Marketing Team Notes – December 12, 2018 – Make WordPress.org Marketing

Marketing Team Vision

Our vision for the Marketing Team is to be the go-to resource on strategy and content for other WordPress teams. We reiterate our mission each week so that everyone who is new to the team understands what our goals are. This helps with onboarding.

We’d love you to join the Marketing Team. If you have any questions or feel lost (all of us do at some point), please feel free to pingPing The act of sending a very small amount of data to an end point. Ping is used in computer science to illicit a response from a target server to test it’s connection. Ping is also a term used by Slack users to @ someone or send them a direct message (DM). Users might say something along the lines of “Ping me when the meeting starts.” any of us in SlackSlack Slack is a Collaborative Group Chat Platform https://slack.com/. The WordPress community has its own Slack Channel at https://make.wordpress.org/chat/.. We’re here to help guide and mentor you. xoxo ~ Bridget (@gidgey on Slack)

Getting Involved

Everyone is welcome and encouraged to join in, comment on posts, and participate in meetings and on projects. And, yes, you can add yourself to any Trello Card you’d like to work on.

Today’s Meeting

Slack Timestamp

Today’s notes taken by: @maedahbatool

Meeting Attended By: @maedahbatool, @siobhanseija, @daveloodts, @gidgey, @miker, @harryjackson1221, Jesse Owens, @gtarafdar, @jenblogs4u, @coachbirgit, @abhanonstopnewsuk

Last Week’s Successes

@siobhanseija: Our blog on subtitling WPTV videos was published 1.5 weeks ago at https://make.wordpress.org/marketing/2018/11/29/these-videos-need-subtitling-and-you-can-help/. It was fun to see it being shared quite a lot and getting a few lovely comments from people that appreciate the effort. Thanks for sharing team!
@siobhanseija: Another blog was published just before WCUS, a video roundup. These are three videos from WPTV that help you get started with contributing to WordPress. Find it here: https://make.wordpress.org/marketing/2018/12/05/video-roundup-how-to-contribute-to-wordpress/. It could use some more sharing! Also, we’ll try to take it along when working on the plan for first-time contributors.
@harryjackson1221: We posted another case study for Rolling Stone Magazine! And it has had some great visibility this past week. You can read here: https://make.wordpress.org/marketing/2018/12/09/rollingstone-com-a-wordpress-migration-and-redesign-case-study/
@bridgetwillard: Also, @sirjonathan wrote a blog post for Five for the Future that is getting quite a bit of comment. You can read it here: https://make.wordpress.org/marketing/2018/12/09/why-your-company-should-contribute-to-wordpress/

Task Lead Updates

@harryjackson1221: For case studies, we need to have some help from the team spreading the word. The link to the form is here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe9cYQRDtJCcI1nphPTfO_Lb7qAGJP68l0_ceyj0uMNzOwI2g/viewform. Here is an example of how I am sharing it on social media.
@abhanonstopnewsuk: Social media plan doc — images readded in the requested link style. Thanks to @Sandra for help. The document is back in Bridget’s queue. All questions on links from @mcdwayne and Bridget added.
@harryjackson1221: The Rolling Stone Case Study card is not being moved to the Done list since there are still items that need to be completed. I have to post it on the Showcase before moving it.
@miker: https://trello.com/c/V7dAnfne/220-5-for-the-future-email-template-for-contributors-to-use-to-approach-their-company. I am negligent in updating this, but we made substantial progress on it at WCUS. We have sufficient copy, and a plan, but I still need to physically turn it into an email. I am updating the due date on this to next week, and will have that draft completed then.

New Business

@abhanonstopnewsuk: From WordCampWordCamp WordCamps are casual, locally-organized conferences covering everything related to WordPress. They're one of the places where the WordPress community comes together to teach one another what they’ve learned throughout the year and share the joy. Learn more. Milano Contributor DayContributor Day Contributor Days are standalone days, frequently held before or after WordCamps but they can also happen at any time. They are events where people get together to work on various areas of https://make.wordpress.org/ There are many teams that people can participate in, each with a different focus. https://2017.us.wordcamp.org/contributor-day/ https://make.wordpress.org/support/handbook/getting-started/getting-started-at-a-contributor-day/.. @Max has started a draft blog on ‘why someone should contribute to WordPress’. He has had input in from a number of other contributors and some feedback/fact checking has now been received. I am working with him on this and we are setting up the TrelloTrello Project management system using the concepts of boards and cards to organize tasks in a sane way. This is what the make.wordpress.com/marketing team uses for example: https://trello.com/b/8UGHVBu8/wp-marketing. card. We are aiming to have this ready for the first edit by next week’s meeting.
@abhanonstopnewsuk: Request from WP&UP Charity if we can promote its mental health campaign in the WordPress community which has started this month with DecemBuddies (@gidgey has been featured already), will have a survey in Jan and the main campaign in February. Some pointers are being drafted and will be shared with marketing if it is felt this is something that can be promoted on Make WordPress Marketing.
@abhanonstopnewsuk: There is a new sustainability channel being set up by WordCamp organizers and with the community. A draft blog submission to get some help from marketing to promote this. There are questions for the community team on the link to use for the channel so that organizers in other countries can access it. Once they have this, a draft submission will be added to a Trello.
@daveloodts: I mentioned this idea of an ‘adopt-a-volunteer’-campaign; or ‘sponsor-a-volunteer’ in this post: https://make.wordpress.org/marketing/2018/12/09/why-your-company-should-contribute-to-wordpress/. Don’t know if #marketing is the place to be or #community. I see it as marketing the community.
@miker: https://trello.com/c/IkToXlnz/225-wcus-2018-contributor-day-recap. This would be a great opportunity for a new contributor! This card is for a blog post that will highlight the successes from the WCUS contributor day. The community team also publishes what was accomplished. However, I think we should do a marketing post as well. We spoke a lot about the Five for the Future (FFTF) initiative, and posts like this that show what can be accomplished through contributions are important.
@miker: I have one other thing to share from WCUS! We had a number of conversations with different hosts and the Hosting Community team. (Thanks to @Breann McDede and others for participating!). The main takeaway was a strategy to improve our communication with the Hosting Community through more regular direct updates with that team. Using the GutenbergGutenberg The Gutenberg project is the new Editor Interface for WordPress. The editor improves the process and experience of creating new content, making writing rich content much simpler. It uses ‘blocks’ to add richness rather than shortcodes, custom HTML etc. https://wordpress.org/gutenberg/ rollout as an example, the consensus is that it would be useful to have a more formal and defined communication loopLoop The Loop is PHP code used by WordPress to display posts. Using The Loop, WordPress processes each post to be displayed on the current page, and formats it according to how it matches specified criteria within The Loop tags. Any HTML or PHP code in the Loop will be processed on each post. https://codex.wordpress.org/The_Loop.. So we are getting direct feedback about what their users are asking, and the types of things they would like to have to distribute to their customers about WordPress. This being said, I will make an effort next year to attend that group as well. The main objective is to establish a communication loop, so we can be more targeted and responsive when creating time-sensitive content.

NOTE: Due to Christmas holidays the marketing team has decided to take a break and skip the meetings for 26th December 2018 and 2nd January 2019. We will resume from the second Wednesday of January which is the 9th. The formal announcement will be made by @siobhanseija in the next week’s meeting. Till then happy holidays folks!