A place for fandom comm leaders to meet and get help.
Keeping Comms Active
Is anyone else getting discouraged? I lead or co-lead four comms. (Two of each.) One of them is a Power Rangers community- lots of new material, easy to post frequently- I barely get comments. (There are only six people.) In the Young Wizards community other people have made posts! But because it's a small community (almost 40) and we have awhile before new material comes out, it's hard to keep active. In the other two, I've been doing group rewatches. I was expecting a small response in the Tomorrow People community, there's only 10 of us. But the Dark Matter community is almost 150 members, and three of us post. So far, other than a couple likes, the group rewatches are getting no additional traffic. Anyone have suggestions?




I totally symapthize!
It's important to remember that a really good amount of activity, in my experience running comms on a wide variety of platforms, is 10% of members participating. That means that a comm with 100 people generally will only see 10 people interact in a good week.
That said, here are some things I've found really help with my comm (which is almost 400 people, but has hit a quiet period recently... partly because I was quiet):
Even back in the glory days of LJ, a lot of comms got momentum from having a co-mod or a reliable person to make things a bit more active and inviting. There was an attempt at having community mods help each other out like that, but it was structured really formally. The 'help' I needed was someone even just to like a few posts, but people seemed to think essays were required.
//nodding// I've never taken part in those "activity drives" folks organize sometimes, mostly because it seems like so much is required. For me, the big ask is regularity. I don't need it to be super thoughtful, just reliable.
Getting a comm to have basic signs of life at all makes a night and day difference.
I've gone to mostly letting my fandom comm hibernate. If we ever get deep threading, I'll be back to putting more effort in. I have no interest in being a sort of news feed. I thought that style of posting was going to be a temporary thing. So I created enough polls and silly light stuff to build an audience and be ready with that audience once we could have real conversations.
Thing is, I got sick of waiting for something that doesn't seem to be coming any time soon.
To be honest I'm currently mostly focusing on trying to help revive regular posting in big multifandom spaces like /cranky_old_fangirls, /fail_fandom_anon and /fanfic_tropes - it's easier to get some response there, and I think more general activity helps keep fandom people using the site and therefore around to see stuff in the quieter single-fandom comms.
I'm maintaining one of my comms by posting comic book panels twice a week, which is something I can schedule that doesn't take a huge amount of time - the only response is occasional hearts, but it keeps the comm looking alive and proves I'm still here, so it's not just going a month or more between posts of other kinds of content. I think it's good to come up with some sort of low-effort, regular thing you can schedule like that (screencaps, quotes, gifs, etc.) just to keep the comms looking alive without requiring a discouraging amount of work for low returns.
I think AnonReproductionAyden is right that we need to encourage a culture of 'shitposting' on Imzy, just to free people up from falling in the trap of feeling like they have to come up with something in-depth and 'worthy' before they can post. We need to encourage the idea that it's really okay to post any random on-topic thing, even if it's just a one-liner "this gif made me laugh" or "this has always been one of my fave quotes" or "hey I just found this cool link".
In other words, lots of low-effort stuff that only demands a silly one line reply or clicking a poll option to get activity up, rather than just long thoughtful discussion posts that make people feel like they have to have revised canon recently and come up with something long and insightful before they can participate. I think too many of us are still stuck in an old-school "Don't spam the comm with trivial stuff, wait until you've got something worthwhile to say!" mindset left over from LJ and mailing lists, whereas Imzy's actually quite well set up for the sort of "Hey, I just thought of a random thing" casual posting you do on Tumblr or Twitter, and we need to push for more of that. Right now we have the complete opposite of a "too much spam clogging up the comms" problem.
Or News! (Although the Me too post has been nicely replaced by clicking a heart)
I posted to fanfic tropes because no one had in a while and conversations sparked. Comms like that just need more posters.
Yep. You can see in the bigger comms with more members that people will still respond if you give them a post to reply to, so we just need to encourage more top-level posting. I'm basically trying to make a new habit of posting any halfway appropriate thing that crosses my mind in suitable comms that I follow. (Which apart from anything else, makes me less bummed if some of my posts don't get much or any response, because I've also got others out there at the same time that are getting replies.)
Even back on LJ a lot of fandom happy fun times was shitposting. Remember FFAs and SNNLC? No grand thesis statements, deeeeep reviews or thinky thoughts there. Just ... fun.
Also, I think people forget what it took to get some of those old coms going in the first place. It took effort and mod conspiracies and stuff to get some off the ground.
Yeah, I think the thing is a lot of LJ comms were born out of groups of people who were already having long chatty conversations about things going, "Hey, we keep talking about this, why don't we make a dedicated comm?" Whereas on Imzy we're trying to do it kind of ass-backwards, making the comm and then hoping other people will show up and talk. I mean, I know I'm guilty of joining a lot of fandom comms because I like the canon and would happily read other people's discussion about it, but haven't seen it recently enough to come up with anything intelligent myself. So we need more posts where all those lurkers who haven't got much to say beyond "Hey, Fandom X, I used to love Fandom X!" can still participate without feeling like they should leave it to the people who know what they're talking about.
Re shitposting, look what happened when that anon posted that alpha women screenshot + asked for a shitpost tag. Quite a few responses. More fun dumb stuff, especially on multifandom comms
Yes, FFA's a good place to get in the habit of posting again, because there really aren't any rules or set topics beyond "we're all fandom people here". (I'm the anon who just posted the "Sort yourself into fandom houses!" song, which has had a pretty heartening response. People like voting in silly polls!)
I love that poll! It was so fun to stop, think about the house names and what one applied
Also, clearly we should all post in this comm more often, because apparently there are plenty of us lurking here waiting for a chance to talk.
Yup. I got discouraged and stopped posting, at the worst possible time - when the third season of the show was airing. Perfect time to get some interaction, but i just dropped out (RL stuff).
But since I've come back, I've listed my expectations and pretty much post stuff I like. (I should do more polls tbh).
Another thing I plan to try is to encourage shitposting. I think if people don't feel like they have to have a good post, more might comment/post.
Oh! I can randomly post about Power Rangers like nobody's business! (Someone else posted to YW about randomness, and I posted a link to DD for YW....) Hmmm....
it's hard atm because people who joined in the summer don't seem to be here and Imzy has a smaller audience.
Tho some ppl that do use Imzy seem to use it as a respite from other social media? That because you have to put in on Imzy, it's easy to avoid stuff you don't want to see. So maybe I'll start announcing on my other social media accounts when I'm going to Imzy for a break from politics/fandom drama/think pieces sitting down on millennials etc
LOL. For the PR comm I've tried tweeting about it during the show. I should really try that with Dark Matter, but should talk to my co-mod first. I have her email address. (She's here sporadically. Doesn't help.)
Talk to your co-mod, but if she doesn't get back to you within 3 days/a week, just go ahead and do it.
The only other thing I can think of to get fans hanging out here is if cranky old fangirls do that comment on fics thing
I really hope that goes though: it sounds like a blast.
"Mad Men" community has over 500 members and I was hosting a weekly watch party... and I'd get less than 5 people posting. That's with an extra push of support from the top brass at Imzy!
So I've pulled way back and I'm in a semi-holding pattern there.
I am keeping one com in minimal maintenance mode, mostly posting for my own interest. The other I am going to mess around with and see what sticks.
My emotional investment in the site comes entirely from hanging out in LGC and the cranky fangirl one. Comms with activity are pretty awesome and good social spaces.
I love Cranky Fangirls.