As a practitioner of that dark art, I fear you know not what you summon. You don't really want Lemmy to be popular, not in a way that traditional marketing is going to make it popular.
this post was submitted on 10 Jan 2026
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I wholeheartedly agree with this. But what about nontraditional marketing? Should be some ways to market to the desired audience?
The Fediverse should be as ubiquitous as email.
Your ISP, company, government, etc. should all host their own social media, just like they do email.
I don’t know anyone that uses isp based email that isn’t over 60. Tying your on,ine identity to a service provider that is location based makes no sense.
I do, and then use redirects for everything, so I receive mail at that address but never give it out. I use my ISP to get online anyway, so they're already tied to me.
If your redirects are all through a central point, then that works, but if it's done manually, that is a pain to change. So, if your provider changes or you move, it's a pain. I've moved recently, but loved at my last house for 14 years. I still changed providers multiple times, from dsl to fibre-to-node, to fibre to home.
If my email had to change each time I might not have been so nimble. Unfortunately it's a Gmail address and I am in the process of degoogling, so online mail has pros as well as cons!
All true. But...
Don't make your online accounts your identity.
They aren't you. They aren't real.
Neither is your social security number nor your passport or dericing licence. Your email serves the same purpose online. Losing/changing it is extremely annoying as it's tied to so many other services.
You're missing my point.
Not sure if it's intentional or not.
If your point is more than everything online is virtual anyway, then you're missing the point.
Your email being tied to your online identity doesn't mean it's part of your sense of self or personality. It means it's ties to multiple online services that identify you partly by using it. If you change or lose your email, you lose those log-ins or, at least, it's a pain to change them all.
Many places now use a phone number as an identifier instead of an email or as an alternative. Again, because it's unique to you and unlikely to change. However, that makes you easier to track and susceptible to losing it being a loss of things beyond your phone number. This may include access to things like bank accounts or personal photos or friends contact details.
I wasn't confused
Why not? Would it enshittify the platform or something?
Could it be that marketing is an inherently pro-capitalism line of work and its practitioners are unlikely to be altruistic enough to volunteer, especially for something like Free Software?
Here's a somewhat cynical take: marketeers do it for the money. Period. Back when I a student myself, I met many types of students. Marketing students could roughly be classified as 'in here for the money' and 'I do not know what to do otherwise'. There was no real sense of activism or any desire to make the world a better place (except for themselves that is).
Throughout my career I met with many marketeers. They were nice to work with, but I never met anybody in marketing who was inclined to use their skills for a good cause.
Marketing volunteers is pretty much social media in general.
Social media is only one marketing channel, no? How does that tie in to marketeers volunteering their time?
I mean, half the people who work for charities are technically doing some sort of Marketing.
That makes sense, but I guess most of them are doing grunt work?
even volunteer marketing costs money, not just time and labor.
Have you met marketing people? I mean, they’re nice enough, but it’s not exactly a passionate calling.
I know a couple; they are very smart.
No doubt. But marketing is by design a corporate exercise. Non-profits would need to be convinced to prioritize and pay for messaging over whatever function they were established to serve.
All the non-profits I know have a marketing person or department. Some outsource.
Donating to this would be very beneficial for all involved.
I coach (social) businesses all over the world and help them with marketing as well.
Off-topic, but is there any advice you would give to Lemmy and / or Fediverse?
In what sense? What coaching do you seek; marketing, how to get more users or what ?
~~What is the best way for Lemmy to get more users in its current state? What needs to change?~~
What is the main reason that Lemmy is not gaining users?
The easy answer: create a community “how to get to 1,000,000 Lemmy users” and let the swarm come up with and implement ideas. In real life, this means that the mission and vision of Lemmy must be defined, based on that a positioning and messaging document must be prepared, which also describes the user profile(s). You would need to define the Unique Selling Point USP of Lemmy, and an elevator pitch. All these assets build on each other. Then you could start to create campaigns targeted at non-users, eg on other platforms, mastodon, X(!), Reddit (!), etc… draw them in with the assets and statements described above. I have done this with dozens of companies. All quite exciting, imagine a couple of tweets on X “looking for more freedom? Join Lemmy today!” Works well, takes effort, doesn’t need to cost €€€.
mission and vision of Lemmy must be defined
Do you think each niche Lemmy instances should have their own mission and vision, and market themselves accordingly? I'd imagine lemmy.world can represent Lemmy as whole, but something like ani.social speaks more to weebs IMO.
I would first try an overarching mission and vision, it gets too complex very quickly.
That's us. When we write reviews or share things.
Off topic- I never understand why people in commercials are so awkward when they recommend things. I send things to my friends all the time...check out these yoga pants with pockets, Kroger has blackberries on sale, look at Kitty Lulu in the new dog bed, etc. Why is it so hard for fakers to appear genuine?
When we write reviews or share things.
My understanding is that marketeers would have thought through their company's acquisition / retention / etc problems, then decide on the best approach to deal with said problems.
In some cases, marketeers recognised that having reviews bring the most value to their organisations, and would then create means for end users to "write reviews or share things".
This problem-solving is the real marketing work, not us end users spreading the word.