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Re: Promoting our core applications

Magdalen Berns <m berns thismagpie com> wrote:

 * you get a consistent voice across messages


Having a sensible publishing policy can do the same thing for
consistency,
just as we have for code commits.


That doesn't sound like a good fit for us, to be honest. Even if you
could get such a guide written, how would you make sure that everyone
follows it? You'd need someone in an active editorial role, and you'd
need contributors who are able to consistently interpret the policy.


Social media management is not as complicated as all that. I am talking
about a common sense policy which shouldn't need an editor checking over it
as long as people know what they are doing in the first place. Things like:
check before posting, don't publish personal opinions as GNOME, only link to
relevant articles and updates etc.


It sounds like we have a different understanding of "voice". My
understanding: personality, tone, character.


 * the channel owner can schedule activity, to ensure regular posting,
as well as coherence of the channel as a whole


To be fair, I think we've established that this is not how things have
been
happening.


It's not hard to do. When I ran the Twitter feed, this is exactly how I
did it.


Is there a single person who is ready, willing and able to manage the social
media pages in the way you're suggesting right now? That seems not to be the
case.


That's a fair point, and we might well have to think about other
approaches if we can't manage it. I still think that it's a beneficial
approach though. :)


 * it avoids errors, since one person has an overview of what has been
posted (so you don't get multiple people posting the same message, for
example)


 If a manager doesn't know how to check something has not already been
published before posting then they probably are in the wrong role, to be
honest.


It's not reasonable to expect people to check for previous posts
*every* time they want to post something themselves. It's just not
going to happen.



Personally, I do not find it hard to tell if something has already been
published recently. If a publication was not that recent, then I can't see
the harm in retweeting


You don't think that the same announcement made multiple times, but
written by different individuals, could look bad? (I do.)

And that's not the only issue you can have. Another is when you have a
sequence of posts lined up, and someone else posts in the middle, or
when you have a big event happening, and emphasis is taken away
because someone who doesn't know (or care) about it posts on a
different subject.

This isn't just a concern about coordination, I might add. If you give
someone responsibility over a channel, you also empower them to make
something of it - it can be a personal challenge that they take up
creatively. It's really great when encouraging engagement contributors
can carve out niches for themselves.

 it anyway but on balance I reckon that is more

reasonable than it would be for us to expect one person to alone manage each
social media account, especially where the current managers are openly
asking for help managing the workload involved because they seem to feel
it's too much.



And this is my main point - the more people you have posting to a
channel, the more overhead you have, and the more opportunities you
have for errors to occur.


This is not my experience of co-managing social media accounts.


That's interesting - maybe there are other mitigating factors? I have
had a number of experience where people have stepped on each others'
toes on the GNOME Twitter feed.


 * because someone is maintaining the channel, they are able to reply
to questions and discussion


What happens when people don't know who that person is or can't get hold
of
them?


Why would that be a problem?


Because humans can lead unpredictable lives and can sometimes have to
disappear for periods of time, sometimes without letting anyone know.


But as I said in my last mail, I'm not suggesting that we work in
isolation - quite the opposite.


We can document who is responsible for
each channel, and members of the Engagement Team should know and be
able to put someone in touch with a channel owner.



We should be doing either way, yeah.



I'm not suggesting that we can't spread the load, or have people
working together on the media channels, by the way. That's actually
what I was hoping would happen when we recently assigned individuals
to the channels - that they would become our social media team. All
I'm trying to say is that we should have named maintainers for the
channels, and we should avoid random people posting without
communicating with those maintainers.


OK then, well it seems like we may actually agree, since I don't think
anyone is suggesting random people start posting.


Ah good, I'm glad we all agree. :)

A.
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