Bridget Willard 6:31 pm on August 3, 2017  

Marketing the Community – August 2, 2017, Meeting Notes

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

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:

Our Trello Board

Recap from Last Month’s Meeting

This week

It would be great if we can focus on these two items:

Global WordPress Translation Day

@coachbirgit brings up, Polyglots team is on it to organize the third Global WordPress Translation Day on 30th, September 2017.

Attendance

The meeting was attended by: @bridgetwillard @jenblogs4u @vishalmukadam @coachbirgit
@newyorkerlaura @sheriebeth @yaycheryl @claudiud @nikolai @kcristiano

Notes taken by @bridgetwillard @vishalmukadam

Ana Silva 4:47 pm on August 2, 2017
Tags: ,   

Calling all WordPress Agencies

The WordPress.org marketing team has put together a survey to gather case studies from agencies, clients, and enterprises using WordPress.

We want to understand how WordPress as a CMS is used, and we’d love your help to do it.

Why should you do it?

Putting case studies together is not easy work. It’s difficult to find the right words to explain a complex project and do it in a way that others find interesting to read.

The WordPress.org marketing team would like to help! And in turn, we’d love you to help us.

In our survey, we’ve created a format to help you tell your story, so you don’t have to worry about writing huge chunks of text. You can simply use this framework and get them done quickly and effectively, whilst still telling the project story in full. It’s also a great opportunity for you to showcase your most interesting projects and clients.

The survey is broken down into six key parts;

  • The Project
  • The Challenge
  • Why WordPress
  • The Obstacle
  • The Solution
  • The Results

Take a look at our Sample Case Study.

There are several reasons you should submit your case studies to our survey. It isn’t just a way of contributing towards WordPress.org; it’s helping all of us understand the way agencies are using WordPress, and moving towards a future that supports that.

It’s also a celebration of that use! And a way of putting together a portfolio of work to promote WordPress. You will also be free to reuse your case study write-up on your own website and/or company blog once they’ve been published on make.wordpress.org/marketing.

We’re already over 28% of the web. Can you help us make small steps towards growing that number?

Agencies: We’d Love Your Case Studies

Do you have an amazing project you want to shout about? Did you, or your team, work on a cool new feature? If so, we want to know!

It doesn’t matter whether your project was big or small, or whether it was paid for or done pro bono; we want to know the various ways in which WordPress agencies are using WordPress. If you own or work in an agency, you’re just the people we want to hear from.

What should you do?

  • Select one person in your agency to be responsible for submitting case studies.You can submit as many case studies as you like! But we’d advise you to coordinate with your team so we don’t receive the same submission twice.
  • Submit the case studies via this survey.
  • There is no limit on the number of case studies you can submit! The more you can tell us, the more we will know.
  • We want to hear new stories; please don’t send us something you’ve previously published! It’s totally fine if you’ve already written about this project on your site or company blog before. What we’d like you to do is use the framework we’ve created in the form to help you provide this information, rather than copying and pasting chunks of text into the form! (We know this takes work and we’re super grateful for your time!)
  • Please make sure you have your client’s permission to submit this information. We’ll ask you this again when you submit the case study.

When should you do it by?

Originally we set a deadline against this. Then we realised it’d be more helpful if we kept submissions open until we received enough case studies.

What should you know?

Once you’ve submitted the case study, it’ll go through a process of review where it may be subject to further editing.

We’re really grateful to you for your time, but please bear with us if your case study isn’t published! We cannot publish all case studies, but we will carefully review each application and will be in touch to explain our decision.

All case studies will be published on the make.wordpress.org/marketing blog. They will be promoted through various channels and to the community.

Who can I reach out to with questions?

Get in touch with us in the Make WordPress.org #marketing team on Slack. Alternatively, drop us a comment below and we’ll do our best to get back to you.

Thank you for your time! If you have any feedback or would like to get involved with the #marketing team at WordPress.org, please don’t hesitate to do so. We love new members and we’re eager to grow our team 🙂

Want to help?

