I heard indirectly the other day someone say that I don't do enough to promote my posts, just push them out to Twitter. This is true, that is all I do, but considering I barely comment on Twitter and have posted less than 50 times in the last 28 days, plus I have less than 500 followers. But still, I have around 25,000 impressions - not great perhaps, but not too bad either considering they are top level posts and aren't comments on popular content and drama. I also seem to have been shadow banned a few months ago for Steem content, where my posts were getting between 2-5K views each, and then dropped off a cliff overnight - even though now I am getting two to three times the engagement through retweets and likes - I am also getting more click-throughs than I did earlier. But, who knows if Twitter is a valuable resource for Hive to leverage.
What I wonder though is the "not doing enough to promote my posts" bit, and I would like to know what that actually means and if there is anyone who is doing something different. Should I buy billboard space on the highway? Take out a classifieds advert in the back of the local newspaper? Buy votes so I am up at the top of Trending? Oh yeah, that last one only works if you are wanting attention on the platform...
As I see it, the power of social media is the ability for the consuming audience to propel content forward, not the contributor themselves. The contributor does have to find channels at some point, but at the end of the day - the reach of one person is limited, especially when that person also is the one spending their time creating content and likely also working to pay the bills. Plus, sharing this kind of content on other platform like Medium, means that they will read it there, instead of here - defeating the purpose.
The cost of self-promotion is very high as it takes time away from creative and generative tasks and in the case of Hive, doesn't likely bring any direct benefits - even though there might be slight benefits for the platform overall. But, the cost of sharing is very, very low - especially off platform like on Twitter, where a stream of retweets isn't frowned upon in the same way it may be on Hive. Low cost sharing is the driver of social media and it is this that makes something go "viral" online. If there was a cost to share, how many people would pay to share another's work?
It is important to get more external eyes on Hive content for many reasons, including for search Engine rankings and usage statistics, so perhaps what I should do is pay people to share my work outside of the Hive network and aid distribution also. I am not sure if this is a good or bad idea yet.
Get Paid to share my posts
If I give something like a 3% vote (currently 6 cents - curation) for every proven share on Twitter, Reddit or Facebook, perhaps the small incentive will be enough to drive some people to share. If I then double to a 6 - 10% vote ( up to 20 cents - curation) for those who also leave a thoughtful comment about the post, I wonder if it will also drive some engagement.
What do you think?
I wouldn't mind people sharing the work of mine they enjoy out to the masses, but perhaps this will also aid in the distribution and aid in getting more eyes on Hive content. I have been doing the #PoSh (Proof of Share) life since November last year and it does seem to be getting impressions at least on Twitter - So I may as well extend that further - plus, with 
Now, I post about twice a day generally, and normally reward most of the comments I get, so this means that if I get an additional 10 share comments on each, it would take between 1 and 2 extra full votes a day to support this. I can live with that, as previously I used to spend about 50 - 60% of my voting power on comments, prior to the EIP introduction and price, which made it too expensive to get over the dust threshold.
This is an experiment of course and might fail spectacularly or, I might have to change the percentages, but if the goal is to get eyes on from external sources, there is little more I can do at this point, unless someone has a better idea. Again, there is huge value in sharing content on and off the platform for Hive, content creators and all those hodlers wanting their token value to increase - so, I guess I should try and get my work out there and "self-promote".
This way, I don't have to start self-voting, I don't have to buy votes and, it definitely has the potential to aid distribution of Hive to a wider selection of accounts as I would assume, that the larger accounts won't be interested in doing this or, they will do it without the reward anyway.
For those that haven't noticed, there are internal share links available:
Peakd:
Hive.blog
I am no whale, but getting paid a little for doing what one might be doing anyway might be a good way to earn a little extra while also adding value to Hive on what one earns by potentially bringing new eyes onto Hive through link clicks. While not all of my posts might be suitable to share out to Twitter, perhaps some of them that you might enjoy, others you know might enjoy also.
The value of social media is the ability to leverage social networks and advertisers pay for the clicks through to their content from adverts, so since it has been mentioned that I should be promoting my content further afield, this seems a much healthier advertising model than promotion on the platform that puts Hive in the pockets of those who already have a lot, plus, it will hopefully add some more engagement and solid transactions and for those who I get to know, perhaps new relationships and new friendships will form.
Perhaps this is what should happen more on the platform for the accounts like myself that have decent content that may be worth a share from time to time. Perhaps some of the curation initiatives can spend time curating the comments of good posts and authors, rather than just the author themselves - incentivize the sharing outside of the network of great contributions.
What do you think, worth the experiment?
Taraz
[ Gen1: Hive ]