How to grow a community from 0 users?
Just curious how you get your first users for a community platform like indie hackers.
Since the entire value of a community is the fact that there are other people it feels like it should be fairly hard to start with no one else.
When I started my niche social network, I actually setup a catfish profile on another site, and when people messaged me, I would let them know they could find me on another site (my site). I went as far as to say I was the designer of the other site. Totally not proud, but totally worked (at peak, doing 15mm impressions per month and grossing nearly 15k$).
Granted, that only works for more generic sites that tend to have a "dating" focus in terms of the user base, but I think the sentiment still holds true. Find adjacent properties and attempt to poach. Find out the pain points on the current communities and lure folks away.
One of my friends did something like this. They create the community and seed it with a few SEO relevant subjects and the first answers. That attracted organic traffic from other people interested in talking about the topic. Also share on other communities explaining why you're different. Some times just a better UI is a reason for some folks.
On IH you'll find on a regular basis posts with titles like "on twitter? let's connect!". Searching through the archives you'll dig a lot of twitter handles of IHers on Twitter. You often have the Twitter account of IH members on their personal profile on IH too.
I can share how I got a few followers both on Twitter and here on IH (by no means I'm saying my accounts are big - it's the opposite in fact - but I believe it might answer your question).
IH: I follow a few topics and every day I got a mail with a daily summary. I go through the list and answer questions I have an answer/opinion for. This makes a few folks follow.
The rest came after one of my posts took off: https://www.indiehackers.com/post/twittter-is-hard-in-2020-a7d98adec7 (I can't really explain why it was picked like this btw 🤷♂️Probably topic people care about and good timing)
Twitter: Posting on dev.to made a few followers, once again that IH post from above, and commenting under posts of already big accounts made a few more.