5 tips for promoting your open source project
Three open source experts offer their advice on sharing open source projects with the world.

After months or years of hard work, you’ve just pushed your open source project to GitHub and made it public. Now it’s time to tell the world about it.
Chances are you’d rather spend time writing code than getting the word out about your project. Maybe your project will go viral and you won’t have to spend much time on marketing. But chances are you’re going to need to do some work to build awareness, at least in the early days. Fortunately, there are plenty of people who have been down this path and are willing to help. In this article, experienced maintainers offer their advice on sharing open source projects with the world.
Don’t be shy about self-promotion
Start with the obvious. Post to social media about your project. Submit it to Hacker News, Reddit, Product Hunt, and similar sites. Then keep an eye peeled for people who have the problem that you’re trying to solve. Respond to their posts and let them know you have a potential solution. Reach out to podcasts and YouTube channels. Submit talks to conferences. Offer to speak at meetups.
Keep promoting your work as you improve the project. Remember that people want to hear about helpful tools that solve real problems, as long as you’re genuinely trying to help, and not just spamming your followers. You might not be comfortable with self promotion, but you need to promote your work to get it out there. “You shouldn’t feel icky about it,”Sidecar maintainerAaron Francistold us in a Q&A. “You put a lot of time into making something helpful.”
Focus on the problem your project solves
What should you say when you’re promoting your work? First and foremost, you need to know what problem your project solves and be able to communicate that to potential users as simply as possible. “One of the biggest mistakes I see is the use of too much technical terminology,” saysChakra UI maintainerSegun Adebayo. It might be tempting to talk about the technologies you’ve built your solution upon, or the latest buzzwords you think users might be interested in. Open source users are, after all, often your fellow developers and technical people. But it’s easy to go overboard and obscure the value of the project.
For example, your project might make clever use of decentralized computing principles, points outTasha Drew, co-chair for Kubernetes’ Working Group for Multi-tenancy, but what people really care about is why they should use it. “What’s the message you want people to take away from your webpage or your README? It’s probably not related to the theory behind the code,” she says.
Use that core message everywhere: Social media posts and profiles, blog posts, tutorials, etc.
Document, document, document!
Getting someone’s attention is only one part of the battle. If you want people to actually use, share, and contribute to your project, you need clear, up-to-date documentation. “Write as much as you can stand to write,” Francis says. Not only will it make your user experience better, it might even improve your code. “If you find it’s hard to document a particular feature, that’s probably a sign that it’s too complicated and you need to simplify it,” he explains.
Think beyond just documenting the code. You should provide things like quick starts, tutorials, and screencasts. “Video is really helpful for a lot of people,” Adebayo says. “People learn in different ways so it’s important to provide different types of content.”
Be responsive
No matter how good your documentation is, people are still going to have questions—and, if you’re lucky, pull requests. It’s important to be responsive, especially when you’re just starting out. “Time is finite, we only get one life, so value those people who are willing to spend some of their precious resources on you,” Francis says. “That applies not just to people sending pull requests, but to people pointing out problems or making suggestions on social media as well.”
That doesn’t mean you have to be on call 24/7 to provide an immediate reply to every single question and comment. But it does mean you shouldn’t let pull requests, issues, and comments sit for too long without a response. You have to let people know your project is active, and that you value their input. “It might be intimidating at first to interact with people you don’t know, but you have to do it if you want to grow,” says Adebayo. “This is a sure way to meet new people and make new friends that might be helpful to you in the future.”
Invest time in onboarding contributors
You need to document both how to use your project, and how to contribute to it. Create CONTRIBUTING.md and CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md files with your contribution guidelines and code of conduct. These let potential contributors know that you’re open to contributions and that you’ve put some thought into working with others. It’s especially helpful to provide a list of what you would, and would not, like potential contributors to help with.
Remember thatnon-code contributions, like documentation, support, and graphic design, are a big part of any successful project. While these aren’t necessarily non-technical, you shouldn’t assume too much technical knowledge. “You want to make your language and project easy to understand so that people of various technical skill levels will be interested,” Drew says.
Also be sure to take advantage of the “Help wanted” and “Good first issue” labels. These can help people who are looking for ways to contribute find your project.
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