A relatively new Hiver recently reached out to me, asking how to avoid downvotes. I posted about this once in the past, when I myself was running into this issue - but at the time I was looking for help, not offering it.
Originally I was just going to write a long comment, specifically addressing things I thought this user could change, but in order to make this effort as helpful as possible and to potentially assist a wider audience, I’ve decided to cover a handful of the basic things I’ve learned about the blockchain…I am by no means claiming to be an authority on the matter - just a regular dude who’s hung on for a while and picked up a few things from the generous help of others…and in some cases from the school of hard knocks (aka messing up and having to figure out where I went wrong).
A FEW GUIDELINES TO AVOID DOWNVOTES
1. Try to avoid posting more than once in each 24 hour period
Failure to adhere to this unofficial rule won’t necessarily get you downvoted (unless youre going nuts with it), but it will almost certainly hurt your upvotes. Many people use curation trails or even just hold a personal rule of upvoting only one post per person per day at most, so if you make a post that might normally have yielded $1-2, but its your second post in a 24 hour period, it will likely net only a fraction of that…so timing matters if you care about getting the best possible rewards for your work.
Since @ecency added the Waves feature, there is a place where you can post short one liners as many times in a day as you want, but doing this in posts will likely garner unwanted attention.
2. Less pictures can be fine, but less words can be a stumbling block
Having gotten my start on social media on Reddit, I showed up on Hive dropping short one line posts and/or picture only posts. A good friend helped explain to me that Hive operates a little differently.
At first, I questioned whether these longer post expectations would hinder me from continuing with Hive, but in the long run I have found it creates the opportunity for me to build much more rewarding content, both for me and for those who read it. I’m sure it’s not for everyone, but I can tell you I have found this to be effectively non-negotiable in this ecosystem. I think a good rule of thumb is 500-2000 words for a post, but I just kind of came up with that based on where I seem to get the best responses over the years. You can play with this and see what works for you; I think it's the show of effort that counts more than the word count, although they tend to go hand in hand.
In general, whether it's due to the financial reward system or just the overall sentiment of the collective, Hive tends to offer better rewards for more effort - and there are definitely those who will dish out downvotes for what they deem to be “low effort” posts...however if you’re more of a short-form creator, you will likely find people are far more tolerant of this if you post in Waves…although the rewards for waves tend to be negligible, there is great value in engagement and making friends, which I have found waves can be pretty great for.
This is taking it a bit off-topic, but I think it ties in with effort so I'll share it: Here is a Hive article on some good practices for using Markdown code to make attractive articles. Quality formatting goes a long way with making your posts stand out, so it seems at least worth mentioning here.
3. Elaborate on your point with a personal experience
...or at least elaborate one way or another.
If you’re posting a quote or a short concept/idea, try to use this as the theme for your post as opposed to the entirety of the post. For example, if you want to say that dependence on God is crucial for a quality life experience, say that - but then elaborate by explaining how your relationship with the most high has impacted your life and elevated you beyond the heights you could have reached alone. If you want to say that it’s important to spend time with people who care about you, again, this should be the start if your post, but not the whole thing. What made you decide to say this? How has spending time with people who didn’t value affected you? What prompted you to learn this lesson? ...etc.
Personally, I like to use a few pictures to add to my elaboration and make the post feel more like an article. This is optional, but I believe it does help generate interest.
As a general rule, if you're posts feel like tweets, they should be Waves. Dropping multiple one-line posts in a 24 hour period is almost a surefire way to snag up some downvotes.
4. Avoid using stock/downloaded images
This is not a hard and fast rule, but if you do elect to use stock images, Hive users like to see that proper credit is given to the original source. I’ve seen people downvoted for using stock/downloaded images without providing proper credit to the original source, although I don’t often see people committing this offense.
Crediting the original source is as simple as placing a "source" link beneath the image. When possible, it's best to create and use your own images, but there are articles (such as this one) that you may want to put together quickly, and for which stock images can really do the job just as well or better than original art - so again, in that case just cite the source and you should be fine.
5. Be cautious of groups that provide upvotes
I kind of hate saying this, because groups like this can be really helpful in getting new users started. In truth however, this was what got me into a pretty depressing spiral of downvotes. I’m still not sure if it was because the group had permission to vote on my behalf, or because I was still a member after my HP had grown beyond a certain threshold. If you choose to join a group of this nature, exercise caution, I guess that’s really all I can say on that.
In Conclusion
If you are experiencing regular downvotes and you feel it is unwarranted, there are also discord groups such as ecency and hivewatchers, where you can reach out and inquire as to if/why your account may be blacklisted (which was the case for me). I found these groups to be very reasonable and willing to review my case and remove my name from the blacklist - I also quit the group that was potentially causing me to end up on the blacklist once the people on discord told me about it.
Lastly, there are some really great people on Hive who know a heck of a lot more than me. I’m not terribly well-connected, but these are some of the kind people who have helped me get on my feet here:
@melinda010100 @quochuy @cmplxty @theringmaster
If there is anything to add or correct in this article, I would think these folks might be able/willing to note said corrections in the comments.
…if you’re making the effort to stick around and grow, users with more experience will often be willing to help you on your way, and the longer you stick around the more likely you are to build your own tribe of friends of all experience levels.
I hope this helps!
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