Claudiu Dascalescu 11:42 pm on February 16, 2017
Tags: developers, ,   

Marketing to Developers – February 15, 2017, Meeting Notes

The Marketing to Developers team met for the second time, following up on ideas generated at the 18th of January 2017 meeting.

You may visit the Marketing channel (here’s the Slack thread for this February 15th meeting), or you may comment on this post.

Recap of Goals/Scope: Marketing WordPress to Developers: this subgroup focuses on helping developers understand how, when, and why to use WordPress when developing websites. Providing information for theme and plugin developers would also fall in this category: development related information, technical use cases and examples, technical best practices. (Read about the other marketing subgroups in The Four Horsemen of WordPress.org Marketing)

We also felt it’s important to getting the word out to the rest of the community about the Marketing for Developers subgroup.

Developers Getting Started With WordPress

There are no updates from members on the items from last month’s meeting.

**Sara reminds: The meeting can serve as a working hour for the volunteers – to start making progress.

If any of the volunteers want to start working on Marketing to Developers project ideas, just speak up in the #marketing channel and dedicate the time to it.

The team started two GDocs (all related docs in the Marketing to Developers subgroup folder on GDrive)

  1. Why WordPress (for Developers) – where we noted potential reasons on why developers would use WordPress with their work.  This is a draft for working on the following item: “Why WordPress” for new developers to WordPress, the strengths of WordPress, reasons to use it, how to build custom sites with it. To remove the preconceived ideas that developers might have about WordPress.
  2. How to get started as a Developer – the team agreed that an onboarding guide for developers new to WordPress is necessary. The developers may need to understand what plugins and themes are and how they fit in the WordPress ecosystem, which (documentation/training/other) resources are available and how to use each, and in general an overview of what WordPress is and how to use it in projects.

The subgroup discussed using Trello to start adding notes and collaborate on the ideas instead of making a separate GDoc. @hardeepasrani is going to work on drafting what that could look like and share with the group.

See you at the next monthly meeting – here’s the full schedule of meetings in 2017.

The subgroup will collaborate on the Why WordPress (for Developers) and How to get started as a Developer and follow up on progress in the next monthly meeting.

#developers, #meeting-notes

#developers, #meeting-notes

skarjune 1:18 am on February 9, 2017
Tags: ,   

Marketing to End-users – February 8 2017 Meeting Notes

The Marketing to End-users subgroup met for the second time, following up on ideas generated at the WordCamp US Contributor Day and the initial January 11, 2017 meeting. The Marketing team is open to new contributors, and you may visit the Marketing channel (here’s the Slack thread for this January 11 meeting), and you may comment on this post.

Many project ideas have been generated for marketing to end-users, and we reminded ourselves to focus on single site owners or small business users of WordPress along with content creators and bloggers.

In the meeting, those present determined that the first next step should be to develop an editorial structure for proposing and generating marketing content, before working on how to distribute and share it. Sara @rosso99 said, “We have a lot of ideas, and people need to start tackling things tactically, putting structure / proposals around them.”

We also felt it’s important to identify the end-user personas to target and to craft lists of keywords to accompany them. We should draft sample content to demonstrate the various kinds of content to use. We can also begin to consider how to place content on WordPress blogs, how to invite guest posts, and how to work with some external sites in the WordPress ecosystem.

Recap of Goals/Scope: Marketing WordPress to End-Users: this subgroup focuses on marketing to end-users, those single-site owners or small business users of WordPress, and content creators and bloggers. Information is more focused on the usability of the software, Features and integrations which will help them self-manage their websites, and information comparing WordPress to other website solution. (Read about the other marketing subgroups in The Four Horsemen of WordPress.org Marketing)

**Sara reminds: If you want to work on any Marketing to End-Users project idea not mentioned here, you just have to speak up, and dedicate time to it.

End-users Editorial Plan

We discussed potential topics, who to target, and where the content could go. Here’s a summary of the types of things that may go into the editorial plan:

  • SEO strategy
    • Target personas
    • Keywords
  • Content
    • User stories
      • Success stories
      • Inspirational stories
      • Video interviews shot at WordCamps
    • Instructional tutorials
    • Community events
    • Content samples
  • Distribution
    • WordPress.org blog
    • WordPress.com blog
    • Other sites in Community & ecosystem
    • Guest posts
    • Newsletter
  • Sharing
    • Social Media
      • wordpress
      • @wordpressdotcom

The subgroup will collaborate on the End-users Editorial Plan and follow up on progress in the next monthly meeting.

