Being on Mastodon for 4 years

I joined Mastodon Social in June 2021. At the time, I was looking for alternatives to Twitter where I could promote my work. Mastodon fascinated me with its open-source platform and how anyone can make their own servers. I settled with Mastodon Social because it had the most users and was the main official server.

I liked how you had more characters than Twitter and how there was no annoying algorithm that pushed irrelevant things in my feed. However, there was no way to check the analytics for your posts, and you couldn’t schedule your posts.

Overall, Mastodon has been an enjoyable social media to use. However, there are some major drawbacks. Like Twitter, my followers rarely, if ever, interacted with my posts. On top of that, my posts rarely got any engagement. I never had a post get more than 2 or 3 likes (i.e. favourites). I would rarely get any reposts (i.e. boosts) or comments. The server size is not that large, and it has been declining a lot lately. There was a big surge after Elon Musk bought Twitter, but it quickly fizzled out. Now with Blue Sky in the mix, more people seem to be moving there instead.

The main thing hurting Mastodon is engagement. It wasn’t just for me, but most people who posted rarely got any favourites or boosts. Every time I finished making my posts, I would check the live feed for the server and always see a ghost town of engagement. Many people are posting into the void with no one responding. So, if you’re trying to get a following, what is the point of posting if no one engages with your posts?

I believe Mastodon has helped get me a few sales here and there, but not to a life-changing level. This site is very niche. I was able to reach over 100 followers on Twitter, while only reaching above 15 on Mastodon. I wouldn’t mind the lower follower count if they were more active. Having 15 active followers who always engage with your posts is far better than having 100 followers who never check your profile. Unfortunately, I don’t even have 1 follower who is active on my Mastodon page.

I used to post VSS365 posts more frequently on Mastodon, but, just like Twitter, they rarely got any engagement. I now mostly post links to my Wix blog and Wix group. As well as sales that my books have on various sites. I may post more VSS365 posts in the future, but I will only make posts that I can somehow tie to my books. I have posted many non-promo-related VSS365 posts, but it’s not worth the time and effort to do that anymore. If my posts get no engagement, I might as well make it a promo post.

I think Mastodon will have great difficulty maintaining active users. Earlier in the year, active users were above 400,000. Now they’re below 300,000 and dropping. It is not a bad site to use, but it is not worth it for many people. For the time being, Blue Sky seems to be the place to be. Twitter, despite the horrible policies, is still very active with millions of users. There isn’t much Mastodon can do to increase engagement, and the main draw of this site is the absence of an annoying algorithm.

I think a lot of this falls onto the users. If they refuse to engage with people’s posts, then posters will lose interest in the site. Unfortunately, there’s not much community on Mastodon (at least none that I’ve come across).

When I made some posts critical of Twitter, I got some engagement rather quickly. This was hardly the case when I posted things about my books. I suppose I could’ve farmed more engagement if I had constantly complained about Twitter. However, the only reason I’m on Mastodon is to promote my work. The people who like my anti-Twitter posts will definitely not buy my books.

So, will I continue to stay on Mastodon? Yes, but I won’t expect much from it. I have received some new followers this year, but one was an “automated” account, and others were “legit” people offering “legit” services to indie authors. Basically, these new “followers” won’t be supporting my work. I still don’t feel like going to Blue Sky. If on both Twitter and Mastodon, none of my followers support my work, then how can I expect anything to be different on Blue Sky? I may make a blog post about this: people don’t care about you and your work if you are low status.