LEX! Oh vaguely benevolent overlord of the Phandom! I beseech thee! Lend thine divine aid to the American Dragon Jake Long fandom! Please? Like for real here the Phandom has bee Ouroboros-ing ourselves for upwards of a decade, we have plenty of creative energy to spare and with how visible the fandom is what better way to give our friends a boost? Also it's a good show. Also the crossover potential. Also he's a dragon like come on. Anyway, organize a Jake long thing? We have so little content.
I have never seen any of that show, nor am I particularly emotionally invested in getting involved, but may I offer you some advice in these trying times?
1. Make the content, and make it consistently. Even if you think you’re bad at it or you think no one will see it, make it and post it anyways. You literally never know what will gain notes when.
2. Memes are your friend. While I do put a lot of effort into writing and music production, memes gain significant more traction to my blog than anything else. So if you wanna build a community, humor is a great way to do it. In the beginnings of my blog, I used to make memes with other people on the dp discord back when there was just a handful of us. It was a fun bonding activity!
3. Tag all your posts, and tag the content that you reblog. So many people never tag anything, but then complain when their stuff never gets discovered. Like, I browse the danny phantom tag all the time. If you draw something or make a meme, but don’t tag it, how tf am I or anyone else supposed to find it?
4. In terms of community events, start with small week long ones! Get a good tag for it, and then just try it! Sure, maybe the first time you throw an event, only a few people will participate. But then maybe the next event will have a few more people, and their followers will see it, and maybe some of those guys will wanna join, and then the next event is even bigger, etc.
5. Keep the drama off your blog. I mean, this goes without saying, but discourse is no fun for anyone. And although you may think you’re doing a great thing by trying to play mediator or whatnot, just don’t bother. Don’t engage, don’t give it life. If you treat it like it’s something so boring that you can’t even be bothered to look in its direction, then others will follow.
And that’s my wisdom for the day. The Phandom is so successful because we’ve built a community around this show, but the key thing here is the community aspect. Once upon a time that was angst for us, and now it’s memes. So find the thing that pulls people to your fandom (I personally have had success with memes), and then hit them with that sweet sweet art and fanfiction combo. Get a discord going, get a good mod team to help build it, and be careful not to devolve into a clique-y mess. Realize that people are gonna come and go, that’s normal and fine, just make sure they know that the door’s open if they ever wanna come back!
