[META] Creating a new community is easy, but to get people on board, you need to create some content.

If you create a community, please try and populate it with content. I see a lot of new communities with 0-1 posts from the mod. That’s not nearly enough to get people engaged - users are going to see that it’s a ghost town and leave.

If you have enough interest to create a community, you probably know something about the subject matter, so PLEASE add some posts (5-10 would be a good start). Maybe some questions to get people talking, even popular reposts from other sites. It sucks shouting into a void, but if you don’t do it, everyone else will also be shouting into a void.

Also please consider whether you need to create a community! When there are 100 million users of the site, there may be 1000 people who are interested in the same exact niche tabletop RPG as you, but there are <500,000 users here for now, so you’ll be lucky to find 10. Consider creating a thread in a broader community (like boardgames) until you have enough people talking in the thread that it gets messy - then it’s time to create a separate community.

Thanks for coming to my TED talk.

BeMoreCareful,

I wonder if years of fleeing the front page to niche subs conditioned us all to try and make niche subs here when we should just be shooting the breeze right here on front street.

It feels so alien to actually put a run on sentence idea out and not parrot a meme.

That said I made some shit posts on one of the nichest of niche communities.

amcjv12,

Another thought: making a community can also be a nice structured incentive to check in on your hobby regularly. I like looking for videos or articles to link to for my yugioh community even though there’s not many people subscribed - it gives me an opportunity to interact with and think about the game in different ways than I normally do.

truckkun,

Yes. That’s why good literature and good philosophy community. It helps think and read. Also music community for what I listen to. Collaborative playlist hopefully. 🎶👌

AschTheFrenzied,
@AschTheFrenzied@lemmy.world avatar

I wish more people understood this concept in general. Whether it be making communities on a network like this, making discord servers, or even starting a small business – many times my friends and acquaintances have tried to create something that relies on people to keep it alive, but give no one a reason to want to engage with their platform/service/etc, expecting there to be a flood of people out of nowhere that will cause the system to support itself.

Good talk, needs more exposure.

HidingCat,

Also to everyone creating a community, it takes time. Don't get too discouraged if uptake is slow!

dystop,
@dystop@lemmy.world avatar

Yes, this can’t be stressed enough. Expect to be shouting into a void for 2-3 days. That’s the price of being an early adopter!

HidingCat,

Might be weeks even, this sort of thing really can't be predicted at the very early stages.

rms1990,

Its not about how popular it is, its about having a space to talk to fellow like minded people.

cjerrington,
@cjerrington@kbin.social avatar

What is hard too, is if all the posts to get things started are the mods or creator, the same ghost town might occur. It’s hard to tell or know what will be interesting to get people talking so to speak. Some should also be put on the subscribers as well who also have an interest. It’s a double edge sword sometimes.

dystop,
@dystop@lemmy.world avatar

Yes, but if you don’t know what people would find interesting, neither would the first few subscribers. It’s better to have at least some stuff there (even if it’s all posted by you).

speedofdark8,

An idea for people like me that still use reddit alongside lemmy, if you make a post on lemmy, post the lemmy link to the corresponding subreddit. That way if the post gets traction on reddit, all the clicks are leading them to the lemmy post

briongloid,
@briongloid@aussie.zone avatar

I’m trying to get into the habit of posting everyday, I fell out of it on reddit because it grew so big and would often go nowhere.

Mods rejecting posts willy-nilly, users who sit on /new thinking they can be the gatekeeper, shadowbanning of a post without being informed. It’s going to take some time to get used to posting more.

truckkun,

I make a content box and ration it out for good measure.

Catch42,
@Catch42@kbin.social avatar

I only have so many interesting things to say. I don't really want to post for the sake of generating content, so making 5-10 posts right off the bat seems like the wrong way to go about it. I think it'd be better to make one post a day or one every other day or so that anyone who comes in can see that it's recently active.

MargotRobbie,
@MargotRobbie@lemmy.world avatar

Yeah, you’re right, I’m going to try posting something at a daily cadence to build up content in the communities I made, and hopefully more people will join in.

The only way Lemmy can maintain its momentum is by generating original content.

WhoRoger,
@WhoRoger@lemmy.world avatar

But then why create a community then?

You can always at least post YT videos or links to articles so that people can see there’s activity on the comm and it’s not dead.

truckkun,

I am trained in nonstop content generation for steemit.com and Hive.io where being a spammer was the key to success. I would post 100 comments a day and 1 post a day because that was the maximum amount of posts per day. Now on Lemmy it seems my spammy instinct came out and I comment and post dozens of times a day on multiple accounts. 🤐

marswarrior,
@marswarrior@lemmy.world avatar

Great idea, I posted my own photography work here and people joined afterwards. lemmy.world/c/macrophotography

dystop,
@dystop@lemmy.world avatar

wow those photos look amazing!

marswarrior,
@marswarrior@lemmy.world avatar

Thanks!

GONADS125,

I made !vans and I’ve been thinking about posting once a day so that I don’t exhaust my content to post, but is that enough? Should I try to make a couple posts a day?

r/vans is in the top 5% of subreddit size. I’ve got one subscriber other than myself! Haha

Akhuyan,
@Akhuyan@lemmy.world avatar

Would you mind if I pin this post? I feel like it will be helpful if people can see this post the second they enter this community, to help with the 0-1 post problem

Smokeless7048,

There’s a reason I’ve been posting every Hermitcraft video to /c/Hermitcraft. It needs content or its just… Dead

Trekman10,
@Trekman10@sh.itjust.works avatar

I make an effort to comment on interesting posts or links I appreciate! But I haven’t had much in terms of inspiration to post (might be because I don’t have reliable desktop access rn).

MisterMoo,
@MisterMoo@kbin.social avatar

I’ve been doing just that. If you’re a fan of The Office, get on over to m/DunderMifflin. Although I’ve never been a fan of the name. It’d be better if it was m/PaperGreat. Where Great Paper is our Passion.

Fizz,
@Fizz@lemmy.nz avatar

What might be a good idea is to spend a bit of time each week gathering content and then using github.com/RikudouSage/LemmySchedule to spread out the posting throughout the week. Then you can comment on it as it shows up on your feed.

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