Project description¶
Communication and Marketing plan¶
High level communication/marketing/engagement plan
Marketing actions
- Kickoff meeting & article
- Explain project, goals and time line, ask for input
- Usual social media promotion
- Make sure to have a pretty logo, a site to link to and at least a basic thingy to download/look at/demo.
- in case of ‘big deal’ project pre-seed press with information
- Provide updates
- Short (bi)weekly update mail to devel@ and project@
- in case of ‘big deal’ project
- Status updates for news.o.o
- Interviews/articles during milestones
- Final/concluding meeting & article
- Celebrate success and contribution (if any)
- Usual social media promotion
- in case of ‘big deal’ project
- pre-seed press with information on final release and possibly initial announcement
- create countdown to 1.0 release
- attempt to get articles on other websites
Note: the vast majority of the writing above needs to start with the developers. They have to provide either a draft or have a conf call with someone who can write and then be available for review.
community engagement actions
- Write article about how to get the hands dirty
- how-to, tips & tricks, walk-through...
- create (recorded) hangout explaining how to do X, Y, Z
- 2 min intro of project, goals and timeline
- 2-4 min intro of current state & how to use it
- 2 min where to start hacking
- Q&A
- Keep first one short!<>! If there is demand, do more in-depth hangouts later.
- Give conference workshop(s)/talks
- Hands-on with the resulting project. Only if ready for end users
- hacking session. Only if a community around the project exists\
- short talk on progress/plans\
- quickly present project, goals, timeline. If project is small, maybe just a lightning session.
Note: only engage people if this is an intrinsic part of the project or you risk just creating disappointment and failure. You can’t do engagement just by talking or writing: you need to make it part of the development process. Have meetings in the open , make sure the software is VERY easy to deploy and easy to use , be there for questions, have a FAQ on the website etc. And yes, this ALSO goes for technical people. Being a ‘technical’ person merely means you happen to be good at something. It does not mean you’re willing to fight a build system, work through a terrible UI or read terse documentation. ‘engaging technical people only’ is an excuse for not admitting that you don’t want to put effort in.
If you want engagement:
- Be honest. Put effort in, otherwise, don’t promise stuff you won’t do.
- Make clear what channels developers will be available and when.
- Make sure external documentation is up to snuff
- Have usability/ease of use as high priority during development
Updated by aplanas about 11 years ago · 6 revisions