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Allen Taylor
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Every year, I watch Hivians get excited about HiveFest, prepare their travel plans, and gallivant around the world to some exotic location to meet in person the creators and curators who make up Web3's oldest social media blockchain. This year, HiveFest was in Mexico and, like every year, I didn't go. But I was able to catch it on video, which is super-nice. One of my favorite sessions was by presenter @crimsonclad. She talked about marketing Hive. Here's the embed of the entire second day of the conference. Fast forward to 56:10 to see her presentation.
I like how she starts off explaining the difficulties of marketing Hive, which has special challenges that other "Web3 apps" don't have. Here they are in a nutshell:
No VC money
No corporate hierarchy
No dedicated marketing team
No marketing budget
In other words, unlike most so-called Web3 apps and tools, Hive is truly decentralized. Since there is no dedicated marketing team and no dedicated marketing budget, the task of marketing falls on every user who is excited about what Hive has to offer. But most users aren't experts in marketing. They may be experts in something that is beneficial, but marketing isn't one of them.
Personally, I've been doing online marketing full-time since 2006. I've been an online creator of some capacity since the mid-1990s. So, I'd like to address the challenge of marketing a decentralized social application like Hive.
Last week, I discussed the Hive DHF. Decentralized Hive Fund. This fund is a community development fund that anyone can submit a proposal to. I've seen several people suggest that CrimsonClad should be on the Hive payroll so that she can travel around the world and present the Hive opportunity to people because she's such a great spokesperson. She is a great spokesperson. However, she is only one person.
Realizing her own potential is tapped out by this limitation, her HiveFest presentation introduced the idea of paying Hive ambassadors to take up some of the slack, travel the world, and present the Hive opportunity to niche groups. That's a brilliant idea.
Perusing the DHF, I found one proposal for marketing and it's expired. With a daily budget of 218,055.564 HBD and currently funded projects of 30,556.996 HBD, there seems to be plenty of room for a well-thought-out marketing plan that could be spearheaded by someone who is qualified to run a marketing department and has the time and passion to do so. It doesn't necessarily need to be a single individual. It could be a team of individuals with divided responsibilities.
The feature of decentralization has its drawbacks. For instance, it is much more inefficient than a hierarchy where everyone is accountable to someone on a totem pole. On the other hand, decentralization allows for a better distribution of talents, resources, and creativity because people on the totem pole are less concerned with protecting their turf, freeing them to be more mission-minded.
While I think CrimsonClad's ambassador program is an awesome idea, I'd like to see an actual proposal on the DHF with dedicated funding and a real marketing plan. I like many of the initiatives that are taking place in the Philippines, Ghana, and Sucre. I've often wondered why we don't have more of the same in the U.S. Some of these outreach efforts could be implemented in the U.S., Canada, and other Western nations with similar results.
Of course, marketing is a long game, not a short one. In other words, it's not about making a sale today. It's about positioning the brand for an upward slope and forward growth in the future. The energy you put in today could have long-ranging impacts for years to come. With that in mind, a dedicated decentralized marketing team would be to Hive's benefit, but such a team should be culled together and funded by the same proposal-based process that dapp development uses on the blockchain. If this is already in the works, I'd offer my skills as a content creator to ensure it's success. If it isn't, I'd work with CrimsonClad and anyone else to see it to fruition.
Whether I'm involved or not, I believe this is the way to go. Do you agree?
Two days later, the Pre-2020 selection is at 51% with 88 votes. 2020 is up to 19.3%, 2021 is down to 19.3%, and 2022-23 is down to 10.2%. Still, this shows that up-and-coming Web3 gurus attract a large audience of post-pandemic newbies. What this doesn't tell us is when the poll taker entered the Web3 space. My hunch is around 2020, and a quick look at his X profile reveals that Kyle Reidhead joined X in September 2020. That means Web3 is older than his X account, and likely older than his Web3 Academy, which joined X in January 2022. This is not to denigrate Reidhead or Web3 Academy, but wouldn't you rather trust someone who has been in crypto at least before the last bull run? That's still post-Web3 genesis, but experiencing the last bull run at least gives someone a different perspective on the markets they're discussing. I got into crypto in 2018 and I feel like a newbie sometimes. But with two books on Web3 topics, and having been an internet user since the 1990s, I feel like I have a unique perspective on Web3 and most of what I see from Web3 trainers and educators is Web2 stuff repackaged. That is NOT good.
Much of what we see in Web3 is not decentralized. While Hive is not perfectly decentralized, it is more decentralized than the majority of other Web3 initiatives I've seen. For more on the benefits of decentralization, check out my books Cryptosocial: How Cryptocurrencies Are Changing Social Media and Web3 Social: How Creators Are Changing the World Wide Web (And You Can Too!).
Publish0x (Note: If you join Publish0x using this link, I'll get a small portion of tips, but my portion will come from the platform's share rather than yours, and at no expense to you.)
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