Hello photographers of Hive!
Do you remember your first photography posts on Hive?
I do remember mine. It was a short blog where I shared some pictures I took from some birds. I was proud of these photos since I was able to shoot the birds and even a mouse really close because I had placed my camera near the feeding place and used my phone to make the photo.

After I had posted the blog, I started receiving upvotes. Soon I received over 100 upvotes and a hand full of comments. And the blog generated my first rewards on Hive. I was really excited by this!
But when I checked the comments, I got a bit disappointed.
Although my blog got curated by Qurator and a defaul HiveBuzz message, but there were no meaningful responses.
And rewards are nice, but to me a meaningful comment on your photography post can be really valuable too.

As a photographer you want to know what people think about your photographs. What do they like. Do they have tips for improvement?
I really missed that engagement when I started out on Hive.

User retention

I often hear that Hive needs more users and there are quite a lot of initiatives to draw the attention of users and get them to create new accounts. When these new users create an account and write an introduction posts they are often overwhelmed with the number of comments. This is mainly because of the #introduction tag I think. But after that it can become very quiet since these new users haven't created a network yet and their blogs disappear in the large stream of blogs that gets published every day.
I think that users will be more active when there will be more engagement with them. And maybe these new users will even spread the word and attract even more users. Who knows?

Engagement on photography posts

I've been trying to improve engagement on photography posts in the past. I created the Hive Photographers Discord Channel (come join us if you are a photographer too) and I introduced the #aap tag. These letters stand for Ask A Photographer and photographers could add this tag to their posts when they wanted constructive feedback on their photography posts.
Although some photographers started using the tag it never really worked out the way I had in mind. It didn't really increase the comments under photography blogs.

Listing photography posts without any comments!

This week I came up with another idea when I was playing a bit with HiveSQL. I had made a query that listed some photography posts in the two largest photography communities: Photography Lovers (24,286 subscribers and 510 active users) and Photography (7,822 subscribers 38 active users).

I changed the query to filter the blogs hadn't received a single comment.
It came back with quite a big list of blogs. Among them were a couple of blogs that were recently posted, so that got me thinking.
Then I adjusted the query to only show the blogs that were between 3 and 7 days old and still hadn't received a single comment.
I also set the a minimum body length of 1000 to prevent single photo blog posts to be listed.
The query looks like this:

SELECT 
    'https://peakd.com' + Comments.url, Comments.author, Accounts.created, Comments.created, 
    Comments.children, Accounts.post_count, Comments.body_length
FROM 
    Comments
JOIN Accounts ON Accounts.name = Comments.author
WHERE 
    Comments.depth = 0
   -- AND Accounts.created >= DATEADD(DAY, -30, GETDATE())
    AND Comments.created >= DATEADD(DAY, -7, GETUTCDATE())
    AND Comments.created <= DATEADD(DAY, -3, GETUTCDATE())
    AND body_length >= 1000
    AND children < 1
    AND (Comments.url LIKE '%hive-194913%' OR Comments.url LIKE '%hive-119845%')

I ran it and this was the result; 34 photography blogs that didn't receive a single comment!

@rossfletcher/industrial-in-the-parking-structure
@evildeathcore/the-paths-of-childhood-field-and-pond
@chanych85/rattle-swdfch
@asklanbudi/photography-lovers-some-views-in-different-places
@gunting/the-charm-of-the-beauty-bb5e49017a3d2
@dgmsabbir25/flower-natural-view
@happyphoenix/kacang-bali-balinese-peanuts
@kiwithinker/just-a-little-sunset
@ellenripley/goslings-coots-swans-cows-and-a-rabbit
@disha43/a-day-out
@edwardstobia/la-vida-y-sus-bellezas-esp-eng
@xillsabbir/natures-smile-under-the-garland-of-clouds
@asklanbudi/photography-lovers-a-smile-of-togetherness
@evildeathcore/the-paths-of-childhood-golubkovo-and-zverinets
@gunting/the-charm-of-the-beauty-20843ff2eede5
@fatemehsohrabiii/introduction-and-beauty-of-the-azalea-plant
@batistaflow/dos-anos-esperando-esto-y
@gunting/the-charm-of-the-beauty-487992a19725a
@evildeathcore/night-views-of-the-city
@forestbound/feathered-encounters-briefly-seen-forever-held
@justmythoughts/the-beauty-of-the-setting
@aleister/acorns-maybe-no-macro-photography-session-technical-description
@asklanbudi/photography-lovers-activities-in-coastal-areas
@rex-hossain/rose-flower-photography
@stefany0720/mi-interpretacion-de-la-noche-estrellada-y-dibujo-de-un-acueducto-my-interpretation-of-the-starry-night-and-drawing-of-an
@tanveer11/today-we-captured-some-beautiful-pictures-in-my-garden
@mulik369/my-courtyard-a-beautiful-flower
@nana-hive/photo-of-the-atmosphere-of-the-entrance-to-the-city-of-lhokseumawe
@monzo/photography-or-the-beauty-of-the-sea-view-that-shows-a-fishing-boat-in-the-middle-of-the-sea
@maxinpower/passing-through-the-ishikawa-mon-wonderful-japan
@nasseir/fisherman-village
@monzerath/sunset-from-the-perspective-of-a-balloon-eng-esp-el-atardecer-desde-la-perspectiva-de-un-balon
@ndnaimurrahman/yellow-flower-photography-wandering-in
@xillsabbir/a-beautiful-natural-landscape-with-wetlands-trees-and-a-path-where-the-soul-finds-peace

Automation

I'm already running a scheduled HiveSQL query for my @topcomment curation service, so I thought I could also make one for this purpose.
So I've scheduled an hourly SQL Query that selects 3-day-old photography blogs without a single comments and places them in the #engagement channel in the Hive Photographers Discord Channel

It looks like this:

I would ask every Hive photographer to join the Discord channel and check out the #engagement channel to see if there is a post you can leave a nice comment on.

It can be just a simple "Cool photographs" comment. Nothing is worse than no comment at all.
But it would be even better if you tell the author what you think about the photographs and maybe even give them some advice how they could improve their shots (we photographers always want to improve, don't we?).
If it is a new Hiver, you could give them some advise as well.
It will just take a little bit of time and it can make someone's day!

Rewarding great comments

As many of you might know I'm running the @topcomment curation service. Our curation team rewards high quality comments. Since I'll be actively watching the #engagement channel in the Hive Photographers Discord Channel there is a big chance that high quality comments on those posts will receive upvotes. Either from the Topcomment curation service as from me personally.

Again; I really think engagement is very important for user retention and growth.
With this initiative we could support a large group of Hivers; the photographers.

Who is with me?

FriendlyMoose

I'm an amateur photographer with a love for indoor gardening, craft beer, and cycling. As the owner of the Cycling Community and the creator of the Topcomment initiative, I focus on fostering engagement and bringing like-minded people together.
Check out my projects below!

Topcomment is an initiative to reward high quality comments.

For all Hive Photographers: come join our Hive Photographer Discord Channel

A weekly blog with an overview of all the photography contests on Hive. #photocontests.

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