I was thinking about this last night. I would never have bothered to make this much content for a place like Reddit or Facebook as there is just too much attention on other things. Over the last year I’ve spent who knows how much time making, finding, and editing content on here and engaging people to try to keep their attention. It’s nice in that I feel heard, but it’s also such a small crowd, I notice when people show up and start participating, but also when they stop participating. I’ve built a pretty big following for Lemmy. I’m currently juuuuust not making the first page of biggest communities, but I feel I’m doing well for a niche community here. But the given number of regular commentors I get feels like it hasn’t increased over the last 9 months. As soon as I get new people that comment and participate, the same number drop off. It just feels like I’m not getting anywhere, and it makes me question this as a platform. I’ve got about a half dozen people I’d call regulars, and new people pop in and out, but if I stop to think about the effort in, I wonder how much minimum user feedback I can get by with to do this another whole year.
My current goal is to make it to December and do the Superbowl Owl of the Year Tournament again. That was a huge boost to the community for those few weeks, but that was a toooon of effort to do by myself. Thankfully someone usually chimes in with some positivity and has a very enthusiastic response to something I’ve shared that can boost my morale, but it really is tough to keep putting work into what many times feels like a void. I always make sure to thank commentors for saying nice things or just participating, because I wouldn’t keep doing this without them. I always tell anyone who listens the commentors are just as important as the posters because you won’t have one without the other.
I hope for great success for everyone on Lemmy as a platform, but we all need to always try to be more active than we are if that’s going to happen. Just post a “I really enjoyed this! Thanks so much for sharing!” once every day or so if you don’t feel you have anything topical to add to a post you enjoyed. I know it means a lot to me to see that on my work, and I’m sure it does to most posters. Even when I just share a picture, I may have spent an hour scrolling to find you that pic, verify it’s not AI or stolen, and find a little fact or something to add to the post, It’s a really quick and easy way to do a nice thing to show someone that made something for your enjoyment that it reached someone.
I was thinking about this last night. I would never have bothered to make this much content for a place like Reddit or Facebook as there is just too much attention on other things. Over the last year I’ve spent who knows how much time making, finding, and editing content on here and engaging people to try to keep their attention. It’s nice in that I feel heard, but it’s also such a small crowd, I notice when people show up and start participating, but also when they stop participating. I’ve built a pretty big following for Lemmy. I’m currently juuuuust not making the first page of biggest communities, but I feel I’m doing well for a niche community here. But the given number of regular commentors I get feels like it hasn’t increased over the last 9 months. As soon as I get new people that comment and participate, the same number drop off. It just feels like I’m not getting anywhere, and it makes me question this as a platform. I’ve got about a half dozen people I’d call regulars, and new people pop in and out, but if I stop to think about the effort in, I wonder how much minimum user feedback I can get by with to do this another whole year.
My current goal is to make it to December and do the Superbowl Owl of the Year Tournament again. That was a huge boost to the community for those few weeks, but that was a toooon of effort to do by myself. Thankfully someone usually chimes in with some positivity and has a very enthusiastic response to something I’ve shared that can boost my morale, but it really is tough to keep putting work into what many times feels like a void. I always make sure to thank commentors for saying nice things or just participating, because I wouldn’t keep doing this without them. I always tell anyone who listens the commentors are just as important as the posters because you won’t have one without the other.
I hope for great success for everyone on Lemmy as a platform, but we all need to always try to be more active than we are if that’s going to happen. Just post a “I really enjoyed this! Thanks so much for sharing!” once every day or so if you don’t feel you have anything topical to add to a post you enjoyed. I know it means a lot to me to see that on my work, and I’m sure it does to most posters. Even when I just share a picture, I may have spent an hour scrolling to find you that pic, verify it’s not AI or stolen, and find a little fact or something to add to the post, It’s a really quick and easy way to do a nice thing to show someone that made something for your enjoyment that it reached someone.