BOOST OR QUOTE THIS!

@meganmariehart If you don't add hashtags, you miss the audience that follows a particular hashtag. Those people are potential new subscribers.

@meganmariehart @djstreethawk me too.

@meganmariehart got it

@meganmariehart saw you. I mostly forget to use hashtags. I follow a few.

@GeePawHill super convenient for negative filtering though. Some super nice folks out here also post stuff I shouldn't look at. If it's tagged, my filter protects our friendship, and that's worth it to me.

@meganmariehart @metalbrawler

@meganmariehart

I saw it and gave it a star. Reach is hard to quantify.

@meganmariehart Aye

@GeePawHill @meganmariehart
But for some IT IS easy to follow certain Hashtags they are interested in.

(Nobody actually asked why, but I imagine someone must have thought it.) Curiosity is one reason, the other is a recent offline discussion about whether we are hindering a more wide spread adoption of the Fediverse because we dislike advertisements. It’s possible that brands and “influencer”-type people aren’t getting the kick they’re used to from the Fediverse because there are no metrics showing how many people have seen a post. Perhaps it’s different with your own instance – I don’t know!
2/7

For the sake of argument, let’s assume that people would want to test the waters by creating an account on an established instance before committing to setting up their own, even if they have the necessary knowledge and funds. I think people have become accustomed to the insane numbers on commercial social media: millions of views, thousands of likes and hundreds of comments. (I have never been part of this; my profession is too niche. Classical music accounts for just 2–5% of music sales,
3/7

… and opera is primarily a live art form, so its market share is so small as to be essentially unmeasurable. I never bothered to find out how many people I reach vs how many interactions a post gets. I really couldn’t care less!) Brands and “Influencer”-minded people, even people just used to commercial socials testing the fediverse might feel like it is not working for them and leave again, so I was wondering about the *potential* reach of a toot.
4/7

I feel like I get more meaningful interaction (and perhaps even ticket sales!) from a Mastodon post about an upcoming show than from posts on other social media platforms. But a “feeling” dosen’t help when trying to convince people to join. Or to get active. My current theater @staatstheaterdarmstadt is on here since 2022 – zero posts! I would like them to get active or even set up their own instance. I think every theater should have its own instance! It can’t be more work than FB and IG.
5/7

All theaters have websites. I’m not tech-savvy (my husband takes care of that for me), but it seems to me that if you have a website and domain, setting up a Mastodon server can’t be that hard. Perhaps it’s even possible to run it as an outlet only, then they wouldn’t have to deal with moderation. I think every publicly funded entity should have a presence on the Fediverse instead of commercial social media. (Or at least in addition to.) My experimental toot is meant to create an example …
6/7

@meganmariehart Saw this in the Trending section.

… to demonstrate that Fediverse posts are worth the time and effort. Perhaps there is also an argument for a feature request: maybe there should be audience metrics for toots?! Though I imagine that could be difficult due to Federation. Again, I have no idea if one already gets numbers and insight by running an instance.)

Perhaps we can move beyond numbers in the long run, but for now, I fear people enjoy them even if they gain nothing from them. Kinda like a game highscore, I suppose.

7/7

@meganmariehart Edit: oh, my instance only had your first toot. The other 6 appeared only once I replied here. Kinda ignore.

Original: could you edit this toot when you're done? I'm interested, but if I bookmark it, it'll just go into the how-come-it-has-not-toppled-yet pile of to-reads :-G

@meganmariehart I indeed think that the fediverse is not as attractive for people rely on social marketing. No metrics, no algo. You have to built up your presence by hard work, there are no "brand opportunities". For a lot of people this would break their business, for others this would break their ego.

@meganmariehart I once run an experiment similar to yours. I asked people to boost a toot with a URL to a webserver I controlled, no hashtags either. It got <3k boosts. Yours will probably get similar numbers. At that point, IIRC, the Fedi (or was it just Mastodon?) was ~2M accounts, so it reached ~15% of the net. I wrote abut it here:

https://www.grulic.org.ar/~mdione/glob/posts/the-mastodon-effect-meta-discussion/

1/

@meganmariehart But hashtags are the best way to reach people. You mention a theater. They should post with hashtags of their region of influence (city, province, etc), the type of œvre (opera, music, etc) and maybe a couple more. They should sniff around until they find the right ones. I wish there were tools for that, hmmm...

2/

Hey #fediverse ! (See?) Is there a tool that would help find popular hashtags? This should help newcomers, specially institutions like theaters, find ways to reach more people here!

@meganmariehart