promote-open-source-project

<img alt="oss image" src="./imgs/zoss-logo.svg" height="200px" width="200px"> <a href="https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?text=How%20to%20promote%20your%20open-source%20projects%20@ZenikaOSS&url=https://github.com/zenika-open-source/open-source-promotion-cheat-sheet&hashtags=OpenSource,CheatSheet"> <img alt="tweet" src="https://img.shields.io/twitter/url/https/twitter?label=Share%20on%20twitter&style=social" target="_blank" /> </a> <h1 align="center">Open source promotion cheat sheet</h1>

This cheat sheet summarizes important steps you should follow to promote your open source project in the best conditions. You can click items to expand and get more information from a topic.

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A language is missing? Want to improve this cheat sheet? Contributions are welcome!

A PDF version of this cheat sheet is available here.

1. 🎢 Preparation step

<details> <summary>👌 Make sure that your project is mature enough</summary>

Your project must be stable enough with the minimum viable features in order to hook users.

</details> <details> <summary>😎 Choose a cool name for your cool project</summary>

Choose a name that users can easily remember.

</details> <details> <summary>💅 Make your README pretty</summary>

The README is the first thing your visitors will see. Make it simple, pretty and easy to read. Here is a list of beautiful READMEs.

</details> <details> <summary>💪 Highlight the strong points of your project</summary>

Identify your project's strengths and make sure visitors see them first.

</details> <details> <summary>✨ Provide a demo of your project</summary>

Visitors will want to quickly understand the purpose of your project, how it works, and how to use it. Providing a demo is the best way to satisfy users. It could be:

An animated GIF demonstrating how your project works

A link to a live demo

</details> <details> <summary>👌 Install/Usage must be super easy</summary>

You'll probably lose visitors if your project is not user-friendly.

</details> <details> <summary>📘 Create a clean and well structured documentation</summary>

Creating a good documentation is probably the most important step. If you have a small documentation, you can include it within your README. Otherwise, you should probably host it in a separate website. Some open source projects like vuepress can help you with creating a clean documentation in a simple way.

</details>

2. 📢 Spread the word about your hard works

<details> <summary>⭐ Make your project trustable before publishing it on social networks</summary>

Most visitors will check how many stars the project has before considering using it. A minimum amount of stars makes your project more trustable than a project with zero star. This is why you should ask people you know to support your project before doing a public announcement on social media.

</details> <details> <summary>↗️ Share your project on social media and specialized platforms</summary>

Tell the World about your awesome work! Publish it on social media and other specialized platforms:

Twitter

Linkedin

Facebook

Reddit

Dev.to

Lobsters

Hacker News

Product Hunt

Beta page

Human Coders

</details> <details> <summary>📃 Write articles that mention your project</summary>

Write articles about your project. Purpose can be the technical stack you used, how your project works, problems you encountered, etc. Post it to publishing platforms:

medium

dev.to

</details> <details> <summary>🎤 Present your project at conferences/meetups</summary>

Presenting your project at conferences or meetups is a good way to improve its visibility.

</details> <details> <summary>🎥 Record and publish videos presenting your project, how it works, etc</summary>

Recording a video is not an easy exercise. However, it's probably the most efficient way to make your project famous.

</details> <details> <summary>🕐 Choose the best time to publish on social media</summary>

Don't publish during holiday periods or weekends. The best time to publish on social networks is usually mid-week.

</details> <details> <summary>🗑 Don't spam platforms with your promotion</summary>

Don't publish twice on the same platform. It will be considered as spam and it might cause bad publicity for your project.

</details>

3. 🤝 Keep your users

<details> <summary>🆕 Try to regularly release new versions of your project</summary>

Maintain and improve your project with new releases and generate changelogs.

</details> <details> <summary>❗ Maintain your project, process opened issues</summary>

Do not let issues stay open without a single response. Be nice with people that took the time to open issues. 😉

</details> <details> <summary>🙏 Invite users to contribute</summary>

A healthy project is a project with a community and contributors. Let your users know that you need help by tagging some issues with contribution welcome or good first issue labels. See github labels.

</details> <details> <summary>🏆 Reward contributors</summary>

Be nice with people that helped you! Some open source projects like gatsby reward contributors with goodies. If you can't afford that, do a public post (on twitter or other platforms) about the contribution and mention the author (here is an example of public thanks). Open a Contributors section in your README to publicly thank them or showcase them on your project documentation or website. Here are some examples:

vuepress (contributors README section)

Rythm.js (random highlighted contributor on demo page)

</details> <details> <summary>💬 Open a community chat platform</summary>

Github issues are not always the best way to communicate with your users. If necessary, you can use chat platforms to discuss with them:

Discord

Slack

Gitter

</details> <details> <summary>🔙 Ask for feedback</summary>

User feedback is the best way to improve your project. They probably have features and ideas that could make your project better.

