A short introduction to BRAVE
In case you haven't heard about BRAVE browser yet:
It's a chromium based web-browser, packed with privacy features and a build in crypto wallet.
When using Brave browser you can earn crypto tokens (BAT) while receiving ads from 3rd parties. Users can then choose to either reward their favorite content creators with those tokens or just keep them and do whatever they wish (like trading them on a market).
Sounds familiar right?
BRAVE and HIVE basically follow the same goals: rewarding content creators
Exploring the idea of HIVE Ads on BRAVE Browser
Let's assume we would be able to start a HIVE Ad-Campaign on BRAVE.
Why would this be a good idea?
- HIVE could onboard new users and attract new investors
- HIVE would get even more media attention, being the first community capable of starting a professional ad campaign, funded from it's own ecosystem
- The user base is already interested in crypto in general, which makes it a perfect target group
- Even better the user base already understood the concept of rewarding content creators with cryptocurrency but haven't discovered HIVE yet
- Brave supports HiveSigner and Hive Keychain out of the box
How could it look like?
Brave uses notification system to bring ads to the user.
User Ads
All we have to do here is to create a fancy HIVE icon for notification, title and text for the ad. It's possible to create a whole range of different variants and target them on specific user groups.
Sponsored Images
As another option we could use the whole browser starting page in order to promote HIVE.
Just imagine how cool it would be to see share something like @nateaguila's awesome wallpaper embedded in BRAVE (link to original post).
The ad would redirect interested users into our frontends like:
- peakd.com
- hive.blog
- 3speak.online
- esteem.app
- Others not listed here as well
Another option would be a redirect to https://signup.hive.io/ or even creating a brand new landing page in order to welcome and onboard new user.
The details here on this should be discussed with the community and be in concensus with HIVE stakeholders, in case the proposal get's funded.
Proposal Details
The current minimum campaign spend requirement for Brave Ads is $2,500 per month.
Since HIVE doesn't own any $ we have to become a little bit creative here.
- Period: 2020-05-18 to 2020-12-31
- Daily amount: 200 HDB
- Receiver: @hiveads
- Minimum funding required: 6000 HDB
Scope of the proposal:
- Targeted time frame for the ad campaign is the second half of 2020, starting on 2020-07-01
- Targeted monthly budget for BRAVE ads is $5000 to $6000
- Working out details for the ad campaign in the best interest of the community
- Creating marketing material which will be used for the ad campaign
- Setting up all legal contracts with BRAVE required for this ad campaign
- Reporting and bookkeeping of all expenses for full transparency
- All reports available about the campaign will be published
- 90% of funds will go to BRAVE for covering the ads
- 10% of funds will used as compensation for performing and management of this proposal for @roomservice and community members who contribute
Business requirements:
If any of the following goals aren't met, no campaign will be started and all funds (if any) will be refunded to the Decentralized Hive Fund (DHF):
- Minimum funding requirement for at least one monthly budget won't be achieved
- A professional, userfriendly and dead simple landing page for user onboarding is available
- Community will deceide if those requirements are fulfilled for candidates using dPoll
- A professional, userfriendly and dead simple create-account page for user onboarding is available
- Community will deceide if those requirements are fulfilled for candidates using dPoll
Want to see this happening?
In case you wan't to support this idea, just throw your vote at this proposal:
just throwing it out there, @peakd is brave verified
I applaud the initiative but the onboarding now is a complete mess in my opinion. For example, as soon as someone sign-up, he is bombarded with a 20 page FAQ section that would completely scare any normal sane person. We need something smooth, something that gets people to download Hive Keychain and walk them by the hand step by step to their first post.
When you get that, then you can test the funnel and throw money at advertising.
I would be willing to offer 15-100 HP Delegations to give incentive new users to finish reading the FAQ.
It could be scaled based on the content of the introductory post, making them realize the more effort and info in the post, the more Delegation they will receive to get on their feet.
a simple 5 point system could tier the content of the #introduceyourself post.
1/5 = 15 HP - Post Your name
2/5 = 30 HP - Post the Confirmation photo
3/5 = 50 HP - proper info on paper in confirmatory
4/5 = 75 HP - A short paragraph bio about yourself
5/5 = 100 HP - A multiple paragraph introduction with more than 1 photo
Perhaps award them based on each goal, putting more weight on more content, 25 HP for the multiple paragraph intro, 15 HP for the name etc...
