With low effort posts, you will undermine yourself as an author
Every morning, I'm surfing through the latest Hive posts in search for one post that should be featured within the @ourpick project. Together with @mypathtofire and @ph1102, we try to find 4 posts every week-day that we believe are worth reading. Today, I really struggled to find a post that fulfilled this objective.
Quality is great but...
There is this mantra on Hive that we should all create quality content. The problem is that quality content comes in many different forms and is quite difficult to define. It should be of a certain size, word wise It should have a nice formatting with pictures that have the source mentioned. It should have subtitles. It should be written with few spelling and grammar mistakes. Last but not least it should be interesting. I think that this last point is where things get subjective.
We need more creativity and more original ideas
As an author, I know that it's not always easy to come up with great ideas for a post and if you want to build your hive account, you need to produce content. Many of us fall into the trap to do easy posts by using previous content and dressing them slightly differently. It's what I call low effort content.
When I look for a post that people should read, the only thing I actually care about is whether the content is interesting. Do I learn something from it? Is it funny to read? May another person be thankful to discover this content? This is what really matters for me. Unfortunately, it is sometimes very difficult to find such posts.
Does Hive discourage creativity?
When somebody creates a daily giveaway where he changes a couple of sentences every day, he actually earns probably as much as somebody who writes a very creative post that brings added value to the reader. Well, we could argue that the giveaway also brings value to the people participating because they can win the prize. However, the effort put in is totally different.
I don't really think that Hive discourages creativity but it doesn't really encourage it either. I believe that by running projects like @ourpick where we really put a lot of attention to whether the post is interesting, we can do our part to encourage creativity. Not only do we feature these posts in our daily sum-up, we also upvote this content with our curation account and our personal accounts.
Hive is all about creating content but why do we create so much content that we know nobody is really interested in? Because most of us get auto upvotes and curation trail votes whatever content we post. This means that even without effort, people get a little income. So why should we put in the effort?
With low effort posts you will undermine yourself
When I see authors that create a lot of such low effort posts, I simply tend to skip them. Why should I waste time to read stuff that offers no added value to me? I unfollow these authors and also lift the autovotes. The problem is that such an author is maybe capable of creating some good content but if there is too much low effort content around that good content, it won't be visible anymore.
Your content will finally define you as an author. If you post low effort content, you will become a low quality author.
If you want to build something on hive and want to have nice post payouts, I encourage you to skip these low effort posts. Simply don't do them. They will undermine you as an author and you will never end up on the auto votes of the bigger accounts. Create content less often but create content that is interesting to read.
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Hmm
You are right. There are even times when I will be very tired and I may be in a haste to make posts which may not make it quality enough but I've got no choice than to write it well...
Sometimes it's better to skip a day and make sure that we create something worth reading. Every post contributes to our reputation on hive and if we create too many low value posts, our reputation will suffer and in the long term also our income...
I couldn't agree more. 1 decent post per week for $10 has got to be more satisfying than a 2 sentence post each day paying cents.
A reputation takes a long time to build up, but can go down very quickly.
There are lots of people who want to upvote good content and it is worth to do imo.
That's very true. It's a long and slow process and it can be undone very quickliy if we start to do too many of these low effort posts.
It's similar to the saying 'give your best or waste your time'. I think understanding that building is a gradual process that doesn't need to be rushed is crucial. Creating half or quarter-hearted posts will probably bring more harm that good in the long run.
Attracting readers is probably the most difficult task in hive. If after attracting them, you write posts that don't bring any value to them, you might lose them quickly.
That's what we need to consider before deciding to post just for the sake of posting. We might just lose what we've built difficulty.
When as an author you know your reputation is involved when people read your content, you will definitely want to put in more energy and quality in the content you are dashing out
Every post draws the picture of you as an author on hive. It's up to each of us to define what kind of picture we want to give of ourselves.
It makes me wonder if I am messing up by combining Actifit reports on my account or not. I still try to make it a few hundred words about the day but maybe I should split that from my main account. It's tough to always get a post every single day so I agree that being hasty can definitely affect the post quality.
I had the same dilemma in the past when I was doing Actifit posts on my main account, but I decided to move it to another for the reason that Achim pointed out in this post...
I know that my Actifit posts weren't shitposts as I was doing every time 10-15 photos from my walks and writing about my day, but still, many people didn't open the posts and judge them before looking... Eventually, I stopped creating them, but that was for some other reason...
Yea. I am thinking of branching it out to a different account but I just haven't gotten around to it. I do have some account creation tokens so it might not be that bad.
Unfortunately actifit post don't exactly have a great standing in general on hive. Some tribes even excluded actifit tags from their front-ends. I think it would be a wise decision to do these post from an alt account.
I look at these things with very simple goggles...
Low-effort posts can't help you grow your account and that means that you will maybe do something, but only in the short term...
On the other side, creating quality content and engagement has no limits and your growth doesn't have limits either... It is a slower process, but it's something that you build for the long term...
To build up you account you need to attract readers because with the readers come comments, upvotes, relationships. You can't attract readers with low effort posts. So, yes low effort posts is for short term gains but it won't help you build your account on hive at all.. on the contrary.
Very true @achim03 i agree it is getting tougher with so many people just opting for what is very short content and no substance then they are confused why no one upvotes.
It makes curation harder then it needs to be in my opinion. 😢
The more valuable substance in the content the better it is not even about length really either because even short content has it's place in the world.
But even though a quote can move and insprire you we must remember that although a quote is short content alone. It comes from a larger piece of content and was the take away of the content not the actiual content.
I think for some people it is easy to fall into the trap of pre-etablished templates with watered down content and lost substance to the original post.
