Usually we use doodle.com to schedule meetings, this is a good example of why.
And I will add to this that social media platforms engage the traffic that a website has there… into these platforms whatever those platforms are.
And that happens because they are designed for this purpose. To keep their users there and take the traffic from wherever else is possible. So it is a huge mistake for those who run already a website to create groups on social media platforms.
I made once just out of curiosity a twitter account that I connected it with my website… Do you know how many people visited my website from this account? Just three. Would you like to know how many clicked from the link that I provided on my website to that twitter account? 500+ lol
When I realized what this thing was doing on my website I deleted immediately this account and I said that I will never gift my traffic to social media again.
3 Likes
I don’t understand this concern.
The purpose is that people share and speak about the brand. Wether that happens on my website or my FB group is irrelevant, and surely better if it is in a place where tons of people who do not yet know about the brand (like Facebook) see their “friends” talk about or get invited by their “friends” to the brand, than in a place where all the people already know about the brand (like my website).
Having a huge traffic on a Doc or Forum is useless if the traffic is limited to the 50 people visiting it daily since 2 years.
Having 120 new people even just sharing a social posting within a few days has a bigger impact, without even driving a single click to the website. The brand is still “pushed”.
A website is not the tool that makes a brand famous. Social media are. This is at least what my experience tells me.
8 years of conservative “We don’t need social media” vs 2 months of “lets try social media” proved me right on a previous company I was involved with. The people who interacted, spoke about, and hence spread the word of that brand tripled within those 2 months.
Sales increased, and those happen to be on the website.
Since CP is not a sales page there is anyway very little purpose in driving people to the very website
What is crucial is that people who do not know about it, get to know it, download it (and again that can be done only on the website), and then use it. In other words, switch from XY to CP.
Just my opinion based on past experiences: Yes, you may get less traffic from social to private website, but that is not the point of this exercise to start with. There won’t be a prominent link to Facebook, rather, people on Facebook will find the group. And from there, they will either go to CP and download CP or have it already and hence interact on that group with other members. This strengthens the awareness about CP, which is practically non existent atm and creates trust in the platform. Those users will advocate for CP, and that will (hopefully) generate users. Those users will, one way or another, sooner or later, have to land on CP Site to get started. If we can catch even just one person on FB and make them use CP, or help them proceed using CP, it is worth it. None of the existing users of CP will switch to use FB as a CMS just because we have a FB group. This may be different in lets say a blogging website, that wants its traffic on site. CP just needs people using it, it doesn’t matter where they spend their time, as long they install and build websites with CP.
5 Likes
I think the concern partly is that it may end up being abandoned with no activity, like Reddit:
https://www.reddit.com/r/ClassicPress
But we should still give it a go. See how it turns out. Facebook has more users, so might be better than Reddit.
2 Likes
I think the concern is that the team is spread very thin already, to have time to manage it officially and with an in-brand communication.
That means it has to be a community private initiative, that in case is managed the wrong way can harm the project.
I understand the importance of social media, but CP is not only an open source project, there are two structured non-profit behind it (one in the USA and the other if I am correct in Ireland).
This means communication must be managed seriously, and the forum is the right place to do so without delegating.
The unofficial group went dead because once the people involved started they maybe realized how much hard work it is to manage it. There wasn’t a clear objective behind it, no measurable goal, no plan.
It was just “hey, let’s make a group to see how it goes”. And nobody is managing it nor engaging.
Things like these can harm the project credibility.
We discussed FB group during marketing meeting. @anon66243189 will run it. So we’ll see how it goes.
4 Likes
I’m not much of a FB user, but, do think it’s a good idea to run an official group. For some people, if you don’t have these types of “supporting” accounts, the project may seem less legitimate. On the other hand, if those presences aren’t maintained, it could make the project look dead. So, I’m torn on it…
In terms of group involvement, I would join the group, or like the page – or whatever they do now – but, wouldn’t necessarily be an active participant.
Success (or failure) with groups is not predetermined – it depends a lot on the content, the management of the group, and the personalities involved. Millions of companies, entities, and outfits use groups with success.
This is a good point. We also need to figure out a way to attract experienced developers to the platform. At this point, James (and others) is/are carrying way too much.
The content of the “Get ClassicPress” page is overwhelming – too many sections, too much text, too many CTAs. It’s confusing. I would love to redesign this section for clarity.
I’m not sure what kind of work it would take – and don’t think we have the resources right now for it – but, having an option to “Click and try ClassicPress” which spins up a performance-tuned site that exists for, say, 3 hours, would be a good way to show potential users/switchers that “Yes, ClassicPress is exactly what you expect!” without requiring them devote time/effort to setting up a local installation.