Thats really cool!
I would contribute delegations, upvotes and over 150 account creation tickets as well. HIVE devs are working on delegation feature for ressource credits right now, so this could be an option too.
Maybe some kind of "special offer" for BRAVE users, we should find a way to track them using the chain here.
Once we have that offer, I can pass the message to a contact I have that serves as an advisor to the Brave developers.
Really good point! Thanks for your feedback.
As a requirement we should achieve some kind of landing page which makes it pretty easy in order to get started with HIVE. Something like https://hive.io but more suited for average joe who wanna get started with blockchain based social media.
That's something I could work on first.
Let's work on this, get a good landing page made, and see what @good-karma says since the users i surveyed said that Esteem was the easiest way to get a hive account.
We are working on redesigning signup page as well as our website. Thanks for mention!
Thanks goodness. I will be able to onboard more people once you do that, so any idea when it will be completed?
here's what i suggested be changed:
Just teasing my solution for onboarding:
I hope you like it! Will be live by the weekend.
Step 2:
oh god, this look GREAT! 😜
One copy edit suggestion: the words "free and easy' sounds a bit cheap, and sleazy. Here's how I'd word it:
"Create your free Hive account now"
I agree
Look at how cryptokitties onboarding. It's quite straight forward and step by step.
It also means that you need the onboarding to be a faucet. Do you have enough accounts and SP to delegate for users to be able to post?
With Esteem app you get a free account and can transact a bit without any need for HP, I have a test account, and was surprised i can comment and vote without having any HP. I think a support group will be needed to help users though, as they could run out of juice, and get stuck..
Hi @stellabelle, I agree Esteem is a good onboarding but in terms of the flow:
Braves Ads > Landing Page > Sign Up it doesn't quite work since you need to get people to download the app and there you lose the ability to track your conversions. (you can't know how much it costs to get someone to sign-up)
For Esteem, Facebook would make more sense for App Install type ads.
well, what do you suggest? have you tried all the different ways to get an account?
You can track the amount of downloads of Esteem app, so there is a way to track it.
you can't track how much it cost to have a download. You are just punching in the dark and gestimating.
Also, Esteem has a desktop verison, so that can be tracked.
Esteem has all 3: iOS, Android and desktop.
no you can't...you can't't setup tracking when you change platforms (browser to desktop)
as we can see from the stats, the apps that are creating new Hive accounts are :
LIke @cryptoctopus has said, we need a one-pager sign up page, that walks new users through the absolute easiest way. I think it's Esteem app, because most people who use social media want a mobile app experience, not desktop. But we could have two areas: easiest mobile sign up and easiest desktop sign up. This is what I would definitely think is the best option.
And then at the end of the splash page, we can say something like:
If you want other options to get a Hive account, go here: link to signup page (with all the options listed).
This way, if more advanced users want options, they can have it.
I personally tested out the various ways to get a new Hive account and have to say that Esteem is the easiest (minus the blue Steem branding and UX).
Hey @stellabelle, first of let me thank you for all your valuable feedback!
My biggest takeaways from this discussion is that we need to achieve a much better user experience in on boarding BEFORE going into a marketing campaign. That totally makes sense, we don't have to rush things. In a best case scenario we would be able to start a campaign late this summer.
Onboarding is a key successor for HIVE, I'am pretty sure many of those great artists & devs on HIVE are already working something in the meantime.
In any case, I'v added a Business requirements section to the proposal, which should make sure, those community requirements are met before spending HIVE funds into advertisement.
Business requirements:
If any of the following goals aren't met, no campaign will be started and all funds (if any) will be refunded to the Decentralized Hive Fund (DHF):
Regarding eSteem, peakd.com and all those other frontends out there:
When creating the campaign, it's best practice to target specific user groups. In this case we would send mobile device users into the best possible app for mobile users like eSteem and for desktop maybe peaked.com.
My main goal here is to maximize the efficiency of used funds here of course. Details on this have to be discussed.
I'll make follow-up posts on this proposal in upcoming weeks and go into details on all those aspects. So community may decide at a later point if it's a good idea to vote into this or not.
