I find I join an online community, post and reply for a day or so, then never visit again (here goes take two lol). Who else struggles with keeping up engagement "velocity"?
Maybe it's because I tend to overthink posts and make them too lo
For me it's as simple as open the PWA and write. Not always in the perfect matching thread or the best answer in world. But for me it's fun to keep in contact with all of you.
And also try to help everyone with the problems they have and also party up the achievements together.
For me it's somehow the first step into blogging. To learn exactly what you've described: don't overthink everything. Just write what comes to mind.
I guess it’s always come naturally to me. I have always participated in some kind of chat room, online game or forum rather heavily.
I can see why many people get turned off from trying to contribute to communities, particularly in this space.
Twitter many people never get seen with low followers; Reddit posts get removed left right and centre because of wildly varying rules, and account requirements plus is very faceless; IndieHackers, Makerlog don’t have as broad selection of boards or functionality to really have a community feel; I’ve never seen a good Facebook or LinkedIn group in this space; and all the other classic forums are stuck in the past!
This kind of platform is not perfect (nothing ever is) but I think both the software and our approach to structure and moderation solve many of those problems.
More than anything I love being able to see a username and know about the person on a first name basis, being able to see a question know just the people to ask and of course making friends and feeling like part of a community.
We’re small enough that anyone can start posting and will get both visibility and helpful responses. This can go either way in being good or bad of course depending on the people but so
far it’s gone very well!
To echo @Gummibeer a bit, although his answers are usually far more useful. While it’s a bit like blogging I tend not to give it so much thought. If someone posts a question and I don’t know the answer I won’t be worried to offer up a best guess or just share a little direction of where they could look next. I know I appreciate any kind of feedback or direction.
For definitive proof that not every post needs to be a well-considered piece of writing you need only to have a peek in our Forum Games section. 😅
The door is always open for anybody to share, ask or just chat in line with the code or of conduct. I’ve just added an events calendar to the menu where I hope a few more regularly scheduled community events will help to keep people engaged in a positive way.
Add the PWA if you haven’t already! 😉
I code as a developer so I don't have to conduct!? 😉🤪
I'm like this with every community I've come across, sometimes I'm a lurker or just forget about them. The exception I guess is Twitter since that's short silly nonsense, but recently it's felt more serious and sad so I'm trying to pull back a bit there.
One aspect for me might be I'm very good at searching the web for answers so almost never have to ask or engage. But this isn't really a Q&A site so I guess that doesn't really apply. Maybe I'm an introvert and just like not engaging 😝
It's also hard finding communities with the right balance. Some too serious, some too silly. Or so many people messages fly by before you have a chance to respond, or you feel like you're interrupting. But don't worry none of that's a problem here here, there are lovely people in this blue box 💙
I've added the PWA but phone typing is a hot mess, I'll mainly stick to computor beep boop
Great points! Another thing I have come across is that people are more weary now I think, particularly in our industry, that so many things just pop up and close down with a year. Nobody wants to get involved with a community that will disappear because the owner becomes disinterested or is not making bank.
I know there's nothing I can say that most people will believe as I bet they've heard it from others before but truly I did not start here for any kind of profit motive and only spend what I can afford to upkeep even if nobody else contributed at all. I get so attached to my projects as long as there's at least one other person replying to me on here it will still be here. 😋
Me: scrolling through this thread liking things, not posting
Also me: realizes I am the problem
But nah seriously, I lurk A LOT and don't post/comment near as much as I could. For places I enjoy the most, I try to be active, but otherwise I just end up thinking I won't have a worthwhile comment and pass.
Lurking is an interesting one. There is a well documented 'rule' that around 90% of users will lurk, 9% will participate and 1% create. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1%_rule_(Internet_culture)
I find it's more like 60:30:10 here so far! I should do some proper analytics reports and find out exactly.
I see people pop up on the recently active sidebar quite often that we rarely hear from. There are also about another 100% of visits on top that browse as guests or find on search engines. I don't keep IPs or set cookies for guests to find out how many of those are repeat though. Every thread has a (fairly primitive) view count that everyone can see for a rough guide.
There is a little fun coming soon (tonight, hopefully!) that I hope will incentivise a little more activity. 😇
Of course every community has the problem that can turn in to a vicious cycle if nobody else engages, there's nothing to engage with, resulting in even less engagement. Fortunately we haven't had that problem to a huge extent. Before we launched I had a countdown of newsletter subscribers where we only launched when we hit 200 sign-ups. Around 100 actually converted to users but that gave us a nice starting point.
It's definitely not an animated likeness of me that pops out the bottom of the screen and gets more agitated each hour you go without posting. Think Clippy but instead of a paperclip, it's me; and instead of helpful tips, it's desperate attention seeking.
Man, I can't even pay attention to a thread. I skimmed a few posts and ignored the rest. I don't have patience anymore to read paragraphs worth of content. Keep it short and you may find people will engage (if they have something to add). I also will use reactions simply because I have nothing worth adding often times.
