While the @FreeBSDHelp Twitter account is not an official FreeBSD account, it does aim to be the exemplar of best practice community engagement; commercial, opensource or otherwise.
Our tone is friendly, fun, authentic, aspirational and slightly tongue-in-cheek. We exist to connect people and groups within the FreeBSD community with each other, showcase the best of FreeBSD and its community members, celebrate our wins and make progress on our challenges.
- Besides the FreeBSD Code of Conduct that always applies, the following guidelines should be followed as well.
We highly recomment reading the following open source project social media policies and guidelines:
- GitLab: Social Media Policy and Guidelines
- OWASP: Social Media Policy and Procedures
- Apache: Social Media Best Practices
- Feel free to bring your own flavour to our persona.
- Represent, don't argue.
- Ask the team for advice if you're not comfortable or confident posting something.
- Respond to FreeBSD mentions on Twitter in a timely manner with quality engagement.
- Amplify the contributions of community members, e.g. retweet someone's first issue created or port maintained.
- Amplify the voice of community members, users and contributors alike.
- Stimulate positive conversation and discourse about FreeBSD.
- Positively amplify the work and contributions of relevant and related open-source Projects on Twitter.
- Promote a positive, fun, and productive discourse and presence online.
- Avoid bashing brands, companies, individuals, or other projects.
- Ignore negativity, unless you're well equipped to handle it.
- Don't share any personal/confidential information, including any kind of information shared with you in confidence or within private channels.
- Avoid speculation.
- Don't spam.
- SUPPORT: Answer technical, organisational, or process questions asked by Twitter users about FreeBSD wherever possible.
- CONNECT: Loop in relevant FreeBSD experts if and when we can't answer questions ourselves, or to provide additional context.
- SHARE: Share important, pivotal, and momentous commits (src, ports, doc) or other changes within the community.
- CONVERSE AND QUESTION: Elicit community feedback, e.g. run polls with questions relevant to the community.
- AMPLIFY: Highlight fun, new, unique and/or specific ways people can contribute to the FreeBSD Project.
- Review and watch FreeBSDHelp mentions and notification history.
- Review and watch
freebsdmentions. Setup a saved search: freebsd lang:en. Include other languages if you can communicate in that language. - Subscribe to and review dev-commits-src-main mailing list. Every commit for FreeBSD base (src) gets listed here. Note: Ports is not listed here because it is high-volume, but can be subscribed to on the dev-commits-ports-main mailing list.
- Review and watch the FreeBSDHelp Open Source Projects list.
- Review and watch the FreeBSDHelp FreeBSD People list.
The best reference for examples and ideas is, including all of those mentioned below, is @FreeBSDHelp's Tweet History
FreeBSD commits (base, ports, doc) commits that look news-worthy or important
Tweet a summary of the change, and include key details. Use @username mentions to thank authors, committers and companies if they sponsored it or were involved in it.
Share and amplify the wins and tweets of Open Source Projects
- Examples: A projects birthday, big release, news or community poll.
- Idea: If the software is in ports, do a showcase tweet on that software and @mention them.
Share and amplify the wins and tweets of Open Source People
- Examples: Someones great Tweet or blog post on fixing a problem or building a new feature.
Share and remind people about upcoming events.
Gives us opportunities to repeat content, grow participation, and help people not miss out.
- Examples: BSDCon, Other Conferences, Project Birthday, Events, Meetings, Hackathons, etc. 3 days before, 1 day before, a few hours before.
Recurring: Open Source Project Spotlight
Pick an Open Source Project on Twitter** that exists in FreeBSD Ports and showcase them in a tweet.
- Include @project in the tweet.
- Include a link to the Projects FreshPorts page.
- Use a couple of relevent hashtags.
- Do this once a month/week.
- Ask the FreeBSD Community for their project picks.
Recurring: FreeBSD / Open Source Contributor Spotlight
Pick an FreeBSD / Open Source Person and showcase their contributions in a tweet.
- Include @person in the tweet, and/or the teams or things they work on.
- Include a link to their profile page or website.
- Ask the FreeBSD Community for their contributor picks.
- You could also ask the person for some info theyde like to share (Direct Message if open or Email)
Recurring: Run a Poll
Pick a topic or theme and run a Twitter poll. Do this once a week/month. Provides an opportunity for the community to get involved, discussion issues, and us an opportunity to repeat and share content (poll reminders, replies, etc)
Tips:
- Pick 'good' topics. This isn't easy but shouldn' discourage you. Discuss ideas with the team for refinement/improvement.
- Run the poll for the full 7 days
- Try to keep questions and options as 'objective' as possible.
- Middle ground (neutral) options feel useful, but humans are too good at hedging. Avoid them if you can.
Recurring: This in FreeBSD
Summarise some of the most salient changes, updates or wins of the last week or month in FreeBSD. This might be stuff we've individually posted about already, but might also include other news and updates that we've seen or heard about.
- Use images in your tweets whenever possible. Examples: Company or Product logos, screenshots, etc.
- Use popular and important #hashtags, but don't overdo it. Pick the 2 most relevent, MAYBE/RARELY 3.
- Put yourself in our followers, and the communities shoes. Always be asking:
- Would they find this interesting?
- Does this have overlap with FreeBSD? Can it have an overlap to FreeBSD?
- Examples: Open Source, Software, Security, Important or popular tech industry news/events.