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[Music] foreign [Music]
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this is WP product talk the place where every week we interview an experienced
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WordPress product owner on strategies tips experiences failures and successes
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of running successful and thriving WordPress product businesses I am Zac Katz founder of gravity kit and trusted
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login and I'm Katie Keith CEO and co-founder at Bantu plugins
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and I'm excited because today is topic is social media marketing for WordPress products
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and this is a great topic because some extent and yet lots of where
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product companies are unsure how to use it to grow their business boy and to talk with us today is our
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special guest Carmen Kendrick and Carmen welcome to the show
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hi everyone uh please introduce yourself and uh tell us what you do
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yes so again my name is Carmen Kendrick I am a product marketing manager at
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learndash and if you're kind of curious what that title means pretty much anytime it comes to product releases new
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products I am managing the marketing behind all those things and then also my
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little side business is unzip marketing and it is a book that I'm writing about
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how to grow your freelance business so that's me excellent and so we're doing this live
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and people can also watch later so anyone who's watching live we would encourage to leave a comment or a
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question whether you're commenting on something we've said adding your own perspective or asking a question that
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you'd like one of us to answer so feel free to leave comments and we'd love to answer them live
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so firstly we always start with the topic why is this so important for
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WordPress product owners so Zach do you want to go first yeah as social media is crucial you you
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have to know what's going on with social in social media channels because it allows you to communicate directly with
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your customers your users your potential customers uh you need to know what
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people are saying uh so that you can communicate with them uh and respond
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directly to their concerns or their questions or identify uh what how
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they're talking about your product and your brand absolutely yeah
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yeah why do you think it's all social media is a great way to
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find out what your customers want and what they're saying about your brand your competitors and I say that because
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what happens is you're trying to find the right marketing message to put out there and the best way to make your
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marketing to speak to your customers is to use the language that they're already using so when you're on social media you're seeing how they're talking about
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your competitors or even talking about your brand and you can pretty much put that into your messaging when you do do
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your marketing for your product that's a really interesting point to think about the competitor side of
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things as well as what you're doing directly so I think it's a huge topic to talk
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about because social media could be a big opportunity to spread the word about your WordPress products and build a name
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for yourself but it can also be a big time sync and it's difficult to measure the return on investment so as a
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community we need to share our experience of what does and doesn't work for us so that we can all learn from
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each other so uh let's talk about this let's learn from each other uh during our story time
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uh let's share some personal experiences with social media marketing and how it made a difference for you and Carmen
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would you please go first yeah of course so my I've always used social media but
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not in a business or like a marketing a product type of way so my story is kind
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of funny um I was on Twitter before but for whatever reason I deleted my account and so I was going to work Camp Atlanta
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I want to say that was 2018 I believe and um I had gone the year before that but I
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really didn't feel like I really connected with anybody and so I was advised like hey join Twitter and start
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meeting people and so that was like the biggest game changer for me by joining Twitter and have these conversations
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because I would see a lot of the people I was speaking to on Twitter before I got to work or when I got to work camp
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and it just made it so much better I feel like I knew people it was so nice just to you know have that connection
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beforehand so you didn't feel all weird and awkward talk like hey so what do you do in WordPress it's like hey I I saw
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you online we were talking um so from that experience what I did because at that point I was freelancing
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um so from that point I just started to share my journey on Twitter about you know how it was like me going from a
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full-time job into building WordPress websites for people and so many people just latched on to my story and even
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fast forward to now um when this role became available at learndash um I actually found this job I'm working
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I learned as through Twitter so it was really just a great opportunity for me to meet so many people and to share my
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story and just kind of take it from there so that's my personal story we've kind of focused so far on talking
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about the products aspect of it but there's the networking aspect of it too and with word campus coming up I'd love
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to hear more about your experiences with uh using social media as a networking
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opportunity
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with you other vendors other brands and also your customers that may be showing up to
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these word camps so getting on Twitter which is I think is the best platform honestly for like World campuses like
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real-time conversation and getting to know people um or even putting it in your um you can
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change your name on Twitter so like you have your username with yours also a name and so a lot of Brands they
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actually do uh go into word campus and so if somebody's searching that term or they see it come up like you know it is
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both comfortable and you can have that conversation beforehand so when you get to the actual word Camp it just makes it
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just a better experience overall overall excuse me to talk to people when you're there so that's a really big thing for
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networking and when you get there in person like you have that connection and it doesn't feel like hey I'm trying to sell you my WordPress products like hey
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we've already connected so interesting so what do you find is the
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difference between personal versus uh brand kind of social media in terms of
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the pros and cons do you find one significantly more valuable and does it affect the network and
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um that sort of thing yeah so I definitely feel like people we trust other people and it's not so much
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as like you know you want your brand to have its own social media presence but it's also important from someone from
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the brand and Katie I think you do a great job of that like you're very transparent on Twitter about you growing
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your company and so people like to connect like I said before with other people so it's like a balancing it's
