First Draft Club

Engagement is a Two Way Street


I’ve seen a lot of chatter on the timeline that engagement has been weird for the past 2 weeks. 

We’ve either all gotten worse at casting, the hype of “pro” has worn off, or the team has been experimenting with the algorithm and we are staring to feel the effects. 

Maybe it’s a combo of all 3 and we need to take some action. 

1. Clean up who you follow
2. Change your Feed Setting to see All Replies for a week
3. Reply to every thoughtful comment & ignore low effort replies
4. Hack the recency bias in the algorithm
5. Turn on “Super Follow” (notifications) for your favorite casters or friends you want to see more
6. Change up how, when, and where you cast
7. Audit your own profile (handy Dune query below)

1. Clean up who you follow

You can’t make people follow you or engage with you, but you can save your engagement for those who engage back. If you are being truly thoughtful and authentic and someone never replies to you (and you don’t have a spam label so you know they can see you!) then stop wasting your time and move on. People are busy, notifications are buggy, spam labels are real. But if someone ignores you, move on. Even a like is enough. If they give you zero interaction back, try someone else. 

Here’s a quick tool to see who is still around. 
Don’t follow spammy people. Save friends who are mislabeled as spam. 
https://recaster.org/tool/follow-checker

2. Change your Feed Setting to see All Replies for a week


Farcaster is now letting you decide how many replies you want to see. I encourage everyone to change this setting to all for at least a week. Many casters have been in the shadows and you can help them be visible again.  Some accounts are inundated by AI automated accounts and won’t be able to use this setting, but most people should be able to try this for at least a week. Block automated accounts liberally. Give real casters a chance. 

https://farcaster.xyz/v/0x1e17bba1


3. Reply to every thoughtful comment. Ignore low effort replies. 

If you want engagement you have to give it too.  You don’t have to be a reply guy if it’s not your thing, but if people are taking the time to engage with your casts, take the time to reply back to authentic thoughtful comments.  If someone is in broadcast only mode and never engages back, reevaluate why you are replying to them in the first place. Is their content amazing? Does it make your Farcaster experience better? 


4. Hack the recency bias in the algorithm. 


The algorithm really loves whoever you last interacted with. So if you haven’t seen someone in a while or they haven’t seen you in a while, you’ve got to teach the algorithm what and more importantly WHO you want to see! If you let it decide for you, you won’t see the people you want to see the most. You’ve got to force and train it. 


5. Turn on “Super Follow” (notifications) for your favorite casters or friends you want to see more


Sometimes the algorithm doesn’t show you what you want to see and you have to force it. Turn on notifications for a few people for a week and interact with their casts more. This is a good hack to get the algorithm to show them to you more in the future, if it behaves. I’ve had to keep them on for a handful of people who don’t cast often. The algorithm really likes when you cast daily. 

6. Change up how, when, and where you cast

Videos don’t do that great here. Neither do photos or mint frames along. While we may want to share our content this way, the algorithm doesn’t love it. This is a text based social network and that has to be respected. Add more text around your content and try more experiments with text based casts. 

A great cast may not do well if most people aren’t online. Try casting at different times and experiment. 

Channels can be your place to find your tribe. There are thousands. Look for channels with very active hosts. They may have notifications on for their channels and be more excited when you choose to cast there. You can’t get a spam label interacting inside of channels so it’s more welcoming to new folks who are still trying to find their way. 



7. Audit your own profile

You can use this Dune query to see how you cast. Put in your own FID and run it. Then compare it to some other casters that you admire and you think are doing well.  Comparison is the thief of joy, but benchmarking is the only way to truly figure out how you are doing in Farcasterland. 


https://www.dune.com/jkavithamahesh/farcasterprofile

~ Change up how, when, and where you cast ~

Videos don’t do that great here. Neither do photos or mint frames alone. While we may want to share our content this way, the algorithm doesn’t love it. This is a text based social network and that has to be respected. Add more text around your content and try more experiments with text based casts.

Pi-chi.eth Artist /animeoutcasts
Hosting: /sakura /kyoto /anime-manga /farcasterunion

https://portrait.so/pichi

I posted a video 3 consecutive days and it didn't perform well and I planned to use video as the medium. I had to switch to text.

Small but important detail: we now display a preview of the entire vertical video in way that feels more natural when scrolling in a text feed.

Previously, we would make the video full width (like horizontal video) and center it / truncating the top and bottom. This was sub-optimal since often times there's important context like captions.

This will also improve how it looks in a carousel with multiple videos or images.

Horizontal video is unchanged and still looks great.

We're working on a separate dedicated video feed. Coming soon.

Singer & Writer. Lover of stories (& writers), fashion and music.

Definitely good news. I'll try posting a vertical video again.

Good news. Video getting an overhaul. 

https://farcaster.xyz/dwr.eth/0x504850c6