Gauging the Impact of Your Content

Wanting the benefits of fame without having the skills to earn them. The worst thing a content creator can do to themselves is giving into the delusion that whatever they churn out has value. At least, as valuable as they inflate it to be. This is my shitposting account, follow if you like to read more about negative stuff.

It’s not the $ on the post that tells you how much value you’re giving back to your audience, it’s the views and the length of time they stay to consume your content. Let me just pull up some stats from Peakd analytics on my main account. At the time of this writing, these analytics aren’t available due to some errors to which are beyond me but you can check your own stats and reflect how much value you’re pumping up for the audience you receive.

If you haven't realized how much a single minute of retention can mean, you can read a lot of paragraphs within that 60 seconds, breathe in and out 12-20 times relaxed, and an estimated 84 abortions have passed. This post has a 9 min estimated time to complete but less than 3 minutes will be more than enough for fast readers.

I care more about the unique views and average time spent viewing the post than the rewards those those posts are getting. The stats here are not totally accurate as people that use Brave browser don’t get added to the digits but it’s a decent gauge on how much value you’re consistently giving off with each post churned out.

The amount of attention you receive is proportional to the value you’re giving to other people that gives you their audience. In a post with a high average time spent, that means more people took the time to view your content even when they showed signs of further engaging with you on the comments. Never underestimate the minutes because each minute spent means several words read or information processed by consumers from your content. Now I usually churn out posts that have more than 1k words and have a 5min average estimated time for reading.

Seeing I could only hook around 2 minutes of my reader’s time probably meant I bored them enough during the mid or conclusion parts of the post. OR people are just fast readers and scanned their way towards the end, both could happen. Our eyes have adapted to scanning and process info faster online so the counter on post length can disregarded.

Here’s something I learned when making content online, people have short attention spans and you only have a few seconds or minutes to convince them to stick around. You know those trending youtube videos that you’re just not into? Can you imagine yourself watching those clips around 5 mins long when they perfectly show you’re not going to have a good time in the first few seconds of watching? I can’t, I’d let a clip run it’s pitch for a max of 2 mins before I nope out and this is exercising the max of generosity of my time.

Assuming the stats on peakd analytics are close to the real numbers we’re getting, if you see your long form content having low average time barely reaching a minute, maybe it’s time to reevaluate how you can keep hooking people to stay and read. I don’t intend to give good advice here, I just wanna laugh at people who convinced or inflated themselves they’re content creators when the digits on their engagement levels say otherwise.

Because in the cruel world of centralized social media where you can’t get paid to post scribbles, like upvotes for your dinner, starbucks, selfie, flowers you’ve seen on your walks and exercise routine that nobody cares, Hive is an existing rebelling bubble where people can get paid when they share just those and more. Now this creates a dopamine conditioning system and delusions that the money received also gauges the value pumped out.

Your content can be like that stripper way past their age for the profession that no one bothers to watch jiggle but then there’s some rich daddy that coughs up those greens to make it look like it’s still relevant.

If your unique view counter has only 1 digit and you’re getting 2 digits worth of $ on your post value, yeah it might just be rich daddy coughing out those greens. At least you’re relevant to them…

Any artist that was already posting outside of Hive and got onboarded here would know how steep the competitive for attention to get their name out to a greater audience. It’s a jungle out there and no one gives an F about your content unless you try out some gimmick to make yourself more visible for those well loved heart emojis, tweets, shares and all the good stuff that gives you that dopamine kick.

I meant it when I said the worst thing a content creator can do to themselves here on Hive is convincing themselves that their content’s value is reflected by the amount of $ on it. The idea that one is receiving a lot of weighted upvotes consistently because their content is great can either be right or just have a generous set of friends with a lot of stake to throw around. With more stake, any crap or mediocre content can go to trending just cause it’s how the system allows. It’s also true for people with underappreciated content because they’re too lazy to do some legwork making themselves visible. Leave it to the curators to find their voices in the abyss of the network.

Learning from how Youtube’s algorithm works, the platform’s changing dynamic on which content gets more promoted to trending would favor lengthy content, more retention of views while the clips are being played, comments, likes and dislikes. Yes, even dislikes are factored in and contribute to shooting a video on trending if the ratio isn’t far from the likes it is receiving live. It’s all gauging engagement. This algorithm is also meant culling creators that make lengthy videos from the competition if they can’t manage to make their audience watch until the end of the video. It makes sense, if it’s really entertaining, one would watch it till the end and it takes skill to hook your audience for the longest amount of time possible.

Creators here aren’t punished for that reality. It just takes a big stake to upvote to push the post enough on trending even when nobody cares about the scribble churned out. I could put on some make up and glitter for show and I know I’m not going to get more than five people to view it, but I #appreciator anyone that swoops in and save me from my financial situation.

You know what I dislike about getting too much votes on my posts? Going to trending where it’s even more visible that I got there because of a trail instead of having the actual number of people that care about what I actually posted about. The votes are nice and all but I just want to share with you a story of Hentai Kamen(and other weird stuff from Japan just cause) and hope you watched the movie and enjoy it with me too.

The post is past payout and it’s not a shameless plug. I write stuff I’m into and when it gets rewarded more than it’s getting the proportionate engagement, that just means I got a lucky roll on the dice and it wasn’t because a lot of people thought Hentai Kamen was a great story to share about. See where I’m getting at?

The rewards one gets don’t reflect the value they are putting out and this is more prevalent in the platform than people willing to admit their stuff ain’t really material that can hook eyes. It’s really just the network they got that is muscling their post on trending. But it’s not totally the creator’s fault if people with stake wants to be generous on content no one gives a fuck about, sometimes you just have to take a step back and realize we just need to let people have their own biases on what good content is and it just so happens that some have more stake than others in deciding the rewards (doesn’t mean their tastes are good).

Be appreciative and be level headed that by the end of the day, if only a few people actually gave a flying fuck about your stuff, then those people are more important than the votes you’re getting any day because these people are likely going to ask where you’ve been and why aren’t you actively posting like you really do matter. Woe is the user that never had those type of bonds on the blockchain that prints money because that experience is something the money printer could never one up against.

When no one asks where you’ve been while inactive, that’s when you know how relevant you are to the community you thought you belong to. It was never about your content. It was always about the personality people subscribed to.

For creators on Hive that are really are putting their best efforts to entertain. Keep respecting your audience’s time by giving your best shot for each post. Become consistent and expand your network and grow outside Hive if this place is your first platform to blog on for encouragement, then bring traffic back here. If you limit your growth as a creator on Hive, you’ll be doing yourself a disservice in your growth as the real competition is out there. There are so many content creators struggling to get views out there for emojis and clout and they can offer more to the table especially in the field of digital art.

For people that know it within themselves that being a content creator is not their thing and are just posting for kicks and giggles, you da real mvp, because it takes another wired perspective to go against the norm. If I don’t post I miss out on potential earnings, therefore I should force myself to pump out something otherwise my ancestors will look down upon me when I can’t pay rent and support my vices and lifestyle.

I say just enjoy posting the hell you want cause you enjoy what you share and if people dig your stuff that’s great. If you can put some flair to your posts, even better (to fool those curators that you’re a content creator when you’re just a refined shitposter like me).

If you made it this far reading, thank you for your time.