Whether you participate in the survey or not, we’d still love your help promoting it! Help us spread the word. Share the survey and mention #WPAgencySurvey when you talk about us on Twitter.

Jen Miller 12:24 am on July 29, 2017  

Marketing Team — Meeting Time Change to 15:00 UTC

Marketing the Community Time ChangeIn May the Marketing Team began a poll to determine the best time to hold our monthly meetings. Thus far we have 18 recorded responses. 38.9% of respondents suggested 15:00 UTC as their first choice and only one respondent replied that they could not make that time. As a team, we reached out to that individual and were assured that she would continue to follow the conversation and be involved.

Due to this, we will be changing the time of the weekly Marketing Team meetings in Slack to 15:00 UTC.

Our next Slack meeting will take place on August 2, 2017 at 15 UTC which is 8am PDT and 11am EDT. Please join us!

Originally posted in Slack

David Skarjune 9:21 pm on July 27, 2017
Tags:   

Marketing to Agencies & Clients – July 26, 2017 Meeting Notes

The Marketing WordPress to Agencies and Clients subgroup focuses on materials and resources for agencies to market WordPress to clients, as well as providing technical and business information to larger businesses and enterprises.

Meeting Notes

Details are available in the Slack Marketing channel, including resource links. @anafransilva led the meeting.

Usage Survey

@skarjune gave an update on the WordPress Usage survey. 71 responses have come in, and the data is very preliminary as we need more responses and analysis. Still, we were able to review some trends.

We looked at the Source for hearing about the survey, though not all responses provided that. Blogs were the primary Source, primarily the WP Tavern post along with the original WordPress.org post, then some response via the Facebook Advanced User Group. We seem to be reaching a targeted audience that follows WordPress news, and we want to continue more outreach.

SOURCE COUNT PCT
Blog (WP Tavern, Nuzzel) 19 36%
WordPress.org 16 30%
Facebook 8 15%
Personal Associate 4 8%
News Website 2 4%
WordCamp 2 4%
Twitter 1 2%
Podcast 1 2%

Agencies is at the top of the list for the Industry type in responses, so this is a good sign that we will be able to collect Case Studies from our outreach efforts.

INDUSTRY COUNT
Agency 20
Internet 10
Small Business 10
OTHER 7
Software 5
Business Services 5
Education 3
Web Host 2
Media 2
Nonprofit 1
Retail 1

High points for Reasons to use WordPress are expected, as it’s highly regarded for Ease of Use, Extensibility, and Availability of themes and plugins.

REASONS 1-high, 5-Not at all RANK
Extensibility 1.8
Ease of Use 1.8
Open Source 1.9
Themes & Plugins Availability 2.1
Community 2.2
Integrations Availability 2.2
Cost 2.2
Documentation 2.3
Search Engine Optimization 2.4
Scalability 2.6
Accessibility 2.6
Multilingual 2.9

WordPress users have some moderate concerns, and @skarjune speculated that debate on the Gutenberg editor project could be an example of why Road Map is the highest barrier. However, concerns about Security and Performance could be false myths, as there are many ways to remedy those.

BARRIERS 1-High, 5-minor RANK
Road map 3.3
Security 3.4
Performance 3.4
Maintenance 3.5
Scalability 3.6
Ecommerce 3.6
Missing features 3.7
Architecture 3.7
Support 3.7
Workflow 3.7
PHP code base 4.0
Licensing 4.2

As we get more data and do some analysis, the Usage survey should provide some guidance for all the subgroups in determining what kind of White Papers are needed in our Marketing resources.

Marketing Message

@anafransilva finalised the Marketing Message and the group found it ready to publish. We want to add a sample Case Study as an example of how the survey responses will be used. @bridgetwillard started one in the Drive, @skarjune needs to revise that as it was only a test entry by him, and he’ll produce a pretty PDF document to go with the message. @anafransilva and @skarjune will work on this for next week to be published on August 2.

