How to write a good announcement

I have been running ElixirStatus for a year now and with ElixirWeekly taking off these last few weeks, I thought I would take the opportunity to write about making good announcements.

Get noticed with the right announcement

So you wrote your first Hex package or implemented Solitair in Elm with Phoenix. Now what? We have to write an announcement that tells the world about it (and which we can post to ElixirStatus)!

First, describe in the title what happened:

InchEx v1.2.3 released

Introducing flux_capacitor_ex!

Using Ecto validations for fun and profit

In case of project related announcements you should then include a brief description of what your project does in the description:

flux_capacitor_ex is a hex package which provides your Elixir app with a simple time travel device API.

Check out the source code on GitHub: http://github.com/rrrene/flux_capacitor_ex

For more info and use-cases check the official announcement.

This is a great example of a well written teaser: It has all the information you need to decide whether or not you are interested in the project. If you are you can go to my GitHub repo to check out the README or alternatively read the full announcement.

Make no mistake here: Leaving out information and basically just dumping a link does not make people “curious”, so be sure to tease people with more than some vague: “InchEx is a library in Elixir”.

Be specific instead.

InchEx v1.0.0 released - Evaluate your inline docs

makes me think “oh, v1.0 - I noticed this once and now I am curious what has changed for this major release”

Or be bold.

InchEx - Evaluate your project’s docs in an opinionated way

makes me want to find what this “opinionated way” might be.

Let me be frank: Marketing your open source creation can be a dreadful task at times. Telling people about your project, trying to convince total strangers to take a look at something you made, is never easy. So don’t just drop a link, because you leave so much potential for curiosity and discussion on the table.

For the latest community announcements, be sure to check out ElixirStatus and ElixirWeekly.

P.S. Don’t believe me? Take a look at this real-life example on ElixirStatus, where @tuvistavie deploys every trick in the book.