See you at the next monthly meeting – here’s the full schedule of meetings in 2017.

#end-users, #meeting-notes

bridgetwillard 1:05 am on February 2, 2017  

Marketing the Community – February 1, 2017, Meeting Notes

The Community Marketing team met for the second time since Contributor Day at WCUS 2015. We reviewed what was left from that previous meeting and discussed deliverables.

If you’re interested in contributing, please have a read through our chat and the items listed below and leave a comment with which you’d like to help build! You can read the whole meeting in Slack here or the recap below.

Recap of Goals/Scope:

Marketing the WordPress Community: this subgroup feel strongly that the community is a very big selling point of the software, and promoting some of the things that are coming out of the community would raise awareness and encourage adoption of the software; that could include raise awareness about accessibility or internationalization advancements, or even helping local groups with marketing materials or resources for their community. (Read about the other marketing subgroups in The Four Horsemen of WordPress.org Marketing.)

Happenings During Today’s Meeting

Kcristiano gave access to the Community P2 to for Jen Miller and Bridget Willard in the Marketing Community Team to post the Email Marketing GDoc.

Items from last month still left to do are:

1. Editorial Calendar for WordCamp Central to help promote meetup events – currently unassigned.
3. A collection of videos on what makes a meetup great
5. A Foundation-backed online advertising strategy
6. Testimonials from meetup attendees
8. A “Humans of WordPress” style of promotion
9. Support for meetups with low content

Hero Press was suggested as the solution for 8.

Collection of Videos:

We decided to focus on Curating Video for What Makes A Meetup Great (#3).

Jen will find videos that are already existing and curate a list. The purpose is to inspire Meetup Organizers to create their own videos.

Bridget suggested that the Community Team put out a call to action to all Meetup organizers to send a video (how does that actually happen) of why their Meetup is important/great/valuable etc.

Questions:

1. Who do they send it to? WordPress.tv?
2. Who posts to WP.tv?
3. How is it promoted (Facebook Page? What are the Central Social Channels to promote said content?)

Jen Miller will add those questions to the video brief. She also suggests that we work together to create a list of questions this month that could be used to interview organizers and generate testimonials of WordCamps and Meetups.

nirmaldesai suggests we make sure to reference WPTV Submission Guidelines

We’ll reconvene in March about video curation and local creation.

Monthly Email Marketing Follow-Up

Bridget put our Marketing Email Content from last month’s meeting in the Community P2 thanks to @kcristiano‘s help. It has the Swipe File, Suggested Themes, Alternate Themes, and Jan, Feb, March completed as examples.

https://make.wordpress.org/community/2017/02/01/monthly-newsletter-marketing-for-the-community-team-to-wordcamp/

Let’s pay attention to the feedback from the Community Team and Meetup Organizers to reevaluate and iterate our formatting and content.

Thanks for a great meeting.

Looking forward to our next one.

Andy McIlwain 11:13 pm on January 25, 2017
Tags: agencies-clients,   

Marketing WordPress to Agencies & Clients – January 25 2017 Notes

We’ve just wrapped up the first Marketing WordPress to Agencies & Clients meeting since WordCamp US. We continue to iterate on what was started during Contributor Day:

  • Gathering case studies & insights by surveying agencies.
  • Developing a comprehensive list of features & benefits that would eventually become a landing page.

If you’re interested in contributing, please have a read through our chat and the items listed below. Leave a comment about anything you’d like to help us with! You can read the whole meeting in Slack or the recap below.

Recap of Goals/Scope: Marketing WordPress to agencies and clients: the subgroup focuses on materials and supporting information useful for agencies to market WordPress to clients, as well as providing technical and business information to larger businesses and enterprises where the decision-making or platform choices may be happening inside the company. (Read about the other marketing subgroups in The Four Horsemen of WordPress.org Marketing.)

Projects in progress

The following topics were shared in the chat. As mentioned above, we’re iterating on the work that began during Contributor Day at WCUS. Consensus was to approach these projects in small phases.