</details> <details> <summary>❤️ Open a use case gallery to show what users built with your project</summary>

Visitors will trust your project if they see concrete use cases and success stories, e.g., the vuepress gallery.

</details>

🙏 Show your support

⭐️ this repository if this cheat sheet helped you!

❤️ Contributors

Thanks go to these wonderful people:

<table> <tr> <td align="center"><a href="https://www.franck-abgrall.me/"><img src="https://avatars3.githubusercontent.com/u/9840435?v=4?s=100" width="100px;" alt=""/> Franck Abgrall</a> <a href="https://github.com/zenika-open-source/promote-open-source-project/commits?author=kefranabg" title="Documentation">📖</a></td> <td align="center"><a href="https://github.com/tbetous"><img src="https://avatars3.githubusercontent.com/u/4435536?v=4?s=100" width="100px;" alt=""/> Thomas Betous</a> <a href="https://github.com/zenika-open-source/promote-open-source-project/commits?author=tbetous" title="Documentation">📖</a></td> <td align="center"><a href="https://github.com/ebriand"><img src="https://avatars1.githubusercontent.com/u/1011902?v=4?s=100" width="100px;" alt=""/> Eric Briand</a> <a href="https://github.com/zenika-open-source/promote-open-source-project/commits?author=ebriand" title="Documentation">📖</a></td> <td align="center"><a href="https://github.com/FaustineG"><img src="https://avatars.githubusercontent.com/u/27639429?v=4?s=100" width="100px;" alt=""/> Faustine Godbillot</a> <a href="https://github.com/zenika-open-source/promote-open-source-project/commits?author=FaustineG" title="Documentation">📖</a></td> <td align="center"><a href="https://myvirtualstorybook.com/"><img src="https://avatars1.githubusercontent.com/u/5747538?v=4?s=100" width="100px;" alt=""/> Benjamin Plouzennec</a> <a href="https://github.com/zenika-open-source/promote-open-source-project/commits?author=Okazari" title="Documentation">📖</a></td> <td align="center"><a href="https://github.com/Zenigata"><img src="https://avatars1.githubusercontent.com/u/1022393?v=4?s=100" width="100px;" alt=""/> Johan Bonneau</a> <a href="https://github.com/zenika-open-source/promote-open-source-project/commits?author=Zenigata" title="Documentation">📖</a></td> <td align="center"><a href="https://github.com/bpetetot"><img src="https://avatars3.githubusercontent.com/u/516360?v=4?s=100" width="100px;" alt=""/> Benjamin Petetot</a> <a href="https://github.com/zenika-open-source/promote-open-source-project/commits?author=bpetetot" title="Documentation">📖</a></td> </tr> <tr> <td align="center"><a href="https://nick-hat-boecker.de"><img src="https://avatars0.githubusercontent.com/u/8366071?v=4?s=100" width="100px;" alt=""/> NickHatBoecker</a> <a href="#translation-NickHatBoecker" title="Translation">🌍</a></td> <td align="center"><a href="https://github.com/Claire"><img src="https://avatars2.githubusercontent.com/u/5114096?v=4?s=100" width="100px;" alt=""/> Claire Martinez</a> <a href="#translation-claire" title="Translation">🌍</a></td> <td align="center"><a href="https://hazeforum.com/"><img src="https://avatars2.githubusercontent.com/u/31011359?v=4?s=100" width="100px;" alt=""/> André Gama</a> <a href="https://github.com/zenika-open-source/promote-open-source-project/commits?author=andregamma" title="Documentation">📖</a></td> <td align="center"><a href="https://github.com/mbernardeau"><img src="https://avatars0.githubusercontent.com/u/7049049?v=4?s=100" width="100px;" alt=""/> Mathias Bernardeau</a> <a href="https://github.com/zenika-open-source/promote-open-source-project/commits?author=mbernardeau" title="Documentation">📖</a></td> <td align="center"><a href="https://github.com/Antoineoili"><img src="https://avatars1.githubusercontent.com/u/50737365?v=4?s=100" width="100px;" alt=""/> Antoine Oili</a> <a href="https://github.com/zenika-open-source/promote-open-source-project/commits?author=Antoineoili" title="Documentation">📖</a></td> <td align="center"><a href="https://twitter.com/dev_oswld"><img src="https://avatars1.githubusercontent.com/u/40254158?v=4?s=100" width="100px;" alt=""/> Oswld TC</a> <a href="#translation-dev-oswld" title="Translation">🌍</a></td> <td align="center"><a href="https://yizhiyue.me"><img src="https://avatars3.githubusercontent.com/u/8545277?v=4?s=100" width="100px;" alt=""/> Zhiyue Yi</a> <a 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align="center"><a href="https://github.com/alextremp"><img src="https://avatars0.githubusercontent.com/u/20399660?v=4?s=100" width="100px;" alt=""/> Alex Castells</a> <a href="#translation-alextremp" title="Translation">🌍</a></td> <td align="center"><a