Promotional Message Template

@mcdwayne shared the Marketing Message for Agencies being used to promote the call for Case Studies, which can be used by anyone soliciting agencies to respond. Already several members are performing outreach to contacts in their networks and using the Agency Survey Tracker to record their work.

We discussed if we need to make a list of agencies that we know of or that should be contacted. We felt that this would be a very big project that could be difficult to complete. Also, it would create a target list of agencies, and we had previously discussed this and determined that we did NOT want to appear to be selecting specific agencies that would be promoted by publishing their case studies. Even if we did a thorough job of contacting a wide range of agencies, just one complaint of why a particular agency wasn’t contacted might appear problematic.

Instead of creating a list, we will continue to pursue outreach with our own P2P networks, via Community, and through influencers in the ecosystem, and we’ll track our contacts. We do want to reach as many agencies as possible, we want to attract quality cases, and we want to be transparent about the process of finding and selecting Case Studies to publish.

Influencers Message Template

We reviewed the Email Template to Twitter Influencers to promote the Case Studies survey. We liked the nice tone, clear message, and single call to action with a hashtag and sample Tweet:

Agencies, the marketing team at WP.org needs you! Submit your case studies here: #WPAgencySurvey

The message to influencers focuses on just the Case Studies survey, which is a current need, although the template can be easily tweeked for a version to use for the Usage survey.

There was interest in developing some kind of Tweet Now button to automate the follow-through, and @vishalmukadam will follow up on how to do that.

Community Outreach

We considered reaching out to individual WordCamps that are coming up soon, but we’ll check with some Community leaders to ask if they could do a broad outreach to both WordCamps and Meetups to promote the surveys. @bridgetwillard and @skarjune will check with @andreamiddleton and @chanthaboune about that.

Summary

Team members are updating the Trello cards for tasks management as work continues. We’ll publish new posts on the surveys next week, and we’ll continue with outreach to promote the surveys.

To get involved with the Marketing to Agencies and Clients subgroup, or any other subgroup of the Marketing team, see the post on Welcome to the Marketing Team — Here’s What You Need to Know.

Our next meeting is scheduled for Wednesday, August 23.

Bridget Willard 6:00 pm on July 19, 2017  

Marketing to Developers – July 19, 2017 Meeting Notes

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.

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.)

Slack Timestamp

Meeting Recap

@iviolini added suggestion to wishlist and created a Trello card.
Provide feature and future functionality information to community through regular channels

@mcdwayne points out building personas:
A persona is a global description of a type of ideal client clone of image editor personas.

Mentioned persona’s Trello card examples.

Marketing to Developers Trello board is here.

  • @vishalmukadam ask what is a persona:
  • And one the best explanation was given by @nagpai:
    Different profiles of developers who use WordPress to build websites. Personas are profiles with a name and personality attributed so that it becomes easy to “talk” to them and device communication.
  • @mcdwayne And in one line “what a developer looks like.”
  • @yvettesonneveld also explained in a good way.
  • @hardeep Are designers and freelancers counted in this persona list or is it strictly developers?
    @skarjune Says those are traditional job labels but the workflow and deliverables to clients have changed in the WP ecosystem.
  • @nagpai explains there are two types
    • I could think of two types of developers.
      1. Coding school – Traditional coders who did PHP or other platforms earlier and now use WordPress as a ready framework.
      2. Power user school – The likes of Matt who began as content writers and went about improvising or building something that suits their needs, one step at a time.

This meeting was attended by @bridgetwillard @mcdwayne @vishalmukadam @iviolini @skarjune @nagpai @yvettesonneveld and @hardeepasrani.

Notes taken by @vishalmukadam

Bridget Willard 5:00 pm on July 12, 2017
Tags: Marketing to End Users   

Marketing to End Users – July 12, 2017 Meeting Notes

Subgroup Goals

Marketing WordPress to End-Users: this subgroup focuses on marketing to end-users of WordPress: Site Owners, Small Business owners, and Content creators / bloggers / contributors. 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)

This Week’s Meeting:

Slack Timestamp

@vishalmukadam took notes.