If a particular suggestion strikes your interest and you have time to work on it, please raise your hand in the comments with a mention about which one so those interested can start coordinating in Slack (in #marketing).

  • Case study survey for agencies
    • Gather information from agencies about successful WordPress projects that can be showcased on WordPress.org. These case studies would focus on the projects from a business perspective, i.e. “what were the challenges, how were they overcome with WordPress, and what impact did it have?”
    • Insights from the case studies would be added to a list of features & benefits that target specific use cases or agency personas. See below for more detail on this.
    • To promote: Join forces with the Make Community team to share the survey via Chapter Program meetups and WordCamps. Additionally, reach out to local agencies and agencies with a strong relationship to the WP community.
      Based on initial response rate, we’ll set an incremental goal (# or %) for gathering additional responses each month.
      • Action items
      • @skarjune and @nirmaldesai updating survey questions
      • Check-in after 15 days
      • Review & launch survey during next meeting
  • Feature & Benefits landing page: Info gathering
    • Philosophy = “Help agencies win their clients over to WordPress.”
    • This is an iteration from the FAQs/Fact Sheet concept that began at WCEU and continued during WCUS. We agreed that more value would come from a functional page on WordPress.org instead of printed collateral.
    • Features and benefits would be filterable based on use case (e.g. eCommerce, SaaS platform) and agency persona (e.g. designer, developer, account manager). Imagine: “What’s your role? What’s the project?” Display relevant features & benefits accordingly.
    • Initial audience: WordPress-friendly agencies that are looking for information to use in their sales & marketing process. Future audience: Agencies that are considering WordPress alongside other platforms.
    • Action Items
      • @andymci converting existing FAQs/fact sheet notes into a spreadsheet
      • Review during next meeting

Future projects

The following topics were shared as follow-ups to the above projects that are in progress. Other suggestions are welcome (please bring them to the next monthly chat).

  • Feature & Benefits landing page: Spec & build
    • Using information that we’ve gathered from the surveys + populated in the spreadsheet, identify requirements + create a brief for the new landing page.
    • Work with designers on the Marketing team to create mockups.
    • Work with developers on the Meta team to create the landing page.
  • Feature & Benefits landing page: Case studies
    • Using surveys that we’ve gathered, identify requirements + create a brief for how agency case studies should be presented on WordPress.org.
    • Work with designers on the Marketing team to create mockups.
    • Work with developers on the Meta team to create the landing page.

#agencies-clients

Nirmal Desai 9:59 pm on January 18, 2017
Tags:   

Marketing WordPress to Developers – January 18 2017 Meeting Notes

The Marketing WordPress to Developers team met for the first time since WordCamp US . We discussed new ideas of ways to better explain the advantages of the WordPress platform for the new developers as well as how can we improve the documentation of the WordPress features in form of case studies and white paper so it can be easily understandable to quick learners.

If you’re interested in contributing, please have a read through our chat and the items listed below and leave a comment with which you’d like to help build! You can read the whole meeting in Slack here or the recap below.

Recap of Goals/Scope: Marketing WordPress to developers: this subgroup focuses on providing development– related information, technical use cases and examples, technical best practices, and in general help developers understand how, when, and why to use WordPress when developing websites. Providing information for theme and plug-in developers would also fall in this category. (Read about the other marketing subgroups in The Four Horsemen of WordPress.org Marketing)

Projects and priorities suggested

The following topics were shared in the chat. This is not an approved list of projects, just suggestions or places to start! Other suggestions are welcome (please bring them to the next monthly chat).

If a particular suggestion strikes your interest and you have time to work on it, please raise your hand in the comments with a mention about which one so those interested can start coordinating in Slack (in #marketing).

