If you want your community to grow, there’s things you can do to help. Some of them are better than others. What are things that are good for the Fediverse, and what are some things that are better left on other platforms? Here’s a few things and my opinions
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Clickbaity titles (“Liberals DESTROYED by LOGIC”) - No thank you.
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Consistent posting - Yes. If you start a community, you’ll probably be the only one posting on there for a while. It’s easier to bootstrap a community if it’s something that comes with content ready-to-go somehow to make your job easier.
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GIFs - I’ve been using this over in [email protected]. That’s about as growth-hacky as I’d like to get, but I’m pretty sure people are more likely to engage with animated GIFs than static images for communities like that.
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Sources - I think this is something that can differentiate the Fediverse from other platforms. On my posts in [email protected], I’ve been spending time to source everything before posting it. This makes sure I don’t accidentally post edited images that I’ve seen over in /r/outofcontextcomics, and makes the Fediverse show up in searches. That actually probably hurts growth a little bit, but IMO is worth it
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Transcribing - Another differentiator for the Fediverse. Everything’s been done by hand and it’s been great. I’ve been transcribing my posts in [email protected] and I’ve been very happy to see that search engines are already picking those up.
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Transcribing as a growth hack is cool because it’s also more accessibility for disabled people. Probably even more helpful if you put your transcription of images as alt text.
I’ve always seen sourcing more as a preemptive “someone’s going to ask where I got it from” or a personal ethics thing you might do if you value it, not growth hacking.
Clickbait is a push-away factor for me. I’m not here for outrage.
Clickbait is a push-away factor for me. I’m not here for outrage.
I think most users here would agree with you (I certainly do). There are dozens of apps out there that scroll the same memes endlessly and trying to make Lemmy competitive in the marketplace for attention by imitating that format will fail. I think the best strategy for Lemmy-growers is to lean into the strengths of the Fediverse by hosting discussions and communities that the Reddit algorithm suppresses.
This is a good thought provoking post, but I think most of the methods you describe here actually work against the Fediverse, both in terms of desired outcomes and actual growth.
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If a user comes to Lemmy (for example) and sees the same stale meme feed and engagement bait they see on Reddit, what’s the incentive to switch? What makes Lemmy unique?
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Of the users who are here and understand the reasons for not using commercial social media, most are probably trying to avoid the bulk of the sort of content made by the suggestions you give.
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Growth-for-growth’s-sake puts more burden on instance admins for reasons that don’t involve growing a sense of community (presumably the reason they are investing time in the first place).
My point is that Lemmy can never compete with Reddit in terms of attention and distractability and trying to build “community” around that here will always fail. We should lean into Lemmy’s strengths, focus on growing communities and discussions and the kind of thing the Reddit algorithm suppresses.
Yeah, to be clear, I just mention clickbait titles to say “no thank you”, and the Fediverse doesn’t need that.
I’m borrowing the term “growth hacking” from the VC “growth at all costs” community, but using it as more of a comparison. Growth is good, but uncontrolled growth is called cancer. How can we cultivate good, healthy growth, and what goes too far?
I think GIFs are kind of in a grey area. They can start to create the same stale meme feed as you mention, but if there’s some meat underneath that, that makes people stick around, then I think it’s worth it.
By posting consistently, I don’t mean spamming. It’s more “try to be active”. You can’t start a community by assuming “if you build it, they will come”. As an example, I started moderating [email protected], and I’ve helped it out by posting interesting local news articles. I don’t just automatically repost everything though, that would be too spammy. I read the papers and specifically think about what articles would be interesting to post there.
Ah I got you, yes I totally agree. And I also do think gifs and shitposts etc can be shared and engaged with in an organic way that doesn’t force out slower content, which is also partly why active moderation is so important.
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Whenever you see content that would fit in other communities, mention them in a comment. Even if it isn’t consequently cross posted there, people looking at the post are likely to be interested, leading to discovery.
If its a non-meme community, like an actual serious topic. Post memes about it.
Post images instead of text. (Look at the bad facts community. Can’t remember the exact name.) That guy gets it.
Personally the name and image of the community make a bit of difference to me. Although not much.
Low Quality Facts. He’s one of the best things on Mastodon these days.
Do you think memes and serious content belong in the same community? Maybe they don’t if you’re huge but the Fediverse is small enough that we shouldn’t be splitting communities so readily?
You’ve pointed out both sides yourself there. I’d say if its a new and struggling community allow it. If its a big community and there’s other relates communities, don’t.
Say science memes exists, so don’t post memes in other science communities. But there are other communities where it makes sense.
One I use, is stagger crossposts.
If you’re not sharing something time sensitive, post to each relevant community with several hours of time delay inbetween. (I often do days or even weeks)
This will prevent the usual de-duplication of the posts, thereby preventing the biggest post from cannibalizing the upvotes from the rest, and is a soft excuse to repost something a few times.
People will discover the communities which were posted to earlier, from the newr posts. I try to go from smallest to biggest in order, as the first will benefit the most.
I try to go from smallest to biggest in order, as the first will benefit the most.
Neat! I independently came to the same conclusion!
This will prevent the usual de-duplication of the posts, thereby preventing the biggest post from cannibalizing the upvotes from the rest
There should probably be an easy way to upvote the crossposts without visiting each one
I filed an issue on Github for this: https://github.com/LemmyNet/lemmy-ui/issues/2825
One of the things that I think we can make better use of here is partnerships with other groups (communities, magazines, what have you). This is especially useful with other on-server groups, for several reasons, but it’s generally applicable. Building a web of trust and engagement can go a long way. Obviously, forced, artifical engagement-for-engagement isn’t the goal, but creating a sense of “these are other spaces we support” can be big.
Personally, I’m a proponent of themed servers, but that’s a step earlier than what we’re talking about here. But having servers focused on certain topics can help keep moderators and admins engaged, potentially reduce inter-node communication, reduce federation issues, etc. Plus, it comes with some of that “trust network” built right in.
Yeah, it would be great to see partnerships in the sense of like comments sections for magazines hosted on Lemmy or something. Not sure if that’s what you’re talking about, but that would be a neat Fediverse feature.
One of the things that I think we can make better use of here is partnerships with other groups (communities, magazines, what have you).
Very true. I’m the main poster on [email protected], but if I find an article about an animated movie, I post it to [email protected] to help @[email protected]’s community
We also have each other’s communities linked in the sidebars
