Documenting ongoing marketing projects #375
Replies: 6 comments 39 replies
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The projects listed here, except running the meetings and People of WordPress, are primarily the purview and responsibility of the Automattic-sponsored contributors. Indeed the Automattic-sponsored contributors have all of the final say in each of these projects. The consistency enabled by sponsored contribution for these projects is certainly valuable. But they are far from "meaningful" marketing work for contributors to do. The work volunteer contributors can do on the projects listed here is limited primarily to making suggested edits that can be accepted or rejected by Automattic-sponsored contributors and doesn't touch on mosts aspects of "marketing" by any standard definition. The Showcase handbook even has an AI-prompt for folks to use to "write" the Showcase entry. So, it's true these are the ongoing and Project Leadership-approved projects for the Marketing Team. But there is no way for non-Automattic-sponsored contributors to meaningfully contribute to them. And the lack of any meaningful way to contribute is the primary reason the Marketing Team has incredibly short and high turnover, extremely few long-time contributors, and almost no engagement after Contributor Days, despite initially high interest from folks who have extensive marketing experience. |
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@jdevalk: THIS THING YOU SAID HERE:
is the entire point. |
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Lots of conversations regarding the team's vision and future, which are totally valid. I would love to hold space for those conversations. For the sake of this particular thread, I had hoped we could address only the work that is already in motion, most of it committed to before any sponsored contributors showed up. This existing work is generally lacking documentation, metrics, and regular contributions. I do not however presume this work to be "meaningless" and to do so would be disrespectful of the years of work this team has done. For a 20-year-old project, and nearly 8-year-old team, it seems prudent to address our past and present before building a new future. |
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You hit the nail on the head: this one is so broad & general that it's hard to do much of anything with it. When you're speaking to everyone, you're essentially speaking to no one.
Showcase has been live for a while now, and while it ain't much, it's something to work with. In the absence of measurable goals, it's difficult to have progress (how would you measure any progress?). I think we can apply a general +15% growth YoY as a goal and see how it goes. We'd then have more of an experimental mindset.
I think those are two separate issues. To say we have a goal to reach X by date Y doesn't mean that the entire thing is abandoned if it's not reached. Simply, it means that we have that time pressure so that we prioritize it. If we don't hit those measurable goals, we take whatever insights we got and apply them to create more fitting measurable goals for the next timeframe. I think I also wouldn't want to predict what people will or will not do. A bit of a cart/horse thing here, where we're saying it's hard for new contributors to join because we don't have strategies or measurable goals, but then we're also saying we shouldn't have strategies/measurable goals because we don't have new contributors. I don't think it'd hurt anyone to try. I think, at least, we should open the discussion around having one particular strategy/measurable goal that we can rally around. Whether it's increasing Showcase page sessions by 15% YoY, or any other thing we'd want to tackle. |
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> If that marketing strategy involves me doing work, I might tell you "no" and, if so, I'll probably also tell you why.@eidolonnight that is a very interesting statement that you made in your comment above. I think perhaps the Marketing Team, and the community as a whole could benefit from some clarity on the scope of the Automattic-sponsored Marketing contributors role. According to your WP.org profile, "Automattic sponsors Nicholas Garofalo to contribute 40 hours per week to the Marketing Team." This is the same amount pledged for Reyes Martínez and Lauren Stein. Dan Soschin's 40 hours are split between Marketing, Training, and Core so let's say 10 of that goes to Marketing, and Brett McSherry is pledged for 5 hours per week. So roughly 135 hours PER WEEK of Automattic-sponsored time is pledged to the MakeWP Marketing Team. I simply do not think that the projects listed here account for that amount of time. Currently, Dan and Laura are busy with 6.5, so let's say they are fully consumed with that, so for Q1 we have about 85 hours a week of pledged sponsored contribution from Automattic to the Marketing Team.
The team reps are handling the team meetings, and (unsponsored contributors) @abhansnuk and @nalininsbs manage the People of WordPress posts. Reyes dutifully manages the Month in WordPress post. And Brett McSherry has handled most of the Amplification Requests in a timely manner in those 5 hours a week. But tin all honesty, I can't see how that adds up to 85 hours of work a week, let alone 135. So I'm wondering three things:
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I have a very simplified view of marketing this very useful piece of software. and its here: When I look at Dot Com messaging - its commercial, its strong, it tells the story from a user perspective the features overview is exactly what it should be. I see Enterprise in dot org, hidden behind the about link. I am no marketer for sure - which is a benefit, I see things the way customers do. I see dot org as a community led exercise that is a bit confusing, wants me to download a thing to make a website rather than encourages me to use that thing in partnership with the many thousands of companies that offer WordPress solutions. I look at Dot Com, I see a solution albeit the getting started CTA is terribly confusing once clicked and should appear later in my view. Showcase in dot org needs a new CTA - See what others are doing. Is there a definitive marketing message to general commercial users rather than a fixation around community? Does focusing on community 'feel' as though this phenomenal software solution is for me as a small, medium, large, enterprise business? Do we as WordPressers need to look at the messaging of others in the web building space? Like Wix, Shopify, Webflow, Duda who have very strong commercial messaging or is that type of messaging reserved for Dot Com? Anyway, I like WordPress and I will continue to use it as my go to web development platform. I'd just like to see more emphasis on attracting and explaining in a clear, concise manner to commercial users (on dot org), what the benefits are other than, you can write what you like, when you like. |
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Moving this conversation topic from the #marketing Slack to this discussion thread.
The Marketing Team GitHub has over 100 open issues, which makes it difficult for contributors to quickly identify issues that are most in need of help. Furthermore, the provenance, status, and endorsement of these issues are often unclear, leaving contributors uncertain about the impact of their work.
In an effort to help, I've compiled the following list. These ongoing projects, to my knowledge (which is limited), have or had the support/commitment of other teams, project leadership, and the Marketing Team. This list is by no means exhaustive, and we can see various new ideas shared in the Discussions area. These are simply projects that are already in motion.
Are any projects or links missing from this list? Are there links or documentation that are missing? Who are the regular contributors to these projects who could onboard new contributors?
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