  1. Continue to conduct developer interviews and compile info from WCUS meeting (notes linked here)
  2. Why WordPress for new developers to WordPress, the strengths on WordPress, reasons to use it, how to build custom sites with it. To remove the preconceived ideas that developers might have about WordPress.
  3. How to involve new developers more with WordPress? What information or guides can we provide aside from the Theme & Plugin handbooks? Where should a developer from 0 start?
    1. Getting new developers to use WordPress for site builds.
  4. What kind of interviews do we need to take to promote WordPress to new developers? Interviews can be in form of blog or video?
    1. From developer to developer – detail about the functions & features that lead them to choose WP as their CMS.
    2. Here’s how I use WP.
    3. Migrations – Most new developers are using ready-made systems like Wix, Squarespace, Weebly or a self-hosted CMS. We can find a developer who has migrated from those platform and using WP. We can take their interview and perception of migrating from self hosted to WordPress.
    4. Gathering a list of developers to interview is an idea; a list of results/outcomes is also another idea – what kinds of emotions/results/reasoning do we want the interviews to speak to?
      1. Results: rapid development / time to market.
      2. Tons of existing technology to leverage. Devs don’t have to create everything from scratch. And the technology has been beta tested by a large community.
  5. Case Studies
    1. A template for creating a case study for open sourced technologies.
    2. Case studies showing off technology like WP_API for the integration with different backends and integrations with development setups (js, php api clients).
    3. WordPress still has a reputation as a blog platform to some that are not in the know. Case studies help overcome that.
    4. Educating developers about the option to use WordPress in their software as a backend.
Andrea Zoellner 9:06 pm on January 11, 2017
Tags: ,   

Marketing to End-Users – January 11 2017 Meeting Notes

The Marketing to End-Users team met for the first time since WordCamp US and the completion of the Homepage redesign. We discussed new ideas of ways to better explain the advantages of the WordPress platform for content creators, small-business owners, and other non-developer individuals.

If you’re interested in contributing, please have a read through our chat and the items listed below and leave a comment with which you’d like to help build! You can read the whole meeting in Slack here or the recap below.

Recap of Goals/Scope: Marketing WordPress to End-Users: this subgroup focuses on marketing to end-users, those single-site owners or small business users of WordPress, and content creators and bloggers. Information is more focused on the usability of the software, Features and integrations which will help them self-manage their websites, and information comparing WordPress to other website solution. (Read about the other marketing subgroups in The Four Horsemen of WordPress.org Marketing)

Projects Suggested for the Future

The following topics were shared in the chat. This is not an approved list of projects, just suggestions or places to start! Other suggestions are welcome (please bring them to the next monthly chat).

If a particular suggestion strikes your interest and you have time to work on it, please raise your hand in the comments with a mention about which one so those interested can start coordinating in Slack.

  1. One recurring suggestion was to better utilize https://wordpress.org/news/ on WordPress.org. The question was raised whether people could actually subscribe or receive posts by email.
  2. Publish inspirational stories
  3. Talk about the REST-API – case studies/interviews which focus on the results
  4. Post articles or even videos showing a user creating content in WordPress and then attempting to create the same content in another platform.
  5. Post a series of articles that showcase WordPress as the platform behind mobile apps would be great.
  6. Post articles or web content that highlight the Power, Potential, and People of WordPress. Ex: “WordPress solved this problem for me and now I’m a success”- type articles. Showcasing everyday people and how they came to choose WordPress, what they did with it, and how it low-key changed their life.
  7. We discussed how Open-Source is not well understood to a beginner and the benefits aren’t communicated. We could work on “delivering the importance of WP being open”. Some questions: How do we communicate to end-users? Which aspects will they care about the most? (Open data, switching costs, migrations, moving platforms). Potential action item: look at other OS groups and how they do it.
    • A case study or interview with someone who was locked into (unnamed) platform would be great / user who was burned with a closed platform and then they migrated to WordPress.
    • A story on how the open community has changed people’s lives
  8.  Continued redesign of /features page on WordPress.org
  9. “Why WordPress” for content creators / site owners. Similar to the one we created for enterprise or agency-level, we could create something geared towards bloggers and content creators. This could be a flyer but also a landing page. 
  10. Create a compact nutshell of most recent/helpful information to help you succeed on WordPress. 
  11. The home page could ask a question to determine which segment is visiting, so we can better target developers, enterprise-level, and end-users. 

#end-users, #meeting-notes

Meagan Hanes 10:27 pm on January 4, 2017
Tags: Community,   

Marketing the Community – January 4 2017 Meeting Notes

The Community Marketing team met for the first time after WordCamp US. We reviewed what was left from that previous meeting and brainstormed a number of new suggestions and deliverables to discuss and work towards completing.

If you’re interested in contributing, please have a read through our chat and the items listed below and leave a comment with which you’d like to help build! You can read the whole meeting in Slack here or the recap below.

