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Good morning my fellow people on Hive and especially my current and future students on Hive. My name is Zak Ludick, I live in Cape Town South Africa and since the start of 2022, I have been actively onboarding and teaching the basics of Hive to a number of new users. Most of these I on-boarded myself, but these lessons are valid topics for anyone who posts online and it is a good idea to educate and contemplate!

The Hashtag

A hashtag, when used like this: #guide becomes a clickable item on most UIs and if you do follow that link it should give you a list of blogs that contain the #guide.

This is free exposure!

You don't need to tell anyone about your post, no need to call or text or email someone about the news. There is no need to pay for advertising or the need to use a chat promo channel.

You simply put the appropriate tags into the post - on Ecency you will find the tags section between the Title and the body of the post!

People searching for a specific topic of conversation will come across your post, as simple as that!

"If that is so simple, then why are there still a lot of words in this post Zak?" You might ask.

Well, like most things, there is a simple answer - the gist of the topic that most people will be easily familiar with, but to truly MASTER the art of the Hashtag (or just "Tag"), then you will need to pay close attention.

First Tag is the Community Tag!

It is NOT recommended that you post most of your things on your personal Blog on Hive. Not just yet. Even seasoned Hive users with thousands of followers rather opt to post into a community and you should too!

This is because of exposure again.

Nobody is going to read your post unless they are already your follower and if you only have 8 followers then how do you hope to get more than 8 votes?

In the screenshot above I have selected the OCD community to post into for this post. This translates to hive-174578 but does not stress about that. This is your first tag and that is what it will look like. Now your post will be posted directly to that community.

What are Communities and how do I know if I may post there?

A community is an interest group of one form or another. This is the simple gist of it. A community becomes a place to sort certain content and depending on the community, there will be all sorts of rules.

Let's use Foodies Bee Hive as an example. You can see already that their topic is all about Food-related posts and if you have a look: 12,702 members with 645 posters and 3,091 posts - it is fairly busy and will generate more exposure than a smaller community.

Remember: Exposure means the potential for votes through visibility but it can never be assumed that this guarantees you any votes.

When posting to a community, be sure to have a look at their rules:

Most community rules are easy:

• Keep the posts on topic
• Don't copy or steal work
• Be nice to others

The Community and the next 4 tags after this

in the Foodies Bee Hive above, it speaks of earning FOODIE. On Hive you earn HIVE (generally in staked HP) and HBD for your post payouts, but you can also earn a massive plethora of Secondary Layer Tokens from communities.

There are simple tokens on Hive that have been minted. It costs something to mint a token and then these tokens can be traded and transferred to one another.

Usually, there is some sort of use or Utility built into the token. let's consider:

Here is the LEO token. It is the native reward token for the @leofinance community and when you post to this community, you can earn some LEO. 1x Leo is currently worth $0.083 and together, the tokens have a Market Capacity of over $1 million.

LEO in particular acts like HIVE and HP. You need to stake it. Having a large Stake increases you vote in LEO rewards. You also can earn more LEO via curation payout.

Your community tag, plus the first 4 (total of 5) tags are the ones usually set to give you a chance to earn some additional tokens.

The remainder of the Tags

Additionally, you want to add as many other tags that are keywords to the post that you are making. For example:

Tags should always be relevant.

In the above example the Music Community is the main tag. Gems and OCD are large communities with many members, good for exposure as is palnet but this has a token. Neoxian and Proofofbrain, POB also have tokens.

The ukelele and coversong tags are music related and are really specific. People looking for a very specific bit of content could find this post by looking at that keyword.

Lastly, using the #capetown tag, this highlings a geographical location which may be of interest for people who want to link up with others in a certain part of the world or to give the reader some context about where in the world you are posting from!

Conclusion

Using tags is essential to the well-being and success of the Hive poster - especially the newbie who has very little HP!

Skip this step at your own peril but in general, you will not get much support if you do not use these right.

If you mess up and forgot about tags then it is alright, you can simply edit you post and add the tags in. I recently had a student who did not put in tags. I picked it up and she edited it, sticking some recommended tags into the post and soon enough the votes and interactions began to flow!

Learning from others. It is easy enough to go to the community where you wish to post and to look for a post that has similar content as the one you intend on posting. Choose one that is successful! Then scroll to where the tags are and emulate.

That means use your brain! Look at the tags and choose only what is relevant to YOUR post and get an idea of what tags you should use instead of some of theirs.

I might make a post soon about Music as well, but if I used the "ukelele" hashtag when there is nothing in my Music post that has anything to do with the ukelele then I have missed an opportunity and I have misinformed, which can be annoying!

Until next time!

Cheers!
@zakludick