DiscussionWhy are there over 2,000 subscribers but posts get very little engagement?

submitted by 7874 from self.LGBDropTheT

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[–][deleted] 20 insightful - 1 fun20 insightful - 0 fun21 insightful - 1 fun -  (7 children)

The amount of activity we get with 2K subscribers is pretty darn good, and it's nearly always regular and committed users/subs who engage. We get multiple posts a day, and every single post has a couple responses, if not many more. This website as a whole is small, and we're one of the most active communities, despite not being on s/all.

As for inactive users, there are a couple things we've observed (speaking as a mod here):

1) Many users joined SaidIt for subs that were banned from Reddit in June/July 2020. After a few weeks or months, they found the rest of the site lacking for their interests, and didn't stick around even for our sub.

2) There is a troll/astroturf problem on SaidIt as a whole - unrelated to us - and we have a resident troll/astroturf problem in our sub specifically. User inactivity could be due to banning.

3) The mobile app was removed from the Google Play store (presumably due to lack of updates), and can only be found by searching SaidIt directly. Which most people using phones won't do. Download page: https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.saiditnet.redreader

[–]7874[S] 3 insightful - 1 fun3 insightful - 0 fun4 insightful - 1 fun -  (6 children)

Have that many people been banned? If even half the inactive users have been banned that'd be a thousand people.

[–][deleted] 8 insightful - 1 fun8 insightful - 0 fun9 insightful - 1 fun -  (5 children)

In our sub, nowhere near half - guesstimate is about 100 users, so perhaps 5%. Most of them are the same person making alt accounts though, because again, we have a troll problem.

[–]7874[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (4 children)

So I guess they don't make up that many of the inactive users then. Idk how much activity is normal for this many subscribers, but only .75% of subscribed users are contributing, so why??

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (3 children)

I figure a lot of subscribers just lurk and read. I do that with several sites and/or subs, so why wouldn't they. Subscribing is like a bookmark, they save us for future reference, and come back when they are able.

The same thing happened with us on Reddit. We had (and still have) a core active group of users who frequently post and/or comment, with random one-off users here-and-there ... but many of our 20K-plus subscribers did not engage beyond upvotes/downvotes.

There are a lot of potential reasons why. There's no blanket answer or one true reason. People are people, and have their own individual needs and wants regarding interacting on social media.

Why does it matter to you? Maybe that can help make a difference for others.

[–]7874[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (2 children)

I'd just like to see a little more content and engagement. I don't think this POV is very unpopular, despite how TRAs try to make it seem. Maybe we should advertise?

[–][deleted] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (1 child)

You're welcome to recruit new members from other platforms and tell like-minded people you run across how to find us.

The current mod team doesn't have the bandwidth for dedicated advertising of the sub on social media or whatnot. We've had mod applications available since 2019, and our Rules/Announcement stickies always shares a link on how to join. The most recent one even said we're lacking in the social media department and could use some help. No takers.

[–]7874[S] 1 insightful - 1 fun1 insightful - 0 fun2 insightful - 1 fun -  (0 children)

I don't really use social media very much, but I can recruit individuals from reddit.