Social media plan?

I am also active on Mastodon and would love to comaintain the Fedora account there.

I think we can even start with simple reposting Fedora Magazine and Community Blog articles.

I use Mastodon a lot like replacement for the RSS feed, and there are several bots posting news from various sources, like Hacker News or Deutsche Welle and so on.

There is also an unofficial bot Fosstodon which posts Fedora Magazine articles with 130 subscribers, but I think doing it under the more official name would be better.

I would consider using Fosstodon.org instance as a base at least at the beginning. Maybe also sponsoring the admin of the instance. And then if we run it successfully over a reasonable time, we can always switch to a new server.

There are companies providing Mastodon as a hosted service too, if we would need one.

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Hi folks,

Would it be possible to ensure the Marketing Social Networks wiki page is up to date as part of these efforts? It would be helpful to get an understanding of where/who is active currently, as well. Although I see we are planning to focus on a couple platforms to start, it would be nice to connect with the admins of these accounts to let them know there is some renewed effort around Fedora’s social media presence. Hopefully we can easily spread the efforts we put into Twitter/Mastodon to our other networks.

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Yes, I will be working on that next week

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Hi @x3mboy wondering if you were able to work on making sure the Marketing Social Networks page is up to date? No worries if not, I am just working on something tangentially related (Moderation Guidelines [0]) and I might be able to pitch in.

Thanks!

[0] Fedora-Council/tickets ticket #392: Fedora Moderation Guidelines - Fedora Discussion

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I did some edits, but not sure how much more needs to be edited. If someone can review the page, would be awesome

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After reading @x3mboy’s document on the Fedora Twitter account, and observing carefully Fedora Youtube’s channel, I think most of the same strategic lines from one apply to the other. Let me explain:

For the moment, Fedora Youtube channel has been mainly a repository for community events like the past Mentor Summit and Council meetings. Besides that, there are many keynotes that (I think) were once live presentations, like the one about what’s neo on Fedora Workstation 35. From my point of view, Youtube has been an afterthought, not an integral part of Fedora’s marketing mix.

That being said, I think the aforementioned functions of the Youtube channel are quite valid, since some people in the community don’t have the time or availability to attend most live events, and the content isn’t lost for those who want to watch it. This is vital for the community… sadly enough, it doesn’t work quite well on Youtube’s dynamic.

If someone wants to know about Fedora on Youtube, most information is on diverse Linux-related channels like The Linux Experiment, Linux for Everyone, Learn Linux TV and so on. These are great channels indeed, I learned a lot from them on my own Linux journey. But, as usual, the information there is filtered by the host’s own point of view, preferences and personal workflow… and there are things that are better told from a first-party perspective.

I’m very new to Linux and even newer to the Fedora Project and I somehow feel like I entered the theater in the middle of the movie and I don’t know where to start now that I want to catch-up and bring something to the table (though I’m figuring things out bit by bit). The Youtube channel should also be a doorway for those newcomers who want to catch up on what Fedora is beyond the distro (I’m just scratching the frost of the tip of the iceberg).

So, as a youtuber myself, here are my (sort of) two cents:

1.- Thumbnails:
This is vital for Youtube engagement (click-through rate, or CTR for short), is what people see before even reading the title and a key ingredient on the decision whether to watch the video or not. Most videos on the channel have no thumbnail but a frame of the video… mostly a screenshot of an online meeting - nothing engaging.

GIMP templates (using layers) so people can identify the nature of the video: Events, council sessions, presentations, testimonials and stories (more on that later), tutorials and so on. A frame, the Fedora logo, a space for text and a space for a related photo. I’m not a designer, but I’m sure there may be one here.

Besides identification, sorting, and making videos more “clickable”, thumbnails also work on bringing a sensation of order and care to the eye of the viewer… and you know how humans love to see order in things.

2.- Playlists

If there’s one thing well done in the Youtube Channel are the playlists. Quite well sorted and maintained, event-centric (I love the one on Diversity with some of your stories), tidy and neat… a great way to catch-up if you ask me.

3.- Original content and collaborations.

Besides the content that’s already there, the channel needs more “Youtube-like” content: Short, entertaining and informative. And as a one-man-army youtuber, I’m quite aware that it is a lot of work (research, writing, pre-production, filming, editing, thumbnail, caption, title, and so on) hence, I won’t even talk about consistency and uploading frequency (I don’t even have the moral authority to do it) or even suggest a permanent course of action on this regard.

However, I think Fedora could lean a bit on the Youtube Linux community that’s already there: Asking these youtubers to contribute with one video about their experience with Fedora in general and how they are seeing the progress or the distro, the community and FLOSS in general. They bring content to the channel and the channel brings traffic to their channels…

4.- Graphic elements

Besides the aforementioned thumbnail templates, the Youtube package should include a standard introduction (a 5 second animation: Logo, name and tagline… something simple) and an end screen (10-15 seconds with space for Youtube end-screen elements, credits for the video, logo and name).

