any ideas to promote this comm more and encourage reccing?

[ratcreature]

I'd love for this comm to become a bit livelier in this new year, and to broaden the reccer base.

While it is absolutely great that a handful of people rec so regularly, making sure the comm isn't (near-)dead, and there are also some new reccers every now and then, just reccing for a month, there often aren't enough reccers to average a rec per day, so fanart_recs definitely could be more active.

One way would be to make this comm more widely known and grow in numbers, some of whom then might rec eventually. I think for that having a banner to offer people prettier linking with some embedding code would be nice, but I suck at making attractive banners myself. So if anyone felt like making some we could offer, that would be great. Maybe if we had such pretties and a pre-made promotion they could just c&p more would spread the word than now. I could also use something like that to advertise again on dw_community_promo which I haven't done in a while.

The second way would be to encourage more current members and subscribers to make the jump to reccing, but I'm not sure what the barriers to that are there now. Is there anything that could be made easier and would make you consider reccing? Like, for example the comm could do occasional open posting periods outside the regular structure, allowing every member to rec a fanart they wanted to, without having to commit to a whole set but still dip their toes in. (though really, it's only four! *puppy dog eyes*)

Comments

[ratcreature]

I really modelled it onto crack_van, because that format worked well for them and all the fandom-specific clones of that comm, and I thought it would be transferable to fanart. So it seemed a tried model to keep a comm alive and interest up long-term, and considering this comm is now over two years and at least still has some regular traffic (which is more than can be said for some open posting fannish comms) it worked somewhat.

Another reason why I picked this setup is that many people like to prepare recs in advance, and if you aren't sure to be the only one to rec a popular fandom, another might have just recced that currently hot fanart if it is just melee posting.

Ideally being able to claim a month had the goal to ensure steady content and traffic to keep up interests and to give reccers the opportunity to highlight their fandom in the space. Personally I actually find this kind of setup less intimidating? (that's not quite the word, I mean, the effect where in an unstructured crowd you can't know what others might do and keep back to lurk and see, hoping others will start and post so you won't have take space, compared to when you sign up and have a space given to you to fill out).

I'd consider changing the structure if many member say they'd prefer more free-form reccing in this space over the crack_van format, though.

[jelazakazone]

I found out about this comm through the snowflake challenge and I actually liked that the traffic wasn't high. I hadn't had the idea that I would actually post anything here, at least not for a while. I tend to be very voluble in my own space and much quieter in comms, if I'm even in a comm.

I can totally see that having a structure is good. I'm brand new to the comm, as I said, so I hadn't even checked out how things worked here!

[ratcreature]

Welcome! Glad you joined (and that someone promoted this comm in their challenge response). Subscribing without posting is certainly welcome. After all what good would reccing be if nobody saw them?