The Social Media Promotion Plan Turning Likes into Donations

Goal: Drive traffic to your tools (Data Animator) and convert 1% of that traffic into GitHub Sponsors.

You cannot just ask for money. You have to Give Value first.

1. Reddit Strategy: The “Indie Hacker” Narrative

Don’t post ads. Post “Stories”. Reddit hates self-promotion but loves “I built this cool thing”.

Subreddits: r/javascript, r/reactjs, r/webdev, r/dataisbeautiful, r/ SideProject.

• The “Showoff” Post (r/reactjs):
  • Title: “I built a client-side alternative to Remotion that renders 60fps video in the browser.”
  • Content: A 30-second video showing the smooth timeline and resize.
  • The Ask: “Open source on GitHub. If you use it, buy me a coffee.”
• The “solution” Post (r/dataisbeautiful):
  • Title: “I got tired of Flourish adding watermarks, so I built a free, private Bar Chart Race generator.”
  • Content: A high-quality Bar Chart Race video. Link to your tool in comments.

2. X (Twitter) Strategy: “Building in Public”

Twitter is for the “Journey”.

• Day 1: “Starting work on the React Bindings for Kinetix. Remotion is cool, but I want something that runs purely in Canvas.” #buildinpublic
• Day 7: “Finally figured out the ‘Smart Scaling’ logic using Vector math. Here is the before/after.” (Attach video).
• The “Viral” Thread: “How to build a Video Editor in the browser (A Thread 🧵)”.
  • Tweet 1: The architecture.
  • Tweet 2: The loop.
  • Tweet 3: The export.
  • Final Tweet: “The code is Open Source here. Sponsors get early access to the Particle System.”

3. YouTube Strategy: “The Education Hook”

Don’t just demo the tool. Teach people How to Build It.

• Video 1: “Coding a Bar Chart Race from SCRATCH in React (No Libraries)”.
  • People watching this are Developers (your target sponsors).
  • Mid-roll: “I actually turned this into a library called Kinetix. You can use it today.”
• Video 2: “Top 5 Free Tools for Animated Charts (Better than Flourish)”.
  • List 4 competitors, and put YOUR tool at #1.

4. The Funnel (How to get money)

Traffic -> Tool -> “Support the Dev” Button.

1. The “Free Tool” Page:
   • User creates a Chart.
   • User clicks “Export MP4”.
   • While Rendering: Show a modal. “This tool is free and privately hosted by me. If it saved you time, please consider donating $5.”
   • Button: “Support on GitHub Sponsors”.

Summary

• Reddit: Get the initial spike of users (The “Hacker” crowd).
• X (Twitter): Build the long-term brand (The “Founder” crowd).
• YouTube: Capture the search traffic (The “Learner” crowd).

Key Rule: 80% Give, 20% Ask.