Moving @voltaire’s petition here:
develop a marketing plan that works in conjunction with senior Committee members (to be worked out or done with them in a conference call or video or series of 2-3 calls) so that efforts are more organized top to bottom. The marketing plan would have strategic approaches or tiers with all of them focused on achieving one objective.
Hope it sticks. I really think this could lead to bigger and bolder things, but clearly there should be more structure to who does what, where, when, what’s delegated, how does development get done, that sort of thing. And then an overarching marketing plan determines priorities, delegation, potential avenues, how to rich the most appropriate users, defines revenue sources, and sets a tone for going forward.
If needed, I can help with this. I know a thing or 2 about online marketing.
Thanks for the input. Maybe we can team up and try to kickstart things…
I’m down. I really want this project to succeed and see widespread adaption.
Funny thing is hopping back and forth b/w the WP forum and here is the piercing difference in quality of people and discussion. Absolute amateur hour over in WP lala land vs 1st class folks/discussions here.
I think it’s really important to strike now while emotions are high, so let’s get some budgets worked out with the higher ups and shift this into high gear.
Only just saw this post - thanks for the heads up @wadestriebel!
I’m very open to people putting a plan together. I will say one thing though: we need action more than words at the moment. Yes, we certainly need a robust plan, but I’m drowning in a flood of relevant mentions of ClassicPress, Gutenberg and WordPress across the web. We have 10,000+ unprocessed mentions in our BrandMentions account.
The other big area we need support in is PR. We need to compile a list of journalists, craft press releases and build relationships. This is a job a number of people have volunteered for and then flaked out once they realised that it’s not fun work.
The last area we really need help with is content curation - we need to be pumping out relevant, interesting, helpful and engaging content on our blog and other channels.
If we had enough hands on deck to deal with all the engagement that’s happening across the web, combined with an effective press and content outreach program, we would see ClassicPress rocket to the skies.
P.S. Our objective is simple: ClassicPress to be powering 1,000,000 sites by the end of 2020
One of the suggestions I made was to get involved with HARO, Help A Reporter Out. You’re the top guy at CP so no one is better than that to be the spokesman. HARO is basically hearing what reporters need, offering to help them back with a short and very focused response back, and if fortunate and it takes, ClassicPress gets mentioned in a major news or media outlet.
Blogs, videos, press releases - content marketing (to me) should all be a top priority agreed without doubt. There should be at least one good explainer video on YouTube now with “WordPress” “Gutenberg” and “ClassicPress” as key words and in the SEO description. Anybody on Fiverr can knock that out.
Let’s put together a list of what we would want done and then solicit volunteers to do them, and then you or the Committee can pick what you want to use. You can make it a contest and offer some kind of cool prize as incentive even - and then publicize that on ClassicPress’s Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Instagram, and so on channels. If there are no Instagram and FB channel accounts I’d create them - even if they’re rudimentary, just so content can start going up. The Universe rewards action. That’s a start.
On a broader note, I’m a big fan of action. It’s what wins battles. Plans win the war. Strategies and actions can be disconnected without a plan; so to get the ball rolling…why not put some content up asap and then see if there’s momentum to build a comrepehnsive marketing plan that can potentially somehow put the Committee on Skype/Slack/Zoom all at the same time and put some heads together with a PR/Marketing pro and hash it out.
That’s just me and I’m a very gung ho guy and was never fun to work with because I was trained to drink Red Bulls and drive production. I’m semi-retired and more mellow now, but all of this is bringing back alot of memories.
Sorry for the separate posts. I’m still waking up. Related to the other comments Scott made - the Committee is core. Volunteers who aren’t core Committee members can easily wig out. Maybe there is a way to delegate roles that resonate with specific members’ skills?
There are tasks that we can exchange labor/expertise on, and tasks that actually require $ (like paid channels).
I think if the Committee can come up with some workable budgets and/or incentives, and you guys can pick some marketing guys/gals to run with it (trial them for 30 days), action can definitely begin.
Spot on for PR.
Again, spot on & affordable.
This. We just need to pick a few things and run with them.
Made a quick doc just so we have something in writing that we can reference. PM me if you want me to add you to it.
