Decide brand voice

[vladh]

It looks like our marketing presence is increasing — we have x.com/ThePledge now, and we're considering adding other accounts in #195.

I think we should have something written down about our brand voice, even if it's just really minimal communication guidelines, so that we can avoid having an inconsistent public image. We don't want one post to be hyper-serious and the next to be mega zany.

I also think it would be ideal to decide on one or two people who are mainly responsible for outward communication, to avoid inconsistent writing, and to prevent confusion.

Happy to hear feedback on this though.

[Delta456]

For each social platform we should go with two people and we can consult @selviano for the consistent writing and also to prevent confusion.

[selviano]

FYI we also have https://www.threads.net/@opensourcepledge and https://www.instagram.com/opensourcepledge/ reserved

I'd be interested in also adding a Mastodon account, but there are more considerations there, as I know there is some natural backlash to "Brands" joining, and also we'd have to choose a server to join (I don't think we should run our own instance, which even Mozilla couldn't do sustainably)
WRT the tone/voice @chadwhitacre and I have been pretty much winging it so far on Twitter. I agree we should codify it soon, though I'm still not entirely sure I know what I think the voice should be, would appreciate input.

[vladh]

This isn't my area of expertise, but here are just a couple of ideas, discard as appropriate.

I don't think our voice can be too zany or silly, for two reasons. First of all, we're speaking about complicated topics, such as “if companies pay their share the Open Source ecosystem will be healthier”, and we want to have credibility and authority. Secondly, we want to be respectful of the fact that the stakes are high both for companies (who are giving a lot of money) and for maintainers (who need to earn a living) here.

At the same time, I'm worried that if we come off as too serious and cold it will (1) be inauthentic (we're not really stone-cold serious types) and (2) alienate maintainers.

So maybe a notch more serious than Sentry?

Other than that, I think one key consideration, for the same reasons as above, is having a very kind and empathetic voice. I think @chadwhitacre does this very well naturally. My Mastodon posts elicited some strong feelings ¹² and we should respect that. In particular, I think too much sass might be interpreted as “talking down”, which I really don't want to do. My blog post might have been pushing it.

I know there is some natural backlash to "Brands" joining

We could also maintain a Fediverse presence with our individual accounts, which is probably more authentic anyway.

Footnotes

1. https://merveilles.town/@[email protected]/113276790585294637 ↩

2. https://merveilles.town/@[email protected]/113277489609206406 ↩