It is difficult like you say so effort is important and people can tell if you made any or not. 😉
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It's definitely difficult to come up with new and original content on a regular basis. Therefore it's very tempting to create posts based on templates. As you say the size of the content doesn't really matter. It matters whether this content brings something to the readers I believe.
I don't think using templates themselves is necessarily the problem. As with anything, it can be done elegantly well or very poorly. I use templates for my daily posts, but I add a lot more to them than a sentence or two. 😁🙏💚✨🤙
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Great post. I find I have to unregister for giveaway post every couple of months because if you ever join one you start getting tagged daily. I haven't created many post lately. I like to create post that add value. Splinterlands battling value has increased a bit since the bot ban. Looking forward to land and all of it's content that I can read.
!PIZZA
I agree that with the botting in Splinterlands, there wasn't much point of writing about Splinterlands strategies. I kind of stopped it and it was a big part of my content creation. I hope that we will continue to see more humans playing the game and then it would be possible to write content about it again :-)
$PIZZA slices delivered:
@ijat(1/5) tipped @achim03
It is a fact that without hard work a person can never achieve success. If a person makes his post without hard work and there is nothing special in it, then at all he cannot become a good worker on this platform.
The question I always ask myself when I create content is: could this content help somebody? If the answer is yes, then I believe it's worth creating it. If not then it's better not to post at all :-)
Great thinking.
Although nobody says one should never post low-effort content, you define a brand for yourself. I'm not sure if you undermine yourself, but you set a certain expectation level from your readers. If you post memes, readers expect to see memes. If you post videos, your audience wants to see your videos, if you write long-form content, your readers expect that. The themes and length of the posts/videos are also something the audience may prefer a certain way.
That doesn't mean we can't experiment. Our readers/watchers may like the variation and we might attract some new ones.
But for curation projects, it is indeed difficult to pick posts that don't respect certain standards. On the other hand, there can be different curation projects with different standards. Why not one for short videos, one for memes, one for photos, etc? Each project defines its standard and follows its own rules/guidelines for curation, as much as possible. I'm sure it sounds easier than it is in reality, especially for certain types of content.
I agree with what you say. We don't only need "quality" in the form of long posts. I don't like reading 4000 word posts for example. There is space for everybody and everything. As you say, you shape your audience with what you create and you build a certain expectation from them. With low effort posts that don't bring much value however, people tend to simply erase their audience. I go with a certain expectation to read a post and if I'm disapointed too often, I would tend not to go back...
Yes, I agree, if we continue to lower the bar on what we write, we will lose readers who expect a certain standard of quality.
I agree ... and btw I do not want to say that I create posts more creative than the majority of hive users.
I only want to say that the mechanisms of Hive do not really attract "high quality posts only". Take the HSBI for example. It certainly has some other mechanisms in place, too - but basically its main mechanism encourages you to create posts every day - regardless of their quality
There are many projects out there that push you to create posts on a regular basis but as you say it's not exactly posts that offer much added value. I can't really say that this is bad, because it's positive to take good habits by creating posts on a regular basis. But creating posts for the sake of creating them is not really what we should strive for I believe.
Hive SBI is one of the few ongoing support programs that does NOT require you to post every day. If you miss a day (or even a week, month, or quarter) then your pending upvote value continues to accrue until you finally post again. It is not 'lost' as it would be for most curation initiatives where a missed day is irrecoverable.
The only pressure from Hive SBI to post daily is if your level is so high that you receive a maximum upvote each time you post. In this case, your pending balance continues to accrue if you don't post, but the total value becomes more theoretical. There are still other options to convert it into new units for yourself or others, though.
I give Hive my all every day, and I've published 1-3 posts every day for over a year and a half, so I very much understand the great challenge of writing something new and interesting on a consistent basis. I use templates for my posts that I do every day, like my Daily Off-Grid Journal Entries, but I do my absolute best to actually give something valuable in each post that I write. I do see a lot of low-effort posts fly by me every day, and it is a little frustrating, especially when posts like that get far better votes than posts into which I put much more time, attention, and care. In any case, I very much appreciate you mentioning this and bringing it more into people's awareness! Thank you! 😁🙏💚✨🤙
I agree that often the value that a post recieves is not in correlation with the effort put in. However, for the long term development as an author, I think we should strive for putting in effort for our readers. Whenever I create a post, I try to figure out whether this post could be useful for somebody and I then write it accordingly. I don't really measure the success on the value a post creates but in the comments it recieves. The comments allow me to start conversations and actually build relationships with my readers. In the long term it's these relationships that are the real value of this blockchain I believe :-)
Your points are excellent ones, and I do my best to always give something of value to my readers. I love and believe in Hive deeply, so I put in great efforts every day to give as much as I'm able.
I have many tasks and responsibilities on the Blockchain everyday, so unless I use templates for my daily, or my very regular posts, I don't have sufficient time to recreate them each day. I have one of the highest levels of engagement on the Blockchain, and I have for most of this year, so I'm a very buzzy Hive bee.
Generally my posts do pretty well in both votes and comments, and what you say about our interactions, connections, and relationships being the true value of the Blockchain is exactly what I've mentioned multiple times in my own posts. I want my posts to be works of art, that inspire, motivate, and help people to see new perspectives. In any case, thank you again for sharing your perspective. I think that what you express has great value for everyone here. 😁 🙏 💚 ✨ 🤙
I was impressed with how you laid out the benefits of making quality posts and the dangers of making low effort posts. I loved the tips you gave for improving the quality of posts, such as making a good introduction, using images, checking spelling and formatting, and giving value to readers.
Thanks a lot for the feed-back. Appreciate it :-)
How interesting, as you say "quality content" comes in many different presentations and you should see many publications that may meet many standards to have quality but others do not, I feel that it is also good to seek to create quality content on the platform even if it is not fully achieved but that the attempt is made, that makes it more valuable.
Well said!