For those of you who offer Google hangouts as a perk, I’m curious: How popular have you found them to be with your patrons?
Context:
I’ve had my Patreon page for 4 months now, so I’m fairly new, but I practically hear crickets every month when I send out my date/times for group hangouts or 1:1 calls (depending on the reward level). I’d love to hear if any of you have a similar experience or, if not, what tips you’d offer to increase engagement on that front.
I am continuously trying to learn from other creators. I would love to build a more engaged patron community, so any best practices you have to offer would be helpful to me!
With the way the public has embraced Discord, and now that Discord supports video conferencing, I would consider moving to that platform as it is likely that more of your patrons use it.
Which is sad to say, because I’m a Hangouts fan myself.
I tried a few, early on, when I had about 30 patrons. Given that people are scattered all over the planet, the first problem was finding a time that could accommodate everyone who wanted to participate. I was only ever able to get half a dozen online, and of those, only one or two wanted to talk rather than lurk.
I think this might be something that works better for people with a larger number of patrons.
I offer hangouts for higher pledgers on two Patreon accounts: https://www.patreon.com/ThreatWire and https://www.patreon.com/TekThing
We haven’t had more than 10 show up for our monthly scheduled hangout, but that hasn’t seemed to keep anyone from NOT pledging at those higher levels.
I’m interested in Discord. Can you do a video conference with more than 10 people? Hangouts has this limit, unfortunately.
I’ve used slack for other things and it’s quite handy. I find it better for group projects and that sort of dynamic, not so much for posting/content giving for patrons.
