I guess I’ll start. Back on Reddit I was moderating a 150k sub subreddit so I didn’t need to post daily. Now I’m moderating two communities (maybe 1.1k subs total). and most everyone is lurkers. Every few days I try to post, but it’s tough without feedback. Besides upvotes and downvotes, I got no clue what people want. Struggling to build engagement and to get people to post.
this post was submitted on 11 Sep 2023
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Lemmy's lack of content in niche areas is also present here. Communities are overlooked among the 1.1k communities.
The number of users is growing stably. However, we have much less interaction than general purpose instances.
It's mostly me posting in [email protected], with votes on the posts being either on the cusp of or just barely into double digits for a 400-ish subscriber community. The rough part is that while the number of subscribers continues to grow, the number of people posting and commenting has not. I exchange at most 1 comment or so from time to time with 1 other user.
The slow but steady subscriber count growth keeps me from giving up and stopping, but I wonder when I'll start to see engagement from more than just me. I'm thinking of trying to encourage more low-effort engagement, like [DISC] posts where people can comment with links to doujinshi with related content, but haven't committed to it yet.
Anecdotally, growing and maintaining a hentai-oriented community feels pretty challenging. The instance as a whole is generally IRL-oriented, looking at Local+Active (which isn't a bad thing, esp. w/ the OC posters!). Other hentai posters have either left in search of or been banned for posting content they'd ordinarily post elsewhere. While the reasons are understandable, I think it creates some barriers to visibility and posting in hentai communities.
EDIT: The UX around GIF/Video posting also seems to suck enough for me to not post any to avoid people just seeing still frames instead of an animation, but that's seemingly more of a Lemmy problem than anything to do w/ this specific instance.
It's starting to get tough. I see that across most of the communities except for a select few. A few posters keeping communities alive with mostly just upvotes/downvotes as engagement. It's a difficult role to have, especially long-term.
The reality is probably that the group that is here right now is probably the group for a while. On one hand, it's cool that we don't get instantly downvoted to -1 within seconds, it also means that your posts don't get upvoted to the thousands or have 100 comments. I personally feel that there is a point of critical mass where this instance just takes off, due to some random event but sometimes I wonder - do I really want that? All those people bring drama, reposts, bots, DMCA, and low-budget content. It does bring OC, creativity, and variety, which is really missing at times.
Anyway, to your question:
I tried a banner contest once, it just sat there with mostly no response - https://lemmynsfw.com/post/1290450
I did a poll once, I got some good feedback using pictures as options - https://lemmynsfw.com/post/887466
I think starting with low effort engagement is a good segue to better engagement. Ask questions, make a poll, make a tournament of pictures, etc. Go back to how large forums used to do it. I also believe that as folks get used to each other it will be come more engaging. It takes time. Also, for your video question, .webp is king at the moment. See here - https://lemmynsfw.com/post/884574
I totally agree that hitting critical mass comes with some downsides. I'm hoping that I'll be a little insulated from that if it happens since I try to be more active on smaller communities, but there's always some bleed over.
Thanks for the tip w/ video too! Having to convert is a mild pain, but at least I've got the option and can script away some of the trouble. It worked fine on the website (mobile and desktop) but seems to fail to load entirely with the Eternity for Lemmy app for Android. I'm not sure how many people use that anyway. Maybe the upvotes will tell.
EDIT: Seems like the upstream Lemmy repo merged a fix for the way it handles webm files.
It's mostly me posting in [email protected], with votes on the posts being either on the cusp of or just barely into double digits for a 400-ish subscriber community.
Yup! That describes my experiences with [email protected] . And I try to post to other communities that I want to see active but it’s hella slow going.
I tried to enable the horny posters by writing post titles as questions, which usually works great on reddit. The most engagement I get on here is “you didn’t include source on this one” 😅
Yeah, that sounds about right. FWIW the original paizuri sub (which I don't moderate) barely has any comments even on its biggest posts in the past year, so it's not like I'm doing much worse. 😋
I just want other people to post so I can add to my own collection. For now, I'm just rediscovering things I've downloaded or artists I should be following, but it'd be better to get from others too.
I just try to post regularly, I show for once a day, but it's more like 4-5 times a week. I also try to always reply when someone comments on my posts. To me it feels more engaging to actually reply to someone versus just giving an up vote. And makes me feel more welcomed in a community.
Also, I'm not overly strict on OnlyFans girls posting, as long as it is quality content. I remember people on Reddit bitching that they "ruined" a lot of subs. But honestly, they are the ones keeping a lot of these niche communities alive. For the communities I moderate, I just ask for it to be labeled [OC] and for post to not link directly to subscriber sites. So far they have been the ones driving the most traffic and engagement.
Edit: One more thing, I try to regularly find communities related to mine and link them on the sidebar. That way people with similar interests can find other communities they might enjoy. I think if more communities start doing this is can really help the smaller ones grow.
Agree on the comments part, if folks would comment more instead of just upvote it would be a huge step forward
I'm continuing to post what I personally like for myself at various communities
- those I started up,
- those I help out on,
- those I took over after "founders" have deserted them,
- as well as on some where founders are clearly gone (banned, or desertion), but lemmynsfw admins haven't gotten around to doing cleanups as they said they would a month or so ago, perhaps magically hoping that these folks will "come back". Example: https://lemmynsfw.com/post/358044
I generally don't worry about upvotes or specific community membership numbers. On Reddit, many huge (and old) subreddits (including the ones I still help mod on) consist of (my unscientific guess) 60-70% dead weight accounts (including spam bot accounts) that are no longer active but are simply kept on the books to keep up the appearance of making the numbers "look good". I'm sure the same is happening here based on account abandonments.
The only complaint I think I have is with downvotes (especially of fetish or niche content) - my theory is that due to the lemmy newness and fediverse, I think most members still don't know how to filter out and block NSFW communities or posters they are not interested in, so they end up downvoting stuff that come across their "all" feed, rather than just browsing past them. Just my observation, no scientific proof 😊
I think this is the most important part - "I’m continuing to post what I personally like for myself at various communities".
I also agree with the downvotes part, to be downvoted for no apparent reason with no comments is probably the hardest part of posting here, it seems so random. Just leave it alone if you don't like it. It takes time to get a post organized (has it been posted before, is there a better source, should I resize it, does it look good on mobile, has the model been posted recently, etc.) regardless of the community
My suspicion is that these "no apparent reasons" down votes are coming most from accounts outside of LemmyNSFW, so federation has it's downsides
The only complaint I think I have is with downvotes (especially of fetish or niche content) …
Absolutely. Half the communities I post to aren’t mainstream so the posts fluctuate pretty heavily with upvotes and downvotes.
Sometimes it’s predictable. For example, hentai of women with dicks get less downvotes than men with pussies. Other times, I feel like I’m playing the lottery.
I do my best to ignore votes in the meantime. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I was planning to advertise my communities over at the other r counter parts but just been lazy
I do think we would have more traffic if more people knew about this site