Thank you for contributing to the Opensource.com community! Now comes the fun part of letting the open source world know about your latest contribution. Promoting your articles on social media is a great way to raise awareness of your work and build your reputation as a writer and an open source community contributor. Here are a few tips to help:
When a new article appears on Opensource.com, you can (and should) promote it on your personal account(s). A few best practices:
- Twitter users tend to favor first-person tweets with a familiar/casual tone over regurgitated headlines. Consider tweeting something like: "I wrote about my first experience with Linux and open source software for @opensourceway (URL)"
- Be sure to use appropriate @ handles for any companies or experts featured your column.
- Retweet the @opensourceway promotion of your article; @opensourceway tweets should appear within a couple of days of publication.
- Retweet and reply to people who mention your article on Twitter. To find mentions of your article, simply search for the URL.
- Use relevant hashtags to boost your content. Remember to use title camel case for accessibility. #OpenSource
Follow the Opensource.com Facebook page and engage in conversation with users who comment on your article there. Articles typically appear here within 24 hours of publishing.
Sharing your article on your personal and/or professional Facebook, Google+, and LinkedIn accounts is also a good idea.
If you're familiar with Reddit and feel comfortable sharing your article there, we encourage you to do so. If you're less familiar, take some time to review Reddiquette before posting. If you don't follow the rules, your account could be shadowbanned.
Advice from the Reddit team:
Feel free to post links to your own content (within reason). But if that's all you ever post, or it always seems to get voted down, take a good hard look in the mirror — you just might be a spammer. A widely used rule of thumb is the 9:1 ratio, i.e. only 1 out of every 10 of your submissions should be your own content.
Also, make sure you're posting your articles in the right place on Reddit. Before posting in a new subreddit, review the types of content posted there and check the sidebar for any subreddit-specific rules.
Not sure where to post? Consider these subreddits:
Hacker News
Hacker News (news.ycombinator.com) is a great place to promote articles about all things programming, science, and tech. When posting to Hacker News, adhering to the 9:1 ratio (or close to it) is a good idea. That means one of every 10 articles you post there can be your own.
Got questions? Email us at open@opensource.com.