Groups for Newbies!
Hi there, I am Phoebe Aurum and if you are reading this blog post, you are interested in learning about groups! Maybe you know everything to know about groups and you are just checking to make sure that I am not getting anything wrong. If it is the latter, you are making me incredibly nervous but I respect your commitment to quality control!
What do groups do?
Groups are a way for users of the site to deliver and share specific content to other users who like the same things that you like! Just by going through the member list of a group is a great way to find users to subscribe!
Before we begin...
In order to make full use of this blog you will have to be on your computer to do so. The Mobile device has a different layout and a different level of functionality to the site. We will have parity one day.
Findings groups
You may find that the first dozen or so groups are not to your interest but after scrolling for a while you get the feeling you won't find the group you're hoping to discover, don't worry! You may be able to find the group by typing their name into the search bar! We have an all-purpose search bar that will look up anything containing the characters you typed into the box. Just type the name and hit enter.
If you find checking groups for activity to be a bit annoying, I can help you! Here is a list of groups that I hand-picked based on my understanding of what new users wanted from various groups but couldn't find (Apolitical content* and specific groups that are outside the purview of the top groups**).
The list is as follows:
Properly Posting
Every good group has real rules to follow in posting content and you should adhere to these rules. If not you could get kicked from the group or your posts could get deleted. Certain groups even check the content of a post before letting it go live. Try not to over post and try to check the backlog. If the group is based on current events then you should at least check to see if posts made within the day have not covered the same subject as you. If the group is based on posting content around a theme then I would try to create original content for the group. It would be very easy to re-post that picture of a girl wearing a hat because you forgot that you did the same thing a month ago. The capacity for humanoids to remember things, especially short-term things, is well documented. Consider adding a bit more to a post when submitting it. You will remember the submission better if you put some thought into the upload. Even something as simple as putting together a paragraph (which is not as many words as you might think!) lets you keep a bit of memory for the post and might enable conversation!
Oh! Before I forget! You want to make sure that you do not post the same thing to multiple groups on the same day and within a short span of time! People that sub to you will get copies of your post and it can harm their feed, anymore than two and you risk antagonizing subscribers!
All right, so you know how to post things and you know what to post. You might be tempted to create a group as well. Let us talk about that!
Creating a group!
Creating a group is easy. Just click on the group section tab and where you see the options; Top, My Groups, and Start A New Group, you select “Start A New Group”, after that you will be taken to a page where you can make first touches to your group.
You will want a banner and a group avatar. Without that, you will not stand out to potential members! If you have many subs, you can invite them to your group at this particular juncture. If not you will just have to invite them later.
Promoting a group!
Once you create a group it is not very good to have it void of content or activity. You should find users to subscribe to your group. You can drop a link of your group in your postings; you could even post it to another group although I would try to get permission first. You can pin your post containing the link to the group on your page (and put it in the bio if you so want) and you can even boost both the group and the post containing the link to your page. There are many dead groups out there and just boosting a group keeps it visible.
I would recommend that you spend 15 tokens over the course of 3 months and that you personally post at least 60 posts over the course of 2 months. This should jump start the group, of course the important thing is to continue posting and even boosting well after that.
Maintaining a group!
You may find that popular groups have rules, lots of users, lots of activity, but no sense of cohesion and a feeling of complete chaos and anarchy. That is not typically the intended design of a group. What you are observing is the result of a group Admin no longer watching over his/her group. When group admins do not post and they do not watch over content, being posted the group can be hijacked by spammers posting all sorts of unusual stuff on the group feed. Make sure that spammers are deleted and in the event, you tire of Minds.com and want to leave it behind, delete the group. Kind of extreme but it is important to consider that the members of the group are at the mercy of the spammer and you are the only one who can help them. A group is just a shared idea. Even if the group itself is deleted, the idea will continue to exist and a new group can replace the previous one with the same idea installed. Deleting an extremely popular and well-used group should be avoided at all costs so if one can, please return to the group at least once a week to do house keeping!
The Future!
If you're seeing some flaws with the group mechanics, you're not halluci01011001 01101111 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100111 01101001 01101100 01100100 01100101 01100100 00100000 01100011 01101000 01100001 01101101 01100010 01100101 01110010 00100000 01101001 01110011 00100000 01100001 00100000 01110011 01101000 01110010 01101001 01101110 01101011 01101001 01101110 01100111 00101110ture Requests groups and sooner or later we'll have this all patched out!
*Apolitical content is nearly impossible to find in this current political climate; as a result anything “Apolitical” is occasionally “Not very political”.
**Some groups added to the list are top groups but are the only groups that fit the constantly requested criteria by the researched user base.