@mcdwayne says Gutenberg stuff can be interesting for “Marketing to End Users Subgroup.”

Or updating codex can be thing which we can decide.

@bridgetwillard says we can take suggestions

We decided to updated codex docs so a Trello card was created.

@jasonsiegel pointed that codex is missing “Why Use WordPress?” page.

@mcdwane created Trello card (“Why Use WordPress” for a website or a blog).

@jasonsiegel added outline on the on google docs.

@kenshino stated codex system will stay but most articles will get redirected to a new system that is being built. And they are not making an effort to update Codex anymore with new user-based articles so updating user docs makes sense.

Attended by @bridgetwillard @mcdwayne @vishalmukadam @adpqwertyzi @jasonsiegel @re_enter_rupok @kenshino

#marketing-to-end-users

Bridget Willard 8:39 pm on July 5, 2017
Tags: Onboarding   

Welcome to the Marketing Team — Here’s What You Need to Know

Firstly, welcome.

We’re so glad to have you as a part of the Marketing Team, whether it’s during a WordCamp’s Contributor Day or during one of our weekly meetings, thanks for being part of Making WordPress.

We have four subgroups: community and three based upon personas. Each meets on a specific Wednesday each month, but you’re free to join any.

You can read more about the teams here.

  1. We communicate in Slack. To join the WordPress Slack, follow these instructions.
  2. Join the WordPress Marketing Slack Channel. Though we have four subgroups, there is one channel
  3. Our meetings have a format. Please read this post.
  4. It’s probably a good idea for everyone to make sure they’re subscribed to posts via email. There’s a widget in the sidebar to sign up.
  5. Join the Google Drive folder. Message @yvettesonneveld or @mcdwayne (or any Team Rep) in Slack and we will get you connected as soon as we can — time zones may vary.
  6. Trello boards are public but you must have an account to contribute. Please PM @yvettesonneveld or @mcdwayne (or any Team Rep) and they’ll add add you as a team member. You can ask in the Marketing Slack Channel for any admin to approve and add you. Once you’re on the team, please join the boards you’d like to contribute to. You don’t need to limit yourself to one board, as you might have a preference for certain projects or tasks instead of a particular persona.

Creating a .org account

Creating a Slack Account

Creating a Trello Account

  • Sign up here.
  • Depending on your preference, use your Google account or your email address.
  • PM @yvettesonneveld, @mcdwayne or post in the channel for another admin to add you to the team.
  • Once you’re on the Trello team, join the boards you’d like to contribute to. There is no need to limit yourself to 1 team. You may have a preference for particular projects, types of work, or you may want to get connected to someone and think collaborating is a great way for make that happen (it actually is).

Linking Documents

If you taking the lead on a task in Trello, please add links to the Google Drive documents used as Attachments. In the task, click “Attachments,” select “Google Drive” and add the link. Also add yourself as member to this task.

It’s a lot of setup. We know.

  • We want you to have a wordpress.org account so that you have access to all resources whenever somebody sends you a link on wordpress.org.
  • Having a “@chat.wordpress.org” account protects you from others seeing your real email address in Slack.

Have Fun

We’re all volunteers who love WordPress, both the software and the community. Remember to keep in mind the Code of Conduct, be friendly, helpful, and disagree in a productive way.

It’s marketing! It’s fun. Let’s do this.

Links to Bookmark:

 

#onboarding

Bridget Willard 7:42 pm on July 5, 2017  

Marketing the Community – July 5, 2017, Meeting Notes

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:

Time stamp for Slack.

Recap from last month’s meeting:

  • We reminded people about the meeting change poll but focused on one project for today’s meeting.