Thanks so far @all who contributed here in the comment section! I really like how HIVE community seems to be less toxic than from what I experienced on STEEM.
exactly my opinion. After taking surveys from users on Twitter, they said that using the Esteem app is the easiest, due to it being on mobile, plus it being free. I have suggested that the Esteem team redesign the splash page to make hive onboarding much better:
i agree, working with Brave seems like a natural, but clean up onboarding chaos first !
Also for the ad, i'd recommend you work with @doze because he has some killer graphics for wallpapers: he literally has tons of this cool stuff
I 100% approve of this example and suggestion, the colors could easily be adjusted to the Hive official red and black
Very interested in this one.
I agree with the commentary that the advert needs to link to a page with a clear and simple signup process.
The funding doesn't sound too unrealistic at all and I think it's worth a shot for what I think is the first venture into advertising/marketing.
I agree that many Brave users running the ads have some sort of Crypto awareness, and they could make a good target audience.
Supported and shared, good luck!
@roomservice Brave is a no-brainer and good plan of action put out here, Reading some of the comments I will agree, let's nail down a seem-less on-boarding experience(splash page, etc) and really optimize this.
Perhaps as noted a special landing page that is in easy step format(1,2,3,etc), and then maybe let's let the user select which front-end is best suited for their Hive experience and show them the options.
Thanks for you feedback!
I'am currently working on a React web app which will solve both problems from my point of view. It will be ready at the end of the week.
Stay tuned :)
Now this is a reasonable proposal I can support. Good idea, but tbh, the on-boarding process here would have us losing on alot of possible users should this ad proposal pass. That would be rather unfortunate. I am all for marketing tho. Great ideas!
Thank you very much for your support - this means a lot too me!
Just for the record:
I don't have to perform the proposal alone, I would love to work with anyone who wants to contribute in any kind of way and can bring her/his expertise.
I would vote for this
Thank you very much!
I'am totally open to discussion with the community. Just throw in your ideas as well and we will make it happen.
My @steemvpn project would handle onboarding, I can get the Hive Power to start redeeming account creation tokens regularly.
I have a domain working and everything, just working on the back end VPN aspects and upgrading infrastructure in the mean time.
It would be very easy to provide an incentive in the advertisement from SteemVPN in the future.
i can get behind the "we will make it happen". I like the throwing spaghetti on the fridge and see what sticks method. I'm going to try out a twitter ad once we get the onboarding one pager done and a way to make it the absolute easiest. The saving of keys is always the hardest part.
@esteem just throws the master key at them, its less confusing, but theres no FAQ as well so its seamless to start using the app if your mobile. As for desktop not the case on esteem.
I support this proposal and will vote to do so after I write this comment.
Currently, in the @HiveHustlers community, @Gastontrussi is working his ass off to create short-form content in the form of Videos - 1-2 minute videos explaining various components of our community, etc.
The same could be applied for Hive. How to vote. Why you vote. How to share a post. How to build your audience. Etc - the list goes on and on.
Why we haven't focused on creating content that makes it easier for newcomers and putting it front and center, is what is puzzling to me.
if we had some sort of marketing budget, we could afford to "pay"/commission someone (or multiple people) to start churning out super quality, short-form content in video format that helps people understand Hive, how to accomplish what they're looking for, and overall answers any questions or doubts they may have.
Thanks @nulledgh0st for the mention, and ideas you dropped right there about short content.
I think most people don't know about DHF and how to vote, so I'll follow up with some short vids on what it is and how to do it.
Hopefully, in the near future, we can have a Marketing budget to educate and promote Hive outside.
It sounds like a reasonable budget and a sensible place to advertise.
Is it those pictures in the background that are the ads? I use Brave as my main browser, and I never really noticed TBH!
Yes, just samples taken from brave.com in order to get an idea - how ads would look like.
Creating ad templates specific for HIVE would be part of this proposal.
If you haven't seen any ads yet, my best guess is that you haven't opted in. Just take a look into this help article.
Hey thanks,
Exploring Brave and BAT are on my to do list for next week, sure there's lots I haven't tapped into for both!
Hey, what's a link to other other social media, and whats your experience with advertising and marketing?
Brave is so far my best browser. I simply love it
Gets for sure my support
Upvoted ! Great idea !
Next would be to have advertising in our front-ends and use it to buy back hive and burn them? or increase DAO maybe