I had no clue that splinterlands is generating that much traffic. I have stated for years that without marketing it will be a bit hard to get Hive mainstream. I'm sticking to this reasoning. 

Posted Using [LeoFinance <sup>Beta</sup>](https://leofinance.io/@acesontop/re-steevc-4jkphx)

This is the million dollar question.

I wouldn’t even know where to begin answering it. But it’s a serious question that needs addressing.

However my contribution to spreading the word of Hive will be another promo video. Something special this time.
It’s a passion project and I’m getting my brothers creative agency involved 😎💪🏻

I am actually a bit surprised that the Leo front end isn't higher on the list.  They have been on fire lately with the stuff they are doing.  

Hive as a platform has no defined audience.  As well, no leader to define who it's audience is going to be.

Leofinance is seeing success as you have a leader who has defined it's target audience and is working to streamline the process of bringing people.

Splinterlands has a leader(s) who defined it's audience and streamlined the process of bringing people.

Hive as a platform is trying to be too many things, to too many people with no one in particular leading the charge.

That's what I think anyhow :)

Interesting post, I agree that a mass marketing strategy can accelerate the adoption of people to the community! this being of great collective benefit. It would not be bad to think of a fund with people committed to this interest, which allocates a large part of the funds to carry out a disruptive marketing in a massive and segmented way! I still do not lose hope that this will happen and I would surely like to be part of it!

Posted Using [LeoFinance <sup>Beta</sup>](https://leofinance.io/@clicmaster/re-steevc-29lxgp)

Some big questions, to be sure.

One observation is that a lot of people write excellent articles/posts about the coolness of Hive... but of course, they *publish them on Hive* and then they share on their twitter accounts *which were pretty much created to publicize Hive, so 90% of their followers are already on Hive.* In other words, there are a lot of *"positive vibes,"* but they are bouncing around in an echo chamber.

Lately, I have been pondering this same question. I've been considering years in marketing and advertising, along with vague memories from a University education I've never used...

Number one: Overcoming *objections.* Primary objection: *"It's too confusing and complicated."*

I think *usability* is improving. And that's very important. The de-facto standard for web usability is called *"login with Facebook/Google."* LeoFinance leads the way in that area with a *"create account with your twitter information"* as a starting point. 

Number two: The *"rewards"* (lack of) issue. The *rewards* aren't the problem; the problem is that we're *using rewards* as the primary *"carrot"* to attract people. It's like using *"free beer"* as an incentive... sure, *lots* of people will show up, but when you run out of beer they all leave again. 

One of the things I'm working on at the moment is revamping/redesigning all my business/hobby niche websites and blogs — some of which are 20 years old — to include *relevant mentions of Hive.* 

And that's where *communities* come in. For example, I don't have lot of people I'd point to *"Hive, in general"* but I have a good segment I'd point at the Natural Medicine community. If it had a front-end interface as sophisticated as LeoFinance's, I could think of about 20 *active* people from that field who'd be shoo-ins, *not* because of *rewards* but because of the *niche appeal* and the *feature* that they wouldn't get posts taken down — like they have experienced on other sites — for talking about and recommending *alternative* healing processes. That's just *one* example. Another might be the *writing communites* I have been part of for 20 years. Similarly, I might point fellow micro-business operators to the CTP community. 

But you'd never *see* those promotional efforts because I wouldn't be talking Hive... *ON HIVE.* However, the onboarding features are *essential* because *I need to know* when someone I recommended Hive to actually *signed up,* so they don't float around in a vacuum and feel confused and disgruntled.

Just thinking out loud...

=^..^=



Posted Using [LeoFinance <sup>Beta</sup>](https://leofinance.io/@curatorcat.leo/re-steevc-4xsykz)

Yes, for Hive to go "mainstream" it most definitely needs to be more newbie-friendly.  Maybe there needs to be a "newbie" frontend.  Somewhere new users could go and get questions answered.  Find tutorials on how to do things. Maybe walk them through creating posts step-by-step, including how to upload images, links, etc.  Provide links to tools they can use. Pixabay, the meme one, hive-Buzz, block explorer, etc.  Even have some sort of "chat" function that they could use to ask questions and, ideally, get a small reward for using it.