Recap of Goals/Scope: Marketing the WordPress Community: this subgroup feel strongly that the community is a very big selling point of the software, and promoting some of the things that are coming out of the community would raise awareness and encourage adoption of the software; that could include raise awareness about accessibility or internationalization advancements, or even helping local groups with marketing materials or resources for their community. (Read about the other marketing subgroups in The Four Horsemen of WordPress.org Marketing)

Immediate Priorities and Projects Suggested for the Future

The following were suggested in the chat – these are not a definitive nor finalized list of projects, just suggestions! Other suggestions are welcome (please bring them to the next monthly chat).

If a particular suggestion strikes your interest and you have time to work on it, please raise your hand in the comments with a mention about which one so those interested can start coordinating in Slack.

The first two items were leftover suggestions from WCUS working with the community team. Please refer to the content in this GDoc for that.

  1. Editorial Calendar for WordCamp Central to help promote meetup events – currently unassigned.
  2. Email Newsletter Content for Meetup Organizers – @jenblogs4u will review what’s been created in the document linked above
  3. A collection of videos on what makes a meetup great, for both small and big towns. There may be existing content on WordPress.tv on this subject! We can add these to the Meetup Organizer Handbook. @jenblogs4u will take a look and see what we have.
  4. Marketing templates for local meetups to self-promote: posters, written copy for local community listings, etc
  5. A Foundation-backed online advertising strategy (for the Community) for 2017 – if there’s a solid advertising proposal, it’s possible funds could be allocate for this, but not guaranteed.
    1. @rosso99 notes: “in the open-source way, let’s see what we can do for free, first – we should be using our efforts and ideas to help as many in the community as possible, whether or not they have access to funds. Let’s assume they don’t.”
  6. Testimonials from meetup attendees, talking about the value of these meetups. Can be written, video, audio. @andreamiddleton will look at adding this recommendation to the monthly Organizer email.
  7. A guide with tips on promoting one’s local meetup, such as co-promoting with other relevant local meetups, coworking spaces, other open-source projects. @gidgey started a Google Doc with ideas here.
  8. A “Humans of WordPress” style of promotion – showcasing what WordPress has done for the lives of people who use it, what happens at meetups and WordCamps, etc.
  9. Support for meetups with low content – a list of interesting WordPress.tv talks + blog posts for group discussion, improving and sharing a list of Meetup ideas, or a list of speakers that can Skype in for meetups that have no speakers. @meaganhanes and @andreamiddleton are continuing chats about this.

#community, #meeting-notes

Sara Rosso 6:58 pm on January 4, 2017
Tags:   

Recommendations & Tips for Running Marketing Subgroup meetings on Slack

Today we had the first subgroup meeting (notes to follow).

Personally I don’t need to lead the meetings – I’d love for those in the subgroup to step up, but will help out to get things started. With that in mind, I thought to share some best practices / recommendations for leading a subgroup meeting for each group to refer to.

  • Decide at the beginning of the meeting who will be responsible for taking and posting notes to make.wordpress.org/marketing after, and a backup person as well.
  • Create a Google doc in your related subfolder in the GDrive shared drive for .org marketing and for that specific document, set Share to “Anyone with the link can edit” so others can help take notes. Share the Gdoc link in the #marketing channel.
  • Post a recap of notes on make.wordpress.org/marketing, with the subgroup title. A list of members present isn’t necessary.
  • Please include a Slack timestamp to the start of the meeting notes for each month in the p2/recap post (similar to https://wordpress.slack.com/archives/marketing/p1483549325000348 ) – just click on the timestamp of the beginning of the meeting and copy that link.
  • Someone who is not taking notes should be a timekeeper to make sure the meeting is moving forward, on task, and aware of time limits.
  • Please use the last 10 minutes of each meeting to wrap up and discuss next steps. Setting some agenda items for next month’s meeting is great, too!
Mark Uraine 8:03 pm on December 22, 2016
Tags: ,   

X-post: New Homepage is Launched

X-post from +make.wordpress.org/meta: New Homepage is Launched

Mark Uraine 11:06 pm on December 12, 2016
Tags: ,   

X-post: New Homepage Redesign

X-post from +make.wordpress.org/meta: New Homepage Redesign