A start! Let’s see if we can get some others to start contributing to this as well. We don’t know what’s already been done and what’s not, so all we can do at this juncture is throw rice at the wall and see what sticks but at least that’s action.
@tommy and @voltaire it looks like you’ve already started a marketing plan so why don’t you (and others) keep working on it here? For now, I’d assume that there is only a small budget to start with. If you want to add “stretch” goals – like “if we had $xxx/month this is how we’d spend it”, that would be fantastic and super helpful to the @Committee.
I’d be very interested in seeing you create a plan of action – a timeline would also be helpful.
Thank you!
@voltaire I’m sure @wadestriebel would be a good resource; since @scott is the marketing team lead (and founder) you should definitely keep him updated. I’m design team lead, so please feel free to reach out to me directly as well.
I’m sure once the roadmap is release, that will be helpful for everyone.
I am happy to help where I can, that being said Scott is marketing team lead for ClassicPress plus marketing isn’t always my strong suit and my time is pretty limited 
I’ve just realised something… I’m marketing team lead but nobody knows anything about me. Perhaps it’s time to give you all some background on my “credentials”.
I first got into the internet marketing 20 years ago by creating bots for mIRC. This kicked off a passion for using code to automate marketing campaigns. I’ve done everything from flooding the first 20 organic pages of Google for tens of thousands of keywords by figuring out a flaw in their algorithm to walking through crowds of people at Hong Kong’s biggest musical festival and taking photos that automatically appeared on 50 foot screens above the main stage (and then were automatically posted to social media to take the offline online).
Professionally I’ve been in digital marketing for 15 years, have managed budgets in excess of $2 million / year, have been personally responsible for growing digital ROI by over 500% for national brands and I currently run a social media marketing service (www.chooseholly.com). I still program daily and my passion is marketing automation, and nothing makes me happier than using novel technologies to drive engagement.
I’m also aware of my weaknesses - I’m completely self taught, with no formal training, and am much more focused on the practical than the theoretical.
As such, one thing I really loathe is talk and no action. For me, marketing should be simple. 3 quantitative goals and 3 qualitative. Everything else is just figuring out how to achieve them.
For ClassicPress, this is even simpler. We have two goals: to power 1 million websites by the end of 2020, and to be known as the best choice for a business CMS.
Getting there is easy in my eyes. The product we have is great because of the community we have. If we can get this message out to the mass market, then the rest will follow.
To the specifics: I’ve never seen HARO succeed. It’s far too passive - waiting for a reporter to ask a question that might be relevant, and hope they’ll use my reply in an article. As for fiverr… Great for buying followers on crappy social media accounts, not good for much else.
We need to think big, we also need to think like a scrappy startup. Both of these things are my bread and butter. What I said in my previous post will see ClassicPress reach the mass market. I just need people who are willing to help with the boring jobs to make it happen.
The biggest thing I need help with right now is compiling a list of journalists outside the WordPress world that we can reach out to when we launch V1.
I want to see us on the BBC, CNN, TechCrunch, in magazines, talked about on TV. I’m not interested in WP Tavern, the WordPress Weekly Podcast or any of the other industry outlets - they’re too small (and we’re also well known by their audiences).
I also desperately need help on keeping up with all the mentions of ClassicPress and Gutenberg across the web. This is a mammoth task and simple engagement at a grassroots level will drive awareness.
Combined with covering the basics of content marketing and getting our documentation up to speed, I strongly believe we can reach critical mass with the shoe string budget that we have.
If we can organize a call to knock out all these things mentioned, that would speed things up I think.
Hi @tommy tagging @scott to respond to the request for a call, but summarizing from Scott’s messages above, it appears as if we already have a plan of action – he has asked for several things:
Review and suggestions on our documentation (https://docs.classicpress.net/) are very welcome. The best place for that is the new Documentation subforum, please create a new thread there with any ideas for improvement: https://forums.classicpress.net/c/team-discussions/documentation
@tommy we generally work asynchronously using the forums, Slack, and other online tools. We are spread out across many different time zones so it is difficult to coordinate calls. There are a lot of ideas and requests for help with specific tasks above, so as a next step, I’d recommend creating specific forum threads for different tasks.