You could even "gamify" the beginning to a certain extent.  Earn 1 Hive for completing such and such a step.  Earn 100 delegated Hive for completing 10 steps.  Teach people how to bookmark frontends and then allow them to earn rewards for "exploring" different tribes.  Instead of giving badges for 10 comments and 50 comments and 100 comments, give them 1 Hive, 5 Hive, 10 Hive.  This could all come out of the DHF budget at least initially.  I also think a lot of users on here would be willing to donate or delegate to a project like this.

Realistically, there could almost be a token created that would feed the newbies. I think about how LBI and UTOPIS pay dividends.  If you created a token that strictly curated the "newbie tribe" with it's curation rewards and then the "investors" would get maybe small dividends and price appreciation, it might be something some of the dolphins and whales would fund.

I mean, the saying is, give a man a fish and feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish and feed him for a lifetime. Hive shows people the fish and then throws boats, poles, tackle, bait, reels, lures, rods, nets, and sunscreen at them all at once and says, "Here you go. All you need to feed yourself for a lifetime. Just figure it out."  Is it any wonder most people would rather just buy the fish and eat it? 

Anyway, just throwing out ideas.  I'm not much of an implementation guy but I do tend to come up with a good idea here and there.  Take it for what it's worth.

Posted Using [LeoFinance <sup>Beta</sup>](https://leofinance.io/@dagger212/re-steevc-ukhoh)

MySpace payed bands, and influencers to come post there, and went from nothing, to millions of users in a year. If we could get a large enough marketing budget, you could pay mid-teir celebrities, and public figures to post say 1 exclusive video or post a week. Maybe promise them a certain amount of Hive of they do it weekly for months? If they have a decent stake waiting for them, they might be encouraged to promote to their fans on other platforms.

I was an early steem adopter that let my page go dormant. I just a few days ago found my keys, to explore Hive. One thing I was surprised to see was that there were several alt media figures posting here who's work I consume elsewhere, yet I've never heard them mention Hive. That kinda bummed me out, and I've been wondering why they just post here, instead of pushing the platform like they do rokfin or LBRY.

I'm still exploring all the new features and such, but I'm gonna make a post going over how I feel about Hive. What I like, and some. Concerns I have.

There is an incredible amount of potential here. The marketing for steemit was always a joke imo. I'm not professional but I always felt that if I had that budget, I could see more results. But I'm probably talking out my ass. Hive has a chance to do it right, and maybe we can bukld something lasting, and impactful.

Well you didn't include the different front ends.. like weedcash or leofinance .. those people are connecting with HIVE but not using one of the 2 front ends you mentioned. Both of which blow in my opinion.. although PeakD is the current weapon of choice

I just had a discussion with @progressivechef about this the other day. I think one of the reasons new users don't stick around is the rewards or lack thereof for new users. When a new user comes on and takes time to write a fantastic post and then gets a penny of upvotes, then watches as others post a meme or a steps report and get over $100 in upvotes. Even if the new user gets curied once in a while for their great posts, it has to be extremely disheartening. Many of the whales may think seeing posts with high money values would be encouraging, as in "here is what you can get if you stick with it" but I think it has the opposite effect, discouraging and ultimately chasing new users away.

That is keeping people. And I think it is a huge problem. I know it's always been a problem—I remember people discussing it 4 years ago when I joined Steemit—but it is one we have never managed to solve.

As for attracting people, I agree with your ideas. 

In my opinion what is missing is some sort of coherent cooperation between parts of Hive ecosystem. Why not include links to other services on the major frontends? Why there are no tutorial with Hive tools (keychain, hive-now, etc.) and community guidelines on the start? People feel lost and this is highly discoureging for new users. We shot our own foot.

On the marketing site I would start with inviting 500-10000 followers content creators from YouTube, people not getting significant reward from centralized social media can use opportunity to diversify source of income. YT blocks comments so I used business offers tab with email address, but it's hard to make it look legit with gmail address... Hive.io email address available for users would help, professionalism in disguise :)

>You can see that both had good initial growth, but have plateaued and may be dropping a bit since the start of the year.

It's a 90 day moving average. As a result, a recent increase in traffic is not likely to be registered as an uptick in the graphic but rather an uptick in the slope of the graph (which can be seen for hive.blog at least).

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