I want your wholesome self promotion

How to share the great work you're doing with the Write the Docs Slack chat community.

I presented I want your wholesome self promotion at Write the Docs Berlin 2025. Speaking as a moderator for the Write the Docs Slack chat, I explained how to share your work in a community-friendly way, though I hope that the advice I gave applies to other chat communities too. If you were in the audience, I hope you enjoyed it.

Video and slides

You can watch the talk on YouTube (starts at 6:27), download my slides, or continue reading for a text-based version of my talk.

Who am I to give this talk?

In addition to being a writer and programmer, I’m also a moderator for the Write the Docs Slack chat community. As a moderator, I have the dubious honor of deleting spam, aggressive sales, and off-topic crossposting.

But I know from my conversations at Write the Docs conferences and meetups that a lot of people are not sharing the amazing things they’re doing. They’re not sharing for fear of being gauche or tacky or breaking the rules and getting deleted. I don’t want you to worry about that! I want your wholesome self promotion.

How to hype your stuff

If you want to share something you’ve done, here’s how to hype your stuff. First, tell me these things:

What is it? Tell me what you’re sharing. Is it a blog post? New documentation? Your first open source pull request? Don’t be mysterious and don’t assume I know what you’re sharing.
Who made it? You? You and some colleagues or friends? Your giant mega employer? Help me understand your part in what you’re sharing.
Why did you do it? Why did you make this thing? What’s the backstory?
What’s the source of your excitement and interest? What did you learn? What are you proud of? What were your constraints or challenges? Tell us the rest of the story and give us the dirt!

Then you can drop that link or screenshot.

Follow the rules

While I’m eager to see what you’ve been working on, there are a few rules of wholesome self promotion.

Be yourself. If you’re not an advertiser or marketer, don’t write like one! Keep it casual, like you’re telling a colleague or a professional peer. And write it yourself; if you use an LLM, I’ll know.
Be on-topic. Use the most specific channel that is relevant or else use the #community-showcase channel. Check the channel descriptions before sharing. If it’s not painfully obvious why you’re using a channel, then explain why you’re posting it there.
Give context. Transparency is key! Always disclose your involvement. If you stand to benefit in any material way, such as through referral rewards or paid products, then you’d better be up front about it.
Don’t tell me what to think or do! Calls to action are poison. Buy now! Retweet! Supplies limited! False urgency! This is “show and tell” not “like and subscribe.”
Pace yourself. Leave room for others’ work to shine too. If you’re re-sharing something you’ve shared in the past, then make sure it’s not already in the Slack history (the scrollback disappears after 90 days) and tell everyone why you’re sharing it again.

Lastly, this isn’t really a rule but please emoji in moderation:

1 emoji = 👍
2+ emoji = 💩

Too much emoji looks like spam.

Some self promotion I want to see

Here are some examples of self promotion I would love to see on the Write the Docs Slack:

I wrote a blog post!
I shipped new docs!
I fixed a bug!
I made an open source contribution!
I made a mistake and learned a lesson!
I gave a talk!

All of this is great and I can’t wait to see it.

It’s OK to mess up

If you break the rules, my fellow moderators and I will help you make it better. I don’t want to punish you. I want to help you start great conversations with other documentarians. So join us on Slack and self promote (wholesomely).