It would be great for these elements (as well as the official fonts) to be available for anyone who wants to make a video for the channel. As well as some editorial guidelines so these videos are in line with the community values, message and strategic marketing goals.

5.- Channel trailer

This element has been on my to-do list for almost a year, so I’m not the authority on the topic. But a short video for the newcomer telling what’s the channel all about usually helps a lot on turning potential viewers into viewers and those into subscribers.

I hope this helps…
(I don’t know if this was worth a new thread, so I posted it here)

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Following up on my last post. I did some intros using templates from Motion Array, DaVinci Resolve (the editing program I use) and the new Fedora logo I got from the website.

I’m aware that someone with better animation skills may come with something 10x better (at least). But this is a start.

Intro 01 - FedoraProject - Intro 01.mp4 - Google Drive
Intro 02 - FedoraProject - Intro 02.mp4 - Google Drive
(Yes, they are on a Google drive folder)

So, what do you think?

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Hi @jcas0058, I prefer the first intro, since it doesn’t modify de logo (I mean the bubbly 3D texture). You would like to put that proposal to the Design team, since it looks like the right place for that asset.

I will comment that in today’s design meeting (2022-04-20).

Regarding the YouTube channel, there is an ongoing work about the content policy and there is a “guide” published by the Fedora Council on the content of community platforms too. Not having a specific guide on what content could be published is retaining me to create more content. I hope we can push the policy further.

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It also bothered me, but is was a part of the template I don’t know how to modify or remove (for the moment).

I’d love to, indeed. These were just things I did on-the-run just to put a proposal on the table. So, How do I do that?

You can use teh design tag/category or go to their matrix channel

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Hi Fedorians,
In one of the sessions you guys wanted more video editors for your YouTube channel, I can help you with video editing, I make content Linux content in Arabic. I do simple editing nothing mind blowing. My channel link: bit.ly/3uioWVQ

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For the purposes of putting a bow on this thread, I’m working on integrating @bproffit’s proposal for a Twitter SOP into the documentation for microblogging in the wiki.

Per our marketing ticket and discussion in other thread about Mastodon.


Context aside, my questions:

  1. @bproffit: Is it alright for us to use your proposal word-for-word in the wiki article? I figure it would be divided up into the sections that make sense in the article.
  2. Is it alright if I simplify or remove parts of the original wiki article? It seems like much of it was written in 2010 when Twitter was still new. For example, there’s a section with “case studies of microblog success” that I don’t think we need anymore.
  3. Alternatively, do we just reboot this article and start fresh with the Twitter proposal? Down the line we just add new details on top as we need to?
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@joseph Thanks for working on this. You should join efforts with @isagordillo who was wanting to work on social media.

IMO, this is the best approach, we should reboot and start this strategy from scratch.

I think that will be easier too. I think nowadays folks get how social media works and I would rather move on actual content than stay on this for too long.

I’ll give it a week as of today to see of there are any other opinions, and if not, we start fresh with @bproffit’s great ideas. :slight_smile:

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I’ll ping Brian about this to make sure he saw it, but in general I’d consider this to be a contribution under the FPCA (so it’s by default CC-BY-SA 4.0).

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Thank you, sir! As of now, we’ll move ahead with just adopting Brian’s proposal as the new SOP for social media and credit him as well. If we hear otherwise then we can change it.

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I was going to turn this into its own post but I think it’s better to share it here.

Browsing through Reddit recently, I found this particular post mocking Windows’ TikTok account and promotions, but it got me thinking, and it made me realize we ourselves should be investing into at least better organizing our social media efforts.

Linux in general still has the “hacker OS” image into the public consciousness and we aren’t doing much to help with that, since most of us are indeed nerds that stay off of mainstream social media. But the only way we can get more and more regular folks to take interest into Fedora is by getting through to them, little by little. So, I studied a bit what tech companies are doing with their social media to help revitalize our social media, with the focus of this particular post being Instagram.

“Out of all social media, why Instagram?”, you might ask.

I hate Meta and its products as much as the average privacy-minded person, but one thing we cannot underestimate is the size of their user base and the fact that it is a relatively easy social media to work with. Images for its main posts can require much less work than videos for something like TikTok or YouTube and be planned and organized in a similar fashion that we already do with Fedora Magazine’s posts. And it’s one of the social media that feels kind of abandoned in its official profile.

First of all, we need to adreess one thing: The profile needs some reorganization.

It still uses the Fedora Project’s old logo and its highlights could use some cohesive cover images to represent them, which would look way more professional than what it currently looks:

Now, what can we also do for boosting the Instagram’s relevance?

