The Marketing team promotes WordPress to current and future users and contributors. We create and amplify campaigns to support the growth of the WordPress project.
Our work is tracked on the Marketing Tasks Board on the WordPress organization’s GitHub. If you are planning a Marketing Table at a Contributor Event, please let us know in the Slack channel.
You can be part of the #marketing channel on Slack. Join our next Weekly Marketing Chat at: Tuesday 15:00 UTC.
Diary dates
This update comes from the 9/25 Marketing team meeting. An agenda will be posted on 9/30 for the 10/3 meeting.
The objective was for us to use this meeting to review this doc, and review the proposed edits. We have had a lot of great feedback from other teams, many of whom have helpfully added content directly about their components.
In the 9/18 Marketing meeting, a number of questions were raised regarding the “main focus” of the release. This was clarified on 9/20 by @francina:
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/ definitely deserves a very important place in the list of features but IMHO is not the main focus of the release. Nor is the theme, again according to me 🙂 As we said in the launch of the release cycle the focus is “polishing current interactions and make the UIs more user friendly”. If I had to sum it up, I would say that 5.3 is a release focused on enhancements, from Gutenberg, to a new default theme to media library. What do you think?
A major focus of the marketing meeting was revising the current draft collaboration doc. A number of feedback items have been incorporated over the last week. We reviewed the feedback and made a number of changes, while adding comments for further discussion. This is a work in progress and iterative document: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1PW52syWz1bksFInmgczZA5OKhEGjM2dXGwNA6A5tl-M/edit#
@yvettesonneveld suggests we do a readability check in Hemingway app and make sure the reading level is at or below grade 8. @miker ran the current copy through the app and found it is currently at a 9th grade level.
@audrasjb requests a specific section be added on accessibilityAccessibility Accessibility (commonly shortened to a11y) refers to the design of products, devices, services, or environments for people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design ensures both “direct access” (i.e. unassisted) and “indirect access” meaning compatibility with a person’s assistive technology (for example, computer screen readers). (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accessibility), which @francina endorses.
@karmatosed raised concerns that the current document did not accurately reflect the full range of Gutenberg enhancements for the release. @youknowriad agreed and added in a list of main features, as well as starter copy.
@miker stated he would compile an update on the current status of the About page to share with the major releaseMajor Release A set of releases or versions having the same major version number may be collectively referred to as “X.Y” -- for example version 5.2.x to refer to versions 5.2, 5.2.1, and all other versions in the 5.2. (five dot two dot) branch of that software. Major Releases often are the introduction of new major features and functionality. team.
@mapk raised a number of points related to the animated gifs currently in the About Page collaboration doc, and added specific comments directly in the collaboration doc. The gifs were made at an earlier stage, and no longer completely reflect the current stage. Feature behavior or UIUI UI is an acronym for User Interface - the layout of the page the user interacts with. Think ‘how are they doing that’ and less about what they are doing. is slightly outdated in these gifs.
Per @mapk, there is no formal process for creating these images. They were created by a few of the Devs in local environments. He offered to provide the gifs if we continue in this direction.
@mapk advised that to his knowledge there is not currently a guide or process for making these images, but that he uses LICEcap or Monosnap to create them in the past.
@abhanonstopnewsuk suggests we start this conversation with the Design and the Accessibility teams on what guidance/ info they have on creating GIFs. I think I have seen something on GIFs from accessibility team before to help WordCamps before. Think it may be worth a check with them first and save a lot of time too.
@karmatosed raised the concern that the impact of gifs should be looked at collectively to consider their combined impact. She also stressed the importance of collaboration with the design team on the overall direction of the design.
The conversation will be continued in the existing trac thread: https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/47708
The meeting ended without consensus on the next steps. @miker expressed that his objective was to follow the lead of the design team, and was approaching the task with the idea that flexibility was required as there will be multiple revisionsRevisions The WordPress revisions system stores a record of each saved draft or published update. The revision system allows you to see what changes were made in each revision by dragging a slider (or using the Next/Previous buttons). The display indicates what has changed in each revision. needed as we approach release.
As we approach the 5.3 release, we have had a number of conversations about using various social media channels to spread the message. This raised a number of questions about the current channels, and how we can interact with those.
@Maziar created a doc for use as a starting point when looking at various social channels: https://docs.google.com/document/d/15Y3EF-B-RU0YwB-_3iO1XVPMVtOkRqbD4GwK7Xrddv0/edit#
From @abhanonstopnewsuk: We need a separate document on social media messages, perhaps this could be done on a Google sheet so that we can retailor messages for the different social media accounts. This would also make it easier for members to take messages and use them on their own social channels.
@miker will create this doc within the Marketing google drive and share the link in the #marketing channel.
This conversation is ongoing.
Outside of the public marketing meeting, we have had a number of conversations about improving clarity and communication coming from the marketing team. This includes how we record meeting notes, communicate project status, and provide a roadmap of planned next steps. This conversation is in conjunction with the largest strategic re-organization of marketing processes already under discussion.
@abhanonstopnewsuk organized the conversations with @yvettesonneveld and @miker. The main immediate action item is to treat the marketing meeting notes more as a high level overview of activity, instead of a granular “transcript” of the meeting. We will still link to the full conversation 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/., but will focus the notes more on the take aways and outcomes. We will also work more to vet the information going out in the marketing notes, instead of just reposting what was said in the channel to ensure consistency with broader communication from other teams.
In addition, we are moving to publish a formal agenda in advance of the meeting. Historically, we have used the same meeting agenda every meeting, and relying on task leads to communicate activity and needed input on their specific initiatives. While this is important, and we will continue to rely heavily on individual task leads, we will be proactive communicating specific agenda items and discussions as far in advance as feasible.
This will hopefully make it much easier for other stakeholders within WordPress to be aware of where and when specific conversations will happen. The goal is for all stakeholders to be able to attend conversations relevant to their specific initiatives.
