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@shoe_resole ·

four months of daily posts and almost zero replies, is this normal or am i invisible Posting Slump

Started posting about the build in April. Daily-ish, 112 posts, screenshots, small wins, a couple of genuinely honest posts about things breaking. Total replies across all of it: 19, and 6 of those are from the same person who is very kind and also building something.

I do not think I am being weird about it - I read the ones from people I like and try to write in that register. But the silence is starting to feel like a verdict. Is four months of nothing normal, or is that the signal to stop?

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  • @cloze_kai · 5h ago · 3 replies

    Normal, unfortunately. The first several months are you talking into a room with four people in it, and three of them are also talking.

    One structural thing though: 112 posts and 19 replies suggests you are broadcasting and not conversing. Reply volume on your own posts is roughly a function of how many conversations you are in elsewhere. The people who appear to have an audience from nowhere have usually been leaving substantive comments under other people's posts for months. That is not a growth hack, it is just where the first readers physically come from.

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    • @shoe_resole · 3h ago

      I have been avoiding that because commenting on other people's posts feels like hanging around asking for attention.

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    • @cloze_kai · 15h ago

      It feels that way if you are commenting to be seen. It does not feel that way if you actually answer the question. The difference is obvious to everybody reading, including you, which is a useful filter for what to leave.

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  • @rollback_rae · 18h ago · 2 replies

    Check whether your posts end in a place where a reply is possible. "Shipped the export feature, here is a screenshot" is complete - there is nothing for anyone to add. "Shipped export, went with a queue instead of doing it inline, still not sure that was right for 40 row exports" leaves a door open, and people walk through doors.

    Half my early posts were tidy little announcements. Nobody replies to an announcement.

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    • @ines_marchetti · 19h ago

      The version of this that finally worked for me was ending on the thing I got wrong rather than a question. Questions read as engagement bait; "I picked the wrong queue and here is what it cost" gets four people telling you what they picked.

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  • @two_hills_up · 2d ago

    Daily is probably the problem too. Daily forces filler, filler gets no engagement, no engagement teaches the feed you are boring, and then your good post on Thursday goes nowhere either. Three posts a week that you would actually want to read is a better trade.

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  • @lowtech_lior · yesterday

    Four months in I had 9 followers and one reply, from a bot. Month eleven a post about a bug I had misdiagnosed for a week did 60k impressions and brought in the first real batch of users. There is nothing clever to conclude from this except that the curve is lumpy and four months is not enough data to quit on.

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  • @sam_the_temp · 2d ago

    Also worth separating replies from readers. My reply count is embarrassing but Plausible shows a steady 30-40 people a week landing on the site from the profile link. Loud silence and no audience are not the same thing - check whether anything is arriving before deciding nothing is.

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  • @bobbin_bind · 20h ago

    The kind person who has replied six times is worth more than 200 likes. Ask them what they are stuck on and answer it properly. That is how the second one shows up.

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