.
MY EXPERIENCE WITH HIVE SINCE I JOINED
My journey on Hive has been so lovely and awesome. Here, I found a great opportunity to learn. When I say learn, yes I mean real learning that cuts across all fields of life. Through Hive, I have been able to broaden my knowledge of many things.
Whatever information you need is available on Hive, just check the right community for it and see wonderful contents from great authors. So, I can say that my number one love for Hive is its knowledge base.
So far on Hive, I have also been able to make good friends from far and near. Through post engagements and discord chats, I have made some wonderful new friends.
Another good part of Hive is also the reward that comes with our participation on Hive. There are many other social media out there where you can spend all your hours and data and no form of reward for it. But on Hive, you learn, you earn, and you connect. This is perfect for me and I couldn't have asked for a better opportunity than this.
PLAGIARISM AND WHY IT IS FROWNED UPON ON HIVE
Having talked about Hive as a knowledge hub, let me talk about how Hive maintains this status and continues to stand out from the rest.
Having distinguished itself and maintains its uniqueness by promoting and supporting only original contents. This makes plagiarism a very big offense on Hive. Plagiarism means presenting another person's work as your own without a proper reference.
Hive frowns at this and it might lead to a penalty through downvoting of the author or muting of the author once plagiarism is detected. So, every author on Hive must be original and publish only original content. If for any reason you want to use a work or picture or material from another author, such must be properly sourced and referenced.
All pictures used on Hive must also be free to use pictures. There are so many sites out there where these free-to-use images can be sourced. I use Wikimedia, pixabay, or pexels. There is also unsplash and others. Also, note that istock images on some of these sites are not free to use images. This is one of the mistakes I once made as a beginner. But that God that I was properly directed and I know better now.
Bringing original content on Hive offers the author the opportunity to learn and develop him or herself. Many persons have developed or perfected their writing skills through Hive. When you put in an effort, you will be surprised by how far you have developed your writing skills with time.
THE USE OF TAGS AND THE IMPORTANCE
Now that we have established the importance of quality and original content on Hive, let me talk about how you can get your content into the eyes of the readers.
This can be done with the use of tags. Tags help your post to be seen by many readers. When you make a post and add tags to it, your post will appear in the communities where you tagged or when those keywords are searched. So these tags are very important to put out your content.
However, these tags must be used properly. There are many communities on Hive with specific contents. Your tags must be those related to your post. For instance, a community like Stemsocial supports posts on sciences, technology, engineering, and mathematics. People looking for knowledge in this area go there to find quality contents. Likewise, a community like leofinance is specific for content on money, and Hive Book club is a community for book lovers.
It is therefore an offense on Hive to make a post on money and tag Stemsocial or make a post on Health and tag leofinance. Therefore, every tag must be related to the topic of the content. This is so that people looking for information on those specific areas will not be distracted by other unrelated contents in the community. Inappropriate use of tags can attract a penalty on Hive.
GENERAL TAGS
Even though some tags are very specific to some contents, some tags can apply to almost all the contents. These are the ones that we describe as general tags. Some of the general tags are Neoxian, proof of brain, newbie, Hive, etc.
Hive is a general tag because the post is made on Hive and is suitable for people searching for that keyword. Proof of brain (POB) is a general tag because most original contents fit into the community as proof of our brains at work. Newbie can be a general tag for new Hiveans and those searching for that keyword will be able to see their content. Neoxian is also a general tag as the curators offer support to quality contents across communities.
In conclusion, Hive is a beautiful place to be, my experience has been awesome. As a newbie, there are many things to know and learn in other to thrive on Hive. This is why this program, the Newbies Initiative Program offers this golden opportunity for the Newbies to have an in debt knowledge of Hive, the do's and don'ts, and how to better our experience here.
I am therefore so grateful to this team for the wonderful job well done. Thanks so much to 
