I agree that the lack of engagement is an issue and it has been an issue prior to the fork. Most of the votes are auto-votes or manual votes without reading. This is more apparent if you just look at the page view statistics offered by Peakd.com on your articles.

I see 2 main problems and I will like to draw comparison with mainstream social networks. On mainstream social networks, you basically bootstrapped your account with a group of your friends. Naturally, your group of friends will be more likely to engage with your posts. In addition, any random guy can comment on your post (depending on your privacy settings of course), which further increases enhancements. This is enabled through easier sign-up process that platforms like Reddit or Quora have. 

While the platform itself it unable to fix the issue of getting your friends onboard, I think interfaces like peakd.com should consider implementing a simpler commenting process to allow people without a Hive account to leave a comment.

It helps if you go out to other people's blogs and make comments and not just expect others to comment on your posts. I'm getting interaction every day but it requires for me to be active.

>*I wrote posts over there to collect my auto votes and that was about it. I might get one or two comments if it was a particularly interesting post. But mostly it was just an exercise in collecting the votes that I had "paid for".*

The sad (but cynical) truth. Thanks for your honesty :-)

Well to ask engangement actually you need to engage yourself I see that this is your first post here in a month and you haven't commented to anyone before, so is easy to understand that you won't receive the same attention as the people who does have interactions with others. 

This is a "quid pro quo" like almost everything else in life.

i get it. I had this same problem a while ago, because it was still STeem, and tbh, i just didn't feel like Steem was going anywhere....
fast forward to now, Hive has a clean start, and many people are really stepping up....there are tons of communities forming, so my advice is to find your passion, join a community or start your own.

i have one question for you: what are you interested in?

LOL, this post got a lot of engagement and a decent payout....its good to be honest!

Hello @mikepm74,

I completely agree with you and this is why I tried to create a community but in the end it is also hard to find people that want to engage and not just post and flee :).

If you are interested in Crypto (investing, art, trading, fundamentals...) you will always be welcome in #HODL community.

Sincerely,

@vlemon

First step is to engage other posts, at least that's what I noticed. It makes people look at your profile too.