Confessions of a Reluctant Tweeter: Social Media for Open Source Projects

By Rikki EndsleyCommunity Evangelist at Red Hat

Twitter: @rikkiendsrendsley@redhat.com

“I don't believe in social media.”

Social Media Best Practices

Example Results (Twitter):

● @redhatopen launched: March 21, 2013

Feb. 28, 2014: 866 followers (~11 months since launch)

Oct. 15, 2014: 2,643 (account tripled in 7.5 months)

Feb. 18, 2015: 3,598 (36% increase in past 4 months)

● @projectatomic launched: Tues. April 15, 2014

by Mon. April 21: 435 followers

Feb. 18, 2015: ~1,300 followers (~10 months since launch)

● @RDOCommunity: launched April 15, 2013

by Mon. April 21, 2014: 372 (~1 year since launch)

Feb. 18, 2015: 1,055 (184% increase in 10 months)

Share relevant, interesting, accurate information

Re-tweet/share relevant, interesting, accurate information

Craft the text

Use hashtags and @

How to Build Your Applications to Scale in the #Cloud http://ow.ly/BeW8Z Video of @TheSteve0 at @oscon

...but don't overdo it

How to Build Your #Applications to #Scale in the #Cloud http://ow.ly/BeW8Z #Video of @TheSteve0 at @oscon #oscon #oscon14

Avoid PR verbiage, marketing speak, exclamation point abuse, and stupid Upworthy-type messages:

“You won't believe what our project will do for your yadda yadda!”

Numbers do well:

"30 community managers in open source to follow on Twitter"

(#3 on opensource.com for the week. #1 & #2 were “why” & “how” titles)

How, What, and Why tweets do well:

"What will Ruby look like when Jruby 9000 rolls out? http://ow.ly/HbXks @headius explains at #fosdem15"

(The talk was called “Over 9000: The Future of Jruby - A talk on JRuby 9000 and where it will take Ruby in the next year”)

Facebook News Feed

52,135 page “Likes” 3 shares30 likes1,966 people reached

“Of the 1,500+ stories a person might see whenever they log onto Facebook, News Feed displays approximately 300.” [2]

Facebook

G+ Page

21,855 followers2 likes1 share3.75K views

G+

Retweet, Reshare,Respond,& Reply

Grow your reach

Consider the schedule

Avoid scandal

Measure Success

https://github.com/OSAS/twitter-stats

Follow UsRed Hat Open Source & Standards (OSAS)

https://twitter.com/redhatopen

https://www.facebook.com/redhatopen

https://plus.google.com/113258037797946990391/

https://plus.google.com/communities/116577470717704091424

Gluster

https://twitter.com/gluster

https://www.facebook.com/GlusterInc

https://plus.google.com/103508384875285064967

https://plus.google.com/communities/110022816028412595292

oVirt

https://twitter.com/ovirt

https://www.facebook.com/groups/ovirt.openvirtualization/

https://plus.google.com/114037911460960750423

https://plus.google.com/communities/109346090491400112913

RDOCommunity

https://twitter.com/rdocommunity

https://www.facebook.com/rdocommunity

https://plus.google.com/115194349759599674844

https://plus.google.com/communities/110409030763231732154

Ceph

https://twitter.com/ceph

https://www.facebook.com/cephstorage

https://plus.google.com/communities/116115281445231966828

https://plus.google.com/+Cephstorage

Project Atomic

https://twitter.com/projectatomic

https://www.facebook.com/projectatomic

https://plus.google.com/108727025270662383247

Fedora

https://twitter.com/fedora

https://www.facebook.com/TheFedoraProject

https://plus.google.com/112917221531140868607

https://plus.google.com/communities/109103154272245339550

ManageIQ

https://twitter.com/manageiq

https://www.facebook.com/Manageiq

https://plus.google.com/107788933173548514771

CentOS

https://twitter.com/centos

https://twitter.com/centosevents

https://www.facebook.com/groups/centosproject/

https://plus.google.com/+CentOS

https://plus.google.com/communities/110237188526999056491