Social Media Management

This section covers the tools, templates, and guidelines used by the RLadies+ communications team to manage social media across platforms.

Platforms

RLadies+ maintains official accounts on:

The WeAreRLadies rotating curation runs separately on Bluesky.

X (formerly Twitter)

X was our main platform until the 2022 change of ownership, after which we stopped posting there. We still hold @RLadiesGlobal, dormant, for one reason only: so that nobody can take the handle and impersonate RLadies+.

• Do not post from it, and do not reply from it.
• Do not delete it. Releasing the handle is the one thing we are holding the account to prevent.
• Login details are in 1Password, as for every other shared account.

Everything the account posted up to then is archived at rladies.org/tweet-archive/rladiesglobal/, so you can link to an old post without sending anyone to X.

Chapters decide for themselves what to do with their own X accounts — see the chapter social media guide.

Brand voice

We sound like a friend who’s excited about what the community is doing — not a corporation issuing announcements. Our voice is direct, warm, and grounded. We’re a movement but we don’t take ourselves too seriously.

Do:

• Use “we” and “our” — we’re part of the community, not above it
• Lead with what’s happening, not who we are
• Keep it short — punchy lines, not paragraphs
• Name people and chapters specifically — spotlight others, not the org
• End with a clear call to action (link, sign-up, “come say hi”)
• Use the purple heart 💜 as our signature emoji

Don’t:

• Sound corporate, formal, or institutional
• Use jargon or acronyms without context
• Over-explain — trust the reader
• Centre the global org over the people and chapters
• Use exclamation marks excessively — one per post max
• Say “females” or “women only” — we say “gender minorities in R”

Hashtags: #RLadies, #RStats, plus event-specific tags (#PositConf, #useR, #LatinR)

What the Global accounts amplify

Most of what the Global accounts publish is other people’s work. We amplify first and publish second — original posts are comparatively rare and usually follow a request from someone on the global team.

Our scope is deliberately narrow: we are R-focused. We very rarely repost content about diversity in tech in general, because keeping the scope tight makes the editorial calls easy. Adjacent tooling is in scope when it is used from R — Hugo, for instance, is fine in a blogdown or hugodown context.

Do repost:

• Chapter posts about past events — not every post from every event. The best ones have pictures and/or links to resources, ideally pictures with plenty of RLadies+ members in them 💜
• Fun chapter posts — the cookies someone baked for an event count
• Posts that informatively describe a future online event
• Posts about things RLadies+ members do: blog posts, packages, talks. Better with a link, and it is fine if the resource is old — someone praising a blog post written months ago is still worth amplifying
• The weekly WeAreRLadies curator handover and the new curator’s introduction post, plus anything else relevant from that account during their week (not all of their posts)
• Posts in languages other than English, as long as you can translate them well enough to know what you are amplifying. This is not merely allowed — it matters

Quote rather than repost when you want to underline a particular aspect, for example a chapter saying it picked its topic because of a thread it saw.

Liking and favouriting is a lighter-weight signal than a repost, but it is still visible and still reads as approval, so be mindful. The accounts can like more than they repost — event posts, posts about future events, and so on.

How do you know someone is an RLadies+ member? You can ask, you can look at their profile (plenty of people put #rladies in their bio), and you can check the RLadies+ directory.

Where do you find things to amplify? Our own mentions and notifications, the #rladies and #rstats hashtags and feeds on the platforms we are on, and Slack — #igotnews in the organisers workspace and #shameless_promo in the community workspace. If good news lands in Slack and nobody has posted it anywhere, encourage them to.

What we don’t post

• Future in-person chapter events, and chapters asking their members for feedback. Those matter to a local audience, not a global one — the chapter’s own accounts are the right place
• Job postings
• Advertising, which includes a book that cannot be read online for free
• “Women”-centric hashtags. We say gender minorities in R. It is fine to repost a chapter post that uses a women hashtag, but when choosing between posts, prefer the more inclusive one
• Event pictures that could be any RUG — if there is nothing recognisably RLadies+ about the picture, skip it
• R questions and answers. The Global accounts are not a Q&A service

Content that takes a stance on a controversy is never posted without review — see the content review rule under posting guidelines.

Replies, mentions and DMs

Mentions are where most of the daily work is. If there are more notifications than you can read, read the mentions and let the rest go.

• R questions are redirected to the community Slack rather than answered. If you know the answer, answer from your personal account. A reply along these lines works:

  This account doesn't do Q&A — join our community Slack to ask questions like this 🙂
  
  https://rladies.org/form/community-slack/

• Trolls are ignored. Ask another global team member when you are in doubt, rather than replying

• Mute conversations the accounts are tagged into when the tag was attention-seeking, or a mistaken substitute for the hashtag. Unmuted noise makes the mentions that matter impossible to find

• Job postings we are tagged in are fine to ignore if you are busy. Otherwise paste the link into the jobs channel of the community Slack, with a note that we do not endorse it

• DMs are rare. Use one to tell a chapter something privately rather than replying in public — for example when a chapter posts in the first person (“I”, “me”) from a chapter account and should be using a personal account for that, or when a chapter account is not named the way chapter accounts should be named

Posting guidelines

• Frequency: 2–3 posts per week on each platform
• Timing: Weekdays 14:00–16:00 UTC for best reach
• Accessibility: Always add alt-text describing the image, including any text shown in the image
• Language: English is the primary language; translate or encourage chapter-language posts
• Content review: Posts about controversies, partnerships, or policy changes must be reviewed by the leadership team before publishing

Platform-specific sizes

Tools

Canva

The RLadies+ Canva workspace contains all brand templates and assets.

Brand templates

Templates are published as Canva Brand Templates and organised by content type. Find them in Brand > Brand templates in the Canva sidebar.

To use a brand template:

1. Go to Brand > Brand templates in the Canva sidebar
2. Click the template you need
3. Select Use this template — this creates your own copy
4. Choose the page with the right size for your platform
5. Edit the text and images
6. Export as PNG (or GIF for animated content)

Workspace folders

Designs in the Canva workspace are organised into folders:

📁 Social Media
   📁 Posts       — Post templates (by content type)
   📁 Covers      — Platform-specific cover/banner templates
📁 RoCur          — Rotating curator templates
📁 Rebranding     — Rebrand announcement designs
📁 Assets         — Editable R+ logo and brand elements
📁 Archive        — Old/unused designs

Brand Kit

The Canva Brand Kit contains the official RLadies+ colours, fonts, and logos. When editing templates, use colours and fonts from the Brand Kit — do not enter custom values. Access Brand Kit colours by clicking any colour swatch and looking for the Brand colours section.

Buffer

Buffer is used for scheduling posts across platforms. The RLadies+ Buffer account is connected to our Bluesky, Mastodon, LinkedIn, and Instagram accounts.

Access

Contact the communications team lead for Buffer access. Team members are added with Approval Required permissions by default — a team lead must approve posts before they go live.

Scheduling a post

1. Log in to Buffer
2. Click Create Post
3. Select the channels (platforms) to post to
4. Write the post text — keep the brand voice guidelines in mind
5. Upload the image in the correct size for each platform (see platform sizes)
6. Add a scheduled date and time
7. Click Schedule Post (or Add to Queue to use the default posting schedule)

Tips

• Customise per platform: Buffer lets you tailor the text for each platform in the same post. Use this to adjust hashtags and handle mentions.
• Preview: Always preview how the post will look on each platform before scheduling.
• Queue: The default queue posts at optimal times during the week. Use this for evergreen content.