Marketing Open Source Projects

Do open source software need marketing? It’s easy to think they don’t since they’re already free and marketing is only about selling something.

But in a talk at the Open Source Summit NA, Deirdré Straughan of Amazon Web Services states that actually, you are selling something with open source projects. You are selling ideas, and in exchange you’re asking for something extremely valuable: people’s time and attention.

What Marketing Is for Open Source Projects

Another reason why marketing is so crucial for open source projects is competition. There are millions of open source projects available nowadays, with more cropping up every day. In order to get noticed in this sea of projects and get the support you need, you need to stand out. Marketing is one of the most effective ways to do that.

But if you’ve managed an open source project for some time now chances are you’ve already done at least some marketing for it, even if you didn’t necessarily call it “marketing”.

So what is marketing when it comes to open source projects?

According to Straughan, marketing open source projects is basically helping people understand what the software is about, and how they can use and benefit from it. With this definition in mind, there are actually a number of ways you can market an open source project and probably already have.

Marketing Tools

The first and most important of these marketing tools Straughan states, is your code. It’s the foundation, the main reason for bringing people in. It should be architectured in a way that people can easily use and contribute to your project.

The second tool is content. This comes in different forms, but the most crucial has to be the documentation. Documentation contains all the information you need to know about the software, and is one of the key elements that attract people to a project. There are several ways that documentation can be presented, including on blogs, videos, podcasts, and white papers. It’s important to diversify the way you present documentation so as to reach more people.

The third tool is your website and/or wiki. Once you’ve got the code and the content, you’ll need a place where people can find it apart from repositories, and this is what your website/wiki is for. But you also have to make sure that they are easy to find, and for this Straughan notes, you need to make sure your project name is unique. If your project name is a common word, it will be difficult to find. You may also have to practice some SEO in order to improve your rankings in search pages.

Customer Experience

In addition to these tools Straughan points out that basically everything that touches the customer is marketing. Everything that a customer experiences with your project shapes his or her perception of your brand. This is why the community is so crucial to open source projects. Community culture helps define a customer’s experience, which affects their perception and determines whether or not they want to participate in the project. Community culture therefore, must uphold certain standards and values such as diversity, kindness and openness.

Marketing may not be your strong suite, but it is part and parcel of building a successful open source project. With the right tools and a well-nurtured community, marketing will come almost naturally and even if it doesn’t, there are always people and resources you can turn to for help.