That’s a valid concern…but, I agree, we will never know if we don’t try. And, since there’s someone willing to help with it, it makes good sense to give it a go.
I agree with this sentiment, generally. However, since @anon66243189 has only just become involved, and he’s offering to help with it, it wouldn’t necessarily spread the pre-existing team any further.
2 Likes
It doesn’t matter how many speak about a brand but how many of all these people will use the brand. Facebook and social media have proved that they are all about empty words and vanity likes.
I personally have no interest at all to get the likes from unrelated with art people, that not only have no interest about the kind of art I’m making, but are also unwilling or unable to buy.
I don’t want to make posts for unrelated people because these kind people will never come back. Those who are interested about something can find their way towards the thing that interests them and as soon as they find something that really interests them, they stick with it.
I for instance didn’t find classic press from social media. I found it because I searched for a WP alternative and I found a post reply on a blog that mentioned classic press.
As soon as I clicked on CP website I decided to try it and not mess up with the WP classic editor plugin. Because I own a website and I was interested about an alternative cms.
It wasn’t that someone invited me to see a new cms, while we were talking about pop music, ( random example of unrelated subject) without even having in the first place a website, to click on the like button in order to satisfy the friend that invited me and never bother again.
What I have to say about my website is that it has TRUE traffic. The people that visit and revisit my website do so because they are interested about what I present there. I don’t present empty content in order to satisfy the requirements of the social media platform algorithm. When I have to say something I say it, whenever I like and with whatever way I want to say it and I’m not obliged to abide with anyone else’s rules.
And I don’t have either to deal with any malicious competitors that will click the dislike button in order to destroy the reputation of my brand name.
2 Likes
in order to have a successful social media group you have to “feed” the algorithm. Otherwise you get lost in the millions of other groups.
I don’t know if you have heard that big companies employ other companies to do this job…to manage social media accounts.
That shows that the “sport” is demanding because it is designed to be so.
To create competition in order to stay afloat on top of the others by feeding the platform with content.
But when you make your company or brand name “content” the only ones that benefit from that are the Zuckeborgs and the Dorseyborgs…lol
Not you, that you spend your time and energy and effort to feed their platforms instead of focusing on how to improve your work.
1 Like
You have made it abundantly clear that you do not support a Facebook group, or any other social media. And that’s fine. However, there’s no need to continue arguing and reiterating your reasoning. Ultimately, those who will put in the effort will be those who make the decision.
1 Like
You didn’t pay attention to what I’ve said at some point here. You haven’t learn how to practice patience.
Wait until the Classic Editor plugin will stop being supported. And then you’ll see how many they are going to look for a decent alternative in total panic because the Gutenberg editor is still a problematic piece of crap.
I’m just participating in the discussion. 
I agree with some of @Marialena.S ideas.
But I also think that @anon66243189 has a plan and is willing to put the work in to make it work.
It is true that social media make you the content, but it is possible to use this at our advantage.
It is not unrelated traffic. A fb page or group can be used to funnel people.
It can be used to target specific people and talk to them.
This takes A LOT of work.
But it can be used to point people towards the site and the “download” button.
The fact is not every group achieves this, no matter how well it is managed because a group is made by the subscribers AND the admin, and no matter what, a group can for whatever reason and despite the admin efforts, become a toxic place from r whatever reason. (Been there, done that. I am not new in managing a community).
I am willing to see what comes out of this group, since it seems that now a plan is in place to make something good out of it.
It can be a funnel/entry point, a place where people create job opportunities around CP (increasing its popularity) or a simple discussion group. It can be something different.
Seeing how the unofficial group ended isn’t giving me good vibes, but I am clever enough not to judge the present basing on a past occurrence.
I expressed my concerns, and they have been heard. It is good to go ahead and see what comes out of that.
2 Likes
The unofficial group ended because social media need someone to be present and feed them with new things continuously.
The thing though that doesn’t need to feed it is to spread information with different ways. Blog posts, signatures on forums, budges and banners on websites, articles, mentions on discussions and such things that once they are published they stay there.
The majority of WP websites owners don’t look currently for an alternative because they rely on the classic editor plugin.But as soon as the classic editor plugin will stop being supported and they will have to deal with the Gutenberg editor that they avoided so long to use and learn how to use, then you are going to see how fast they are going to migrate to other platforms.
BTW and for your information my blog post about Classic Press has up until now 2150 views that you might think that are few but my website is an art website, it is not a tech website. It is the only post about a cms among art material reviews. These are more views than those that I got for some of my reviews. And it is still at the same place. It is not going to go anywhere. If someone searches for wordpress alternative it will pop up somewhere among the results.
So it would be wise to have more posts like this in order to be there when the WP users will start to search on how to switch to something else.
