Social media is a powerful way to connect with your Actor users and potential users. Whether your tool focuses on web scraping or automation, social platforms can help you showcase its features, answer user questions, and grow your audience. This guide will show you how to use social media effectively, what to share, and how to avoid common mistakes along the way.
Now, before we start listing social media platforms, it might be important to acknowledge something.
Developers are notorious for not using social media that much. Or they use social media exclusively in the context of their own interests: that won’t find them new users, but rather colleagues or collaborators.
That's a good start, and maybe it's enough. A developer that can also “do” social media is a unicorn. These are super rare. And if you want to take active chances at promoting your Actor, you'll have to become that unicorn. So before we start, you need to understand the benefits of this activity.
Why be active on social media?
Engaging with your users on social media offers a lot of benefits beyond just promoting your Actor. Let’s look at some of the main reasons why being active online can be a game-changer for your Actor’s success:
- Social platforms make it easy to gather real-time feedback and also provide support in real-time. You can quickly learn what users love, what they struggle with, and what features they’d like to see. This can guide your Actor’s future development. It also allows you to build trust and credibility with your audience.
- Shot in the dark: social media exposes your Actor to new users who might not find you through search engines alone. A shared post or retweet can dramatically expand your reach, helping you grow your user base.
- Consistent activity on social platforms creates more backlinks to your Actor’s page, which can improve its search engine ranking and drive organic traffic.
Where to engage: choosing the right platforms
Choosing the right platforms is key to reaching your target audience. Here's a breakdown of the best places for developers to promote their web scraping and automation tools (in a particular order):
- Discord: We started with an easy one. Create a community around your Actor to engage with users directly. Offering quick support and discussing the features of your Actor in a real-time chat setting can lead to deeper user engagement.
- Twitter (X): Good for short updates, feature announcements, and quick interactions with users. The tech community on Twitter is very active, which makes it a great spot for sharing tips and getting noticed.
- Reddit: In theory, subreddits like r/webscraping, r/automation, and r/programming allow you to share expertise, engage in discussions, and present your Actor as a solution. However, in reality, you have to be quite careful with promotion there. Be very mindful of subreddit rules to avoid spamming or over-promoting. For Reddit, personal stories on how you built the tool + a roadblock you might be facing right now are the safest formula. If a tool is already finished and perfected, it will be treated as promotional content. But if you're asking for advice — now that's a community activity.
- TikTok: Might not be an obvious choice, but that’s where most young people spend time. They discuss a myriad of topics, laugh at the newest memes, and create trends that take weeks to get to Reels and Shorts. If you want to create educational, fun short video content (and be among the first to talk about web scraping), this is your place for experiments and taking algorithm guesses.
- YouTube: Ideal for tutorials and demos. A visual walk-through of how to use your Actor can attract users who prefer watching videos to reading tutorials or READMEs. It's also good for Shorts and short funny content.
- StackOverflow: While not a traditional social media platform, StackOverflow is a great space to answer technical questions and demonstrate your expertise. Offering help related to web scraping or automation can build credibility, and you can subtly mention your Actor if it directly solves the issue (as long as it adheres to community guidelines).