How often should moderators post to grow a community?
from PumpkinDrama@reddthat.com to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world on 15 Oct 15:09
https://reddthat.com/post/52165768
from PumpkinDrama@reddthat.com to nostupidquestions@lemmy.world on 15 Oct 15:09
https://reddthat.com/post/52165768
I wish r/polls equivalent on Lemmy was more popular. As a moderator, how often should I post or engage to help increase its activity and attract more users?
#nostupidquestions
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I’d say, post as often as you can be bothered and make interesting content. I rarely pay attention to the username beside a post, so I’m unlikely to judge that it’s the same person who posts 99% of posts in a less popular community. But if I see lots of examples of posts on a topic, it’s easier for me to remember about it and think “I’ll post there”.
Some clients go out of their way to mark posts by a moderator in some way, though. Alexandrite makes their username bright green an bold, for instance.
I wonder what portion of users are turned off by stepping into a community and discovering that basically every post is from its only moderator, and thus feel that whatever-it-is is probably just that individual’s personal hobby horse.
Not that I’d know, or anything…
lel I declined to be a mod on !gothindustrial@lemmy.world for exactly that reason. I hope it helps people see it’s not just mods.
This is something I really think Reddit did better than Lemmy tbh. Mods don’t appear special in any way, unless they specifically declare “this post is me acting as a moderator”. And only then is it highlighted green (or in some other way depending on the client). Ditto admins.
Subscribed!
First off all, take a look at !fedigrow@lemmy.zip, it’s a place where people who do this kind of thing talk about it.
Second of all, that’s a great question and something that we ask ourselves a lot. There are a couple different approaches.
just ask people to join in on posting. Sure, make a “meta” post, but also dm people who reply or ask them in comments (so others can see as well)
have “events”. Like there’s one now on !fullmoviesonyoutube@piefed.social related to Halloween movies, where anyone else is welcome to join in. On !sumo@lemmy.world , which will probably always be niche, I just make a post at the beginning of the bimonthly tourneys telling people how to follow the tourney, and I say I’ll only be posting 3 more times over 15 days and they’re welcome to also post if they want.
queue up several posts at once and schedule them to be posted later. You can do this in piefed or there was some other service for lemmy I think, or just write them out in a text file. On !juggalos@lemmy.world I have weekly posts queued up for the next month. Say something like “here’s my weekly post! feel free to make your own!”
Hope that helps!
As much as you can.
Whenever you have a relevant post to make. There’s no algorithm to game, just make it a nice place and people will come :)
I mod the !cocktails@lemmy.world and usually will put something once a week or so. It sees slow and steady growth but not sure if I have much to do with that.
It’s unavoidable, but if you veer into spamming All to promote it, I am likely to block you or your entire community. Don’t just try to make something happen so you can be a mod of something. Start a conversation. So many comms on the wider instances are worthless clones of typical reddit categories like Wacky Memes. Nobody needs that.
Once per twelve hours would be ok. It isn’t enough to take over a feed, yet is enough to provide content.
There are psychological-thresholds that have to be met, or that when-crossed, are tipping-points…
3x / week is the minimum-threshold to sustain a yt-channel, or social-site community, as existing,
4x / week is the minimum-threshold to grow it.
It’s actually identical to our fitness-workout-threshold: 3x / week sustains our health, 4x / week brings us closer to our optimal health.
Going significantly above that doesn’t make much ( if any ) positive difference, it seems…
( there are other thresholds, like keep just-connecting videos to 3-mins, which I learned on the ProVideoCoalition forum, a decade or 2 ago…
Also, one has to avoid becoming a 1-trumpet “band”, right? )
Please consider that there are differen sub-populations of humanity, & some think visually ( which I never would have imagined ), some think kinesthetically, some auditorially, some in abstract-shapes.
The book “Collaborative Intelligence” … can’t remember the authors’ names, sorry, is on 3 of those, & how to accomplish stuff, for one’s own cognition-type…
But remap that basic-concept … onto the posts:
IF all your posts are appealing-to, or geared-to, the same subset-population ( whether in cognition-type or in any other way of dividing-populations-up ), … then that’s overtaxing that 1 subset, and not tapping the others, see?
So, find what dimensions of diversity that you care about, & intentionally make the posts more diverse in those dimensions, so as to include more potential-people!
The book “Command Attention” … by a former USMC officer, sorry, don’t remember the guy’s name, is also pertinent…
He pointed-out that if he wasn’t reading “Ebony” magazine, etc, then his office’s stuff would be too white.
The producer-of-content needs to be consuming-diversity-in-their-content-diet, too, see?
( that book contains that as 1 single little point, in the whole thing:
it’s an awesome basic-training course for marketing, if you want such competence : )
Please consider the book by Dib, or Dibb, “The 1-Page Marketing Plan”, as it’s sooo to-the-point, for growing a product or service…
Could you make ( I’ve never been in that community, so if I’m botching how it works, sorry in advance ) a weekly poll about what the most-interesting new polls would be?
Harvesting new ideas, you know?
or semi-monthly, at the very least ( don’t go monthly: that’s institutional-inertia’s pace )
Use the input to spark ideas?
& possibly, have a weekly silliest-poll item, & the funniest poll from that gets done as a proper poll ( Silly Saturday? )?
I hope something in this helps, whether directly or indirectly,
People who’re actually doing contributing to community deserve support, see?
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Eh? There are excellent popular YouTube channels that post way less frequently than that.
I think it would be a mistake to try and draw any clear comparison between a YouTube channel and a Lemmy community. But for YouTube, I’d say weekly is really the minimum of where you want to be while trying to grow.
I ran a 3:15 marathon on 7 runs per fortnight, and a sub-18 min 5k on roughly 3 runs per week. On the other hand, I wouldn’t dare try a triathlon, even a relatively modest goal of 2:30:00 Olympic distance, on fewer than 2 runs, 2 rides, and 1 swim per week, for 5 total workouts minimum.
Exercise is even harder to compare to Lemmy than YouTube is, in my opinion. Because with exercise, the length and intensity of that exercise plays such an enormous factor.
It depends. I mod !dull_mens_club@lemmy.world and don’t feel like I should try to steer the community in any way. I want it to grow it’s own culture naturally. I’m just there to tend the garden, but I rarely have to take any actions due to the nature of the community.