From the hackmd document with the current social media strategy plans there’s not much beyond photos/marketing material for events and reposting stories that tag the @thefedoraproject profile. So, here’s a bunch of ideas for possible social media posts and planning to get it back on its feet. Some of these could also be used on Twitter, which would create a nice sense of cohesion in its posts:

Update notes for Fedora Workstation releases:

With every official release we could do a carousel post with brief descriptions of what’s new in each Fedora Workstation release (with a focus in the main edition) in the feed with a complementing story sharing the post itself with a link to the release wiki page for the complete release notes:


(just an example of the link sharing feature)

Big new features that will come in the next release:

To help hype users to the next release we could share screenshots (with proper use of the picture’s real estate, I’ll talk about that later) of big features that’ll come either in the desktop environments we provide (mainly focusing on GNOME and KDE). A quick example would be talking about GNOME’s redesigned quick settings (whenever that’s confirmed to be merged) or its new Device security panel in GNOME Settings.

Just brief showcases of new features to come in the next release.

SmartSelect_20220807-131622_Instagram

SmartSelect_20220807-131518_Instagram

Quick tutorials of things you can do in your Fedora Workstation machine:

For this one we can create carousel posts explaining in brief detail little things you can do, like, for example, “Using Fedora Media Writer to install Fedora on your machine” or “Installing extensions on your GNOME desktop”. We could even take inspiration in some Fedora Magazine posts for these.

Talking about privacy and security:

We could use the fact that the public perspective on Linux is already of a secure OS to talk briefly about how Linux distros are kept secure and what technologies Fedora uses to do so, obviously trying to keep the language simple and understandable for everyone.

Quotes from interviews and events:

Sometimes members of the Fedora team give interviews to podcasts and blogs about the development of the OS. We should take quotes out of those interviews and from talks in our events to show followers the objectives of the project and to share and give attention to the talk/interview. A bonus tip is to share these types of posts in our stories whenever we post them with links to the original material where the quote came from.

Nostalgia posts:

The Fedora Project has been alive for along, long time. Nostalgia posts would bring fond memories for those that have been tagging along with the project for a very long time, while also showing followers how the project has evolved over time.

Real life photos and digital artwork related to Fedora:

We could create a thread in here for people to share actual pictures of things related to Fedora (their desktop/laptop setups, usage of the Fedora logo in real life, etc.) and post the ones that look really professional (of course, if we have permission to do so). Same for digital artwork (3D modeling, wallpaper creation, etc.). We should also publish a post with the Fedora extra wallpapers every time they are finalized, showing off the next release’s wallpaper artwork beyond the main wallpaper.



We could do to boost the profile’s attention is making proper use of Instagram’s trend boxes in our stories in a similar fashion to #FedoraShareYourScreen earlier this year, for people to share their own desktops in their stories:

Proper interaction in Instagram Stories:

Beyond the last idea, we could also have more interaction with users by having: (and ignore the images in the background of those examples):

  • Polls similar to what we had on Nest 2022, for simple Fedora-related stuff or just random stuff in general:

  • Countdowns for future events:

  • Simple quizzes on general Fedora-related stuff:

  • Links to guide newer users on related topics or have more detail about our posts and specially to share new Fedora Magazine and Fedora Community Blog posts:

Ok, now that the ideas are there, we should also have some guidelines:

I admit, this one is just a nitpick of mine, but whenever we share screenshots we should at least have some mockup around it to make the whole image look less like just a lazy screenshot post and more like a planned, professional social media post.

The image here is from a phone, but you get the point, having at least some “generic” artwork to put the screenshot in makes it at least look more professional than just posting it. Nostalgia posts could also use it, something akin to this one:

Conclusion:

I’m totally up for the task of helping to create templates and artwork for this, as I know it would take a huge amount of work to do even a fraction of those ideas. But I’m certain it would make a huge difference in the image of Fedora as a professional, easy to use OS for everyone.

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Another type of post that escaped my initial write is Twitter screenshots, although I’m personally not a fan of these types of posts.

From what I’ve seen from the project’s Twitter there’s not much that could be used for these kinds of posts, but one specific tweet that is the perfect example for this idea is this one:

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Lots of progress has been done with the social media posts these last couple of days, thanks to the collaboration from the Marketing and Design teams.

We’ve basically finished the design work for the EPEL post, all it needs now is the confirmation from the EPEL team that all is good and the text for the posts themselves (captions for Instagram/Facebook and the tweets for the Twitter thread about it, which we’ve started to organize in the post’s dedicated HackMD). Here’s how the artwork looks:








(this is Instagram and Facebook’s carousel post)


(this is the story)


(and this is the artwork for starting the Twitter thread)

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We’ve also started work on the F37 related artwork. @duffy has done a lot for the F37 Beta post and I’ve started creating the “What’s new in Fedora 37?” post, for sharing the most impressive features of the new version. Here’s how those look:


(F37 Beta announcement post)


(F37 Beta announcement story)



(What’s new with F37?'s artwork, still in its early days, the only one I have ready to go is GNOME 43’s)

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