Articles and comments with information have more chances to found in search results. Particularly if they contain the keywords “WP alternative” 'WP fork without Gutenberg editor" “classic editor” and such things.
If such phrases are included in the posts and the articles then they will appear in search results when will come the time that the majority of classic editor plugin users will have to deal with what they avoided all that long to deal with.
People don’t change easily platforms because they want to avoid the inconvenience of getting into the trouble to do so. But when the platform it self gets way to inconvenient for them to use, then inevitably are forced to do it.
The classic editor plugin will stop being supported by the end of 2021 and then it would be incompatible with the new version of WP and then you are going to see how many are going to search for something else.
Spread online information about CP in order to be ready and wait.
1 Like
I totally agree on your points.
As you say, “it needs someone to be present”
This is a fact wether you are on social media, on blog posts, or on both. It even was true back in “door to door sales” times.
My “plan of attack” (already shared in Slack Marketing Channel, waiting for inputs and approvals) does include several of the points you mentioned, and more.
Amongst others, it includes tasking my in-house designer to create modern artwork for social presence (that does not scare or bore people at the bare look of a header image), link research, listing potential people who we should approach to have them blogging about CP or eventually review CP, group and tool promoting (all without money, the old “guerrilla marketing” works best, no matter where).
There is also a whole section with weight on those google searches you mention
By the way there are a couple social media results, in the first few results of google - which are the ones people look at. There are also many results from Hosting Companies. I don’t think many people want to read “boring” posts of hosting companies explain that they offer quick install of CP. It is good to know but a common user wants to see experiences, reviews, and other, genuine people saying “hell yes. Do it”
Like it or not (I don’t like it) nowadays social media do have a very “strong” presence when people look for “real people opinion”.
The same happens for example on your blog post. People ask you for your opinion after a year using CP, for example.
I found the post with the particular search for Migrating my site to classicpress in the first results. Great post, btw, and several interactions - cool!
That’s definitely great, and a way to go, and keep going. If it’s fine I’d like to add it to the shareable content list I am putting together? Sort of as an “Experience of a Human with CP”.
The plan I drafted does not only include a FB group.
That is just a part of the community. It includes taking care of the dead angles like that reddit cemetery, voting on certain sites listing “alternatives to WP”, contacting certain “compare and review” sites that completely miss on CP, as well as many other steps.
One of the biggest problems is as you correctly say, it all needs a lot of work.
Blogging takes just as much work as writing a post in a social media. It takes work to contact someone, bring the word out there, talk to potential users, and so on and forth.
It does in that all not help when the main website is down with a Error 521 like right now - and as always with work, it needs to be done, which I see is often an issue.
Many people like to say what should be done, but then you never see them again when in fact they could contribute perhaps with a simple push of a button, or commenting in a post where CP is badmouthed, or else things that are relatively simple to do.
It takes effort to persist, effort which I am for once surely ready to put in. I invite you to join Toolset FB Group if you want, check out what “TukuToi” does there (that is my FB page and freelancer presence). We do that all for free, there is no gain a single cent from the Plugin, or its sales, yet we interact every day (not sharing what we had for breakfast, rather helping users achieve their goals) 
This builds awareness. People know TukuToi there. They know Toolset. They know all this is great for them and they have a place where they can interact in their preferred environment.
The same can and will hopefully happen with CP (wether on website, Facebook or old-fashioned handwritten letters, does not really matter I think)
We will see!
The most important is, if it doesn’t work, to realise it and abort it properly, not just let it die silently (like it happened with Reddit)
7 Likes
Do whatever you plan to do with this article. I don’t plan to delete it.
But there is a need for more similar articles. Because these stay, the other just go… they get lost in the massive amount of social media content and are impossible to find them if they don’t have enough likes in order to get into the feeds ( or whatever they use in social media platforms. I’m completely unrelated with these things. I find them boring and counterproductive).
Please do continue writing about and promoting ClassicPress on your blogs and other public, permanent sites. This is just one part of a successful marketing strategy. Another part is reaching users where they already are, which, for better or for worse, is often on closed platforms.
Person A: “We should promote ClassicPress on thing 1”
Person B: “No, we shouldn’t do that, we should only promote ClassicPress on thing 2 instead”
How about, instead of that (and the resulting discussion/argument), Person A and B both go and promote ClassicPress where they are comfortable doing so? Seems like a better use of everyone’s time and energy
3 Likes
Thank you everyone for your input, I am closing this thread now. “Why not a FB group yet?” is the title of this thread, and the question has been answered: Because there hasn’t been anyone to volunteer for this (and keep it running) until now.
@anon66243189 can start a new thread when the group is up and running again.
1 Like