How to promote an instance?

Server administration
#1

Hi,

Let’s try to help each other. Since we try to release instances with no ads and mining data, how to promote them? I saw there are many instances pretty popular with many users and activity, how they succeed?

My instance is a general interest local one in my country and if I’m going to pay to promote the instance, I would have to sell ads as well. Is there another way you found to make your instance known?

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#2

They succeed by having a strong community—don’t pay to promote your instance, it will just get you randos. I would suggest inviting your friends or the people you hang out with online.

In my opinion, the most “successful” instances have around 20 active users—much larger instances exist, of course, but they’re much less valuable to their participants.

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#3

Its hard as i run my instance with no active user for more than a month Try to find friends on Fediverse.You need to remember your instance is for you first.

Promotion is very hard and new user get board quite easily so you need to be patience
Get yourself listed on Mastodon instances Here
Use Twitter
Distribute Printed Poster Here is a nice one Edit it and Use it Dropbox - mastodon-i-want-you.pdf You can showcase few things too of mastodon on poster
Ask Your friends and family to use it.
If its you can not pay the bills its better to leave the project and move to someone else instance

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#4

20 active users is actually a really good number. At least to start out with. They will tend to grow more users (not necessarily active ones growing), anything less probably will have trouble maintaining activity, and anything more than I’d say 150 probably will have a lot of people ending up getting lost in the noise.

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#5

On the same boat here. My instance has 2 users atm.

I’m looking for newbie guides to be sent to new users as part of a welcome message. My targeted audiences aren’t super technical or computer savvy.

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#6

hey! there are a couple of guides on https://docs.joinmastodon.org and github.com/tootsuite/documentation that may be what you’re looking for.

but I also wouldn’t discount the power of reaching out to users and talking to them individually about what they’re struggling with! it’s often much more useful to walk somebody through something 1 on 1 then just pointing them at a guide that may or may not have what they’re looking for

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#7

Tell them to watch this video its much better YouTube

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#8

Tell them it is like Twitter but better.

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