Today’s Notes:

  • We reviewed the Contributor Video Plan. Published 7/5.
  • We discussed the need to keep publishing on the Make.WordPress blog. Main focus for this team is to create content that will end up in a future handbook, to be used by WordCamp and Meetup organizers. (example of Support handbook) Currently no persona has been defined for these audiences, this has been added to the Trello board.
  • We discussed weekly updates on the Team Update blog and Bridget asked the Meta team. Task has been added to the Trello Board.
  • We reviewed the poll results for the meeting time. Meeting time will be moved to 15.00 UTC. as of August 1st of 2017. @jenblogs4u will create a blog post about this.
  • @vitormadeira suggested we help out with creating visual content for Polyglot translators to communicate how to create better translations. He accepted the invitation to be the project ambassador and linking pin with Polyglot team. A Trello card has been created and we are looking for a marketing contributor to be the team lead on this.
  • We discussed the project “Strategy and content to provide content support for meetups with low content”. @bridgetwillard started a document and would love suggestions.

Unassigned tasks:

Waiting for Feedback:

See the Need Approval list on Trello.

Attendance:

 

Bridget Willard 6:41 pm on July 5, 2017
Tags: Marketing Campaigns   

What is a Contributor? WordPress Contributors Speak Out.

What is a Contributor? WordPress Contributors Speak Out.

Hey WordPressers,

WordPress isn’t “just” software. It’s created by volunteers who give of themselves to build community. Real people who contribute their time, skill, talent and enthusiasm to the project. These are the contributors, people like you and me. So, what makes a contributor? Who is a contributor? What does that look like?

We know that many of you have contributed throughout the years and since WordPress just turned 14, we’d love to hear some of your stories.

Everyday new people learn about and join in the WordPress Project, we’d like to encourage them to be part of it, too.

What was your first contribution and when?

What makes a contribution?

Please record your own video and upload it to the Testimonial Category on WordPress.TV.

Then let’s share them on Social.

Suggested prompts:

  • Who are you?
  • Where are you located?
  • What was your first WordPress contribution?
  • When was your first contribution?
  • Why is contributing important and how can someone start?

Scope:

  • Spontaneous or planned video testimonial.
  • Test your lighting before recording.
  • Choose a quiet place to record.
  • Use a loud, clear voice.
  • 1-2 minutes is best; max 5 min.
  • Upload to WordPress.tv in the Testimonial Category.
  • Moderators will tag it “testimonial.”

Videos that you upload will be here. So check them out, share them on social, and get inspired.
Once these new videos are accepted and published, share, share, and share!

Love,

The Marketing the Community Team

#marketing-campaigns

Bridget Willard 4:41 pm on July 5, 2017
Tags: Marketing Team   

Welcome to the Marketing Team. This is how we run our meetings.

Firstly, welcome.

We’re so glad to have you as a part of the Marketing Team.

We have four subgroups: community and three based upon personas. Each meets on a specific Wednesday each month, but you’re free to join any.

Each marketing subgroup has a lead. We would like to run the meetings with more direction and purpose. To that end, we propose the following.

Here’s our format.

  • We start the meeting at 1700 UTC (time may change in the future).
  • The lead will ask if someone would like to take notes.
  • The lead will set the agenda for this week’s discussion.
  • Please hold any off-topic comments to the end.
  • Goal is to work on one single project, with artifacts delivered in GDocs, following the Trello Board.
  • The last 15 minutes we open it up for wishlist ideas and general popcorn comments.
  • Wishlist tasks get a card in the subgroup’s Trello board.

Reminder from Sara Rosso from April 20, 2016.

Some further thinking on last night’s conversation: we shouldn’t expect things (regarding marketing, for example) to act any differently than the rest of the WordPress project; it’s something which involves/impacts hundreds of volunteers and has potential impact of millions of users. Take ‘features as plugins’ and how features are developed apart from the core project, tested, and then integrated once they’ve had enough support/testing/feedback. A full site redesign may be an ‘ideal’ situation but it’s not really the world we’re operating in, and I think we can make small, actionable and impactful changes with the (tiny) team of volunteers who are showing up to work :simple_smile:
with that being said, *all suggestions and ideas are welcome*, just remember *this is a volunteer group* and suggestions should be framed in terms of what resources will be needed (dev resources? other teams needed for collaboration / review / approval?) and especially how the person suggesting plans to accomplish that – do you have volunteers and donated time already lined up? etc.

#marketing-team