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submitted 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago) by dystop@lemmy.world to c/newcommunities@lemmy.world

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.

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[-] BeMoreCareful@lemmy.world 38 points 2 years ago

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.

[-] MiddleWeigh@lemmy.world 4 points 2 years ago

I hard agree.

In fact, I'm finding that NOT focusing on these small interests, is largely more enjoyable of an experience.

[-] cjerrington@kbin.social 19 points 2 years ago

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@lemmy.world 13 points 2 years ago

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).

[-] AschTheFrenzied@lemmy.world 15 points 2 years ago

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.

[-] dystop@lemmy.world 4 points 2 years ago

Thanks! All i can do is try to mention it where I can, and hopefully more people will see this.

[-] HidingCat@kbin.social 11 points 2 years ago

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

[-] dystop@lemmy.world 10 points 2 years ago

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@kbin.social 8 points 2 years ago

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

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[-] rms1990@lemmy.world 4 points 2 years ago

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

[-] amcjv12@lemmy.world 11 points 2 years ago

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@lemm.ee 6 points 2 years ago

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. 🎶👌

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[-] Catch42@kbin.social 10 points 2 years ago

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@lemmy.world 9 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

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@lemmy.world 5 points 2 years ago

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@lemm.ee 3 points 2 years ago

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. 🤐

[-] lixus98@kbin.social 9 points 2 years ago* (last edited 2 years ago)

If you want to crosspost content from reddit automatically use: https://github.com/driccio98/BotIt,
It's intended for links and I wouldn't encourage using it for anything else cause you know, stealing content from others is not good.
But if you need a link aggregator for your community this might do it.

Edit: this is a work in progress, so expect bugs.

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[-] SurvivaLlama@lemmy.world 9 points 2 years ago

Sounds like something AI would be good at.

[-] Syrup@lemmy.cafe 6 points 2 years ago

I kind of hate that you're right

[-] dystop@lemmy.world 5 points 2 years ago

Doesn't matter how you do it - if you can figure out how to automate it, good!

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[-] briongloid@aussie.zone 7 points 2 years ago

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@lemm.ee 3 points 2 years ago

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

[-] Trekman10@sh.itjust.works 7 points 2 years ago

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).

[-] speedofdark8@lemmy.world 7 points 2 years ago

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

[-] marswarrior@lemmy.world 7 points 2 years ago

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

[-] dystop@lemmy.world 4 points 2 years ago

wow those photos look amazing!

[-] marswarrior@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years ago
[-] Fizz@lemmy.nz 5 points 1 year ago

What might be a good idea is to spend a bit of time each week gathering content and then using https://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.

[-] MisterMoo@kbin.social 5 points 2 years ago

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.

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[-] GONADS125@lemmy.world 4 points 2 years ago

I made !vans@lemmy.world 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@lemmy.world 4 points 2 years ago

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

[-] aceshigh@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years ago

ok, i'll post every couple of days.

[-] dystop@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago

Awesome! and thank you for caring enough to do this.

[-] Smokeless7048@lemmy.world 3 points 2 years ago

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

[-] sukotai@lemmy.world 2 points 2 years ago

so true : when i tried mastodon, the first feature i enjoyed was the local feed : it just give you the feeling you don't go to an empty place

[-] BasicallyClean@kbin.social 2 points 2 years ago

If you guys look on my profile m/BotIt is a bot that will autopull content from subreddits you choose based on time and karma requirements you set.

GitHub is in the top post. Works great and will auto populate content.

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[-] ThePowerOfGeek@lemmy.world 2 points 3 months ago

Tip for those creating new communities: don't slam your fresh community with loads of new posts all at once. Pace yourselves. Create 2 or 3 new posts initially. Then over the next day pop a new post every few hours.

The net result is the same (content!), but you greatly reduce the risk of people blocking your community. I look a lot in local, sorting by new. And when my feed is deluged by posts for the same brand new community, I tend to block that community because it's smells like spam. And I'm probably not alone in doing this.

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this post was submitted on 19 Jun 2023
441 points (100.0% liked)

New Communities

17252 readers
5 users here now

A place to post new communities all over Lemmy for discovery and promotion.

Rules

The rules for behavior are a straight carry over of Mastodon.World's rules. You can click the link but we've reposted them here in brief, as a guideline. We will continue to use the Mastodon.World rules as the master list. Over all, be nice to each other and remember this isn't a community built around debate. For the rules about formatting your posts, scroll down to number 2.

1. Follow the rules of Mastodon.world, which can be found here.

A. Provide an inclusive and supportive environment. This means if it isn't rulebreaking and we can't be supportive to them then we probably shouldn't engage.

B. No illegal content.

C. Use content warnings where appropriate. This means mark your submissions NSFW if need be.

D. No uncivil behavior. This includes, but is not limited to: Name Calling; Bullying; Trolling; Disruptive Commenting; or Personal Criticisms.

E. No Harrassment. As an example in relation to Transgender people this includes, deadnaming, misgendering, and promotion of conversion therapy. Similarly Misogyny, Misandry, and Racism are also banned here.

2. Include a community or instance title and description in your post title. - A following example of this would be New Communities - A place to post new communities or instances all over Lemmy for discovery and promotion.

3. Follow the formatting. - The formatting as included below is important for people getting universal links across Lemmy as easily as possible.

Formatting

Please include this following format in your post:

[link text](/c/community@instance.com)

This provides a link that should work across instances, but in some cases it won't

You should also include either:

!community@instance.com

or instance.com/c/community

FAQ:

Q: Why do I get a 404?

A: At least one user in an instance needs to search for a community before it gets fetched. Searching for the community will bring it into the instance and it will fetch a few of the most recent posts without comments. If a user is subscribed to a community, then all of the future posts and interactions are now in-sync.

Q: When I try to create a post, the circle just spins forever. Why is that?

A: This is a current known issue with large communities. Sometimes it does get posted, but just continues spinning, but sometimes it doesn't get posted and continues spinning. If it doesn't actually get posted, the best thing to do is try later. However, only some people seem to be having this problem at the moment.

Extra FAQ information

Image Attribution:

Fahmi, CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0, via Wikimedia Commons>>

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