Social Media

Many projects within Ubuntu now leverage social media to interact with their communities. This is a collection of best practices for handling those resources.

First steps

When seeking out a presence on a social media outlet, see if someone is running something already. You may be able to leverage their existing work and community to make theirs the official one! Often times people are happy to see their community be made official and will add a current member of your team as an admin to facilitate making it official.

Administration

Always maintain at least two designated admins for each social media outlet so control is maintained. At least one of these people should have active involvement directly with the core of the project.

Responding to feedback on social media

Be diligent about responding to feedback received via social media so that growth is fostered in that community and it doesn't seem like a read-only outlet.

What to post

Some suggestions about what to post:

• Announcements
• Links to blog posts
• Calls for participation
• Articles written about your project

Support

Social media outlets are generally not optimal places for support. Users are often better served by seeking out the official support outlets already available from the project rather than asking the admins who run the social media outlets.

When possible, make sure users can easily be directed to these help resources.

Community-specific tips

Facebook

Twitter

• Retweet valuable and favorable posts from people who mention your project
• Try to follow linux news groups and various developers, but not random users.
• Use hashtags (properly capitalized!)

Google+

• Use +Project references in posts to notify these projects that you're talking about them, ie: +Xubuntu is currently testing...

LinkedIn

• As a more professional-oriented space, make sure threads are carefully moderated for content

Reddit

• Cross post all annoucements to the subreddits so they seem busy, plus check for support questions.
• All the flavours have a subreddit of some form

Ubuntu Communities Social Media Channels

Ubuntu Social Media

Ubuntu Quality Social Media

Kubuntu Social Media

Xubuntu Social Media

Lubuntu Social Media

Ubuntu GNOME Social Media