Things could be better, i guess. on [email protected], after 3-4 days i managed to build a community of 76 followers! i’d say that’s pretty good. But…
I’m the only one posting there, and whenever i try to encourage actual discussion instead of just posting memes/interesting facts about Latin, nobody is attracted to it. A little bummed, but it’s still early days.
And i feel like i’m running out of content to hold their attention, and frankly it’s a little stressing. I don’t want the community to die before it even starts. It doesn’t help the vacation just ended, and i’m more busy now.
I was actually going to post here asking for tips, but this thread was just created, so this is a good place to ask, i guess.
If you can think of some kind of recurring post series, it is a good structure to provide a steady drip of content. For latin, maybe something like a weekly post about the etymology of a modern word with a latin root?
In general, posts with a lead image generate much more interaction than non-image, discussion posts. So, the meme-type posts can serve a role to help people discover the community.
Make sure to subscribe to the community from several of the large instances so that it is federated there and people viewing the all feed can see it.
I never even thought about this, but it is an important and easy to overlook step in how federation works! Great tip for noobs trying to start communities and to more experienced users who aren’t as attentive to how the fediverse actually works (guilty).
I thought of #1, but it sounds weird to use my alts to subscribe to my own community 😅 I’ll try to check if any large instances don’t have any subscribers; if so, i’ll make an alt an just subscribe.
I’ve promoted it on both, gotten me from ~35 -> 65, i’d say that’s great!
And yeah, i like posting etymology, and i’ve done it; but it feels a little dirty posting other people’s work, even if i credit them. I’ll try to credit them harder, though; putting the name of the creator directly in the title, and making a post mentioning them. I think that’s fair enough
And for the last point, i learned that the hard way. hours i’ve watched as my futile attempt at a discussion sit at 0 comments, yet my memes get 20-50 upvotes 😂
Yeah it was like that for me for a while. You just have to try your best not to run out of ideas, really know your stuff and just persist, even when it feels like you aren’t getting anywhere. And then every now and then, you will manage to engage a great contributor, who decides to post regularly, taking some of the load off yourself. If you continue to persist anyway, eventually more will come, creating enough of a community to engage in light discussion. I am sorta at that point with [email protected]. I have a couple other great regular posters, one of which posts daily, which helps me to reach an even bigger audience (effectively having double the content). Now I have plenty of content, I just need to keep at it, and keep the place alive and with time it should hopefully grow naturally.
Wow, you’ve been posting for 2 years, I’ve only been doing so for 3 days 😅 and somehow, I’ve already gotten 76 subscribers (excluding my alts for federation) it seems the bottleneck is myself; I’ll devise a schedule of posts for myself, and hopefully that’ll encourage people to post.
I’m more into hard metal myself, but your community seems great! Good luck with it!
Things could be better, i guess. on [email protected], after 3-4 days i managed to build a community of 76 followers! i’d say that’s pretty good. But…
I’m the only one posting there, and whenever i try to encourage actual discussion instead of just posting memes/interesting facts about Latin, nobody is attracted to it. A little bummed, but it’s still early days.
And i feel like i’m running out of content to hold their attention, and frankly it’s a little stressing. I don’t want the community to die before it even starts. It doesn’t help the vacation just ended, and i’m more busy now.
I was actually going to post here asking for tips, but this thread was just created, so this is a good place to ask, i guess.
Starting a new community is an uphill slog. Some tips and observations:
Posting in [email protected] is almost mandatory. I saw a 100x activity on my comms once I posted there
Poop
I never even thought about this, but it is an important and easy to overlook step in how federation works! Great tip for noobs trying to start communities and to more experienced users who aren’t as attentive to how the fediverse actually works (guilty).
I thought of #1, but it sounds weird to use my alts to subscribe to my own community 😅 I’ll try to check if any large instances don’t have any subscribers; if so, i’ll make an alt an just subscribe.
I’ve promoted it on both, gotten me from ~35 -> 65, i’d say that’s great!
And yeah, i like posting etymology, and i’ve done it; but it feels a little dirty posting other people’s work, even if i credit them. I’ll try to credit them harder, though; putting the name of the creator directly in the title, and making a post mentioning them. I think that’s fair enough
And for the last point, i learned that the hard way. hours i’ve watched as my futile attempt at a discussion sit at 0 comments, yet my memes get 20-50 upvotes 😂
Yeah it was like that for me for a while. You just have to try your best not to run out of ideas, really know your stuff and just persist, even when it feels like you aren’t getting anywhere. And then every now and then, you will manage to engage a great contributor, who decides to post regularly, taking some of the load off yourself. If you continue to persist anyway, eventually more will come, creating enough of a community to engage in light discussion. I am sorta at that point with [email protected]. I have a couple other great regular posters, one of which posts daily, which helps me to reach an even bigger audience (effectively having double the content). Now I have plenty of content, I just need to keep at it, and keep the place alive and with time it should hopefully grow naturally.
Wow, you’ve been posting for 2 years, I’ve only been doing so for 3 days 😅 and somehow, I’ve already gotten 76 subscribers (excluding my alts for federation) it seems the bottleneck is myself; I’ll devise a schedule of posts for myself, and hopefully that’ll encourage people to post.
I’m more into hard metal myself, but your community seems great! Good luck with it!
Thanks!