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like you have to balance it because your personal brand if you are connected to your brand very closely it has to also
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reflect so you can't be you know saying crazy things on social media but also you know talking about your brand and
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like how your product is like you know it solves so many problems but you're just a nasty person
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um otherwise so it's very delicate on balance and that but I do think having both is important
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we recommend having I forget what they call them but like Shadow accounts where you have your actual personal and you
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have your your personal brand personal account or do you do you do that do you have it like a separate hidden personal
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yeah so at one point I experimented with it but I just didn't like it to be
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honest I just felt like I was you know I don't know like just two-faced it in a
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sense um so I'm just like you know what this is who I am choosing to be I'm gonna choose to be a positive person I know
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Twitter has like a variety of topics and so you just have to think about like hey
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what is my actual goal with this and not let your personal interests get in the way of like what you're trying to do
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professionally which in sometimes is more important than just like putting your opinion out there because
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everyone's putting their opinion out there and Kitty uh could you share your
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stories uh with social media marketing yeah that follows on quite nicely from
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Carmen's really um I um we always have brand accounts for
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band to mainly Facebook and Twitter just because it felt like we should actually
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we have LinkedIn as well but I never go in there um but all of them are really we've never really invested in we just also
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post our blog our new blog post and that's kind of about it
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um and I've never really seen any value at one point we hired somebody to try to
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grow our Twitter following as a but the Band 2 brand and nothing really happened
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it did you know we got a few more followers but it didn't link to sales or anything measurable so I always felt
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very skeptical about it and uh was never on anything personally from a
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professional stance until just last October and then there was a few things
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that came to convince me to join Twitter as an individual within the WordPress Community one of them was going going to
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word campus last year and I think this year will be different but last year it
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was mostly bigger Brands and companies that have been acquired and as a sort of
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Standalone independent company it made me feel kind of a bit like determined I
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can do it on my own I don't need all this I was hanging out with loads of lovely people but they had all been
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acquired um including people from learndash and um and it just kind of gave me a bit of
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a complex I suppose so I was thinking how can I you know get bigger in the community without needing that support
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of having sold my company which I'm not looking to do at the moment and and the other thing was then my husband Andy
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who's my um business partner as well said you should be on Twitter uh Katie
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um you are the face of barn too and that's what people do so I reluctantly joined Twitter last October
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see there's no coincidence with you moving to Mastodon at this point which we should discuss later anyway
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um as the comparative social networks um so I joined and it was actually amazing and I very quickly built a
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network similar to what Carmen described earlier on fellow WordPress professionals people that run similar
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companies people can learn from me I can learn from them and I found real value in it it was a bit like a mastermind
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Group which I have with Zach and some other people but kind of on a bigger scale so you don't have such a personal
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connection with these people but you have a wider breadth of experience as well so sometimes there's a value in
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posting a question there as well as or instead of within a smaller network of kind of a private Network like a
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mastermind group so I've got loads out of it and when we sponsored wordcamp
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Europe people were coming up to me and saying how much they value my Twitter which I was really surprised about
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because I came into it with no strategy whatsoever and just because of those two
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things I mentioned um the um and the Imposter Syndrome from webcam Europe uh us and my husband
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telling me to so that was really amazing and I've also had some Direct business benefits from being on Twitter
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personally for example we recently acquired a plug-in for the first time called woocommerce Product tabs and the
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previous owner reached out to me having got to know me and he contact me directly on Twitter so if I wasn't on
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Twitter as an individual professional that acquisition would probably never have happened and there's been a few
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things like that and I look forward to meeting people at wordcamp us next week who I've started to get to know on
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Twitter so it kind of jump starts those relationships a bit so I'm kind of still
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skeptical about the brand side of things and would like to learn about anybody who's making that work for them but I
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really do see that as a professional yeah brain is very tough because you
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also I think some of the brands that do um do the best on social are ones that really participate in pop culture
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uh but if you can find those references like we missed the opportunity with Stellar which is like one of the kind of
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umbrella brands of learndash so I think a couple weeks ago it's like a UFO alien sightings and sellers All About Out of
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This World um the seller verse and I'm like hey this is a perfect opportunity um so for me personally I think that
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Brands is really a struggle unless you can kind of connect with with everyone's already talking about without like not
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being true to your brand so another example is Barbie was very big but I
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wouldn't do anything with learned action Barbie I mean I don't know but Barbie's a teacher or something but sometimes you
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can't participate in every Trend and that's okay but I think that's what make a lot of Brands really send out when
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they have their own personality and when they're participating a lot of the pop culture events that's going on
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how do you define that line from participating in in Trends and and
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holding back and uh do you have a document like how do you define this stuff internally uh to say that would be
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kind of cringe if we got involved in this uh hashtag uh let's let's hold back from this one yeah
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yeah I think it comes to uh just having a document that's like your Brand's
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personality as it's like it's a person it's almost like a reverse um client Persona and it's like a
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Persona on your brand like you know when you think of your brand who is it like I can't think of anybody for whatever
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strange reason I don't know like Bob Iger from Disney or something um is your is your brand like this
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person think of it as a person and then also think about your customers so uh learned that she has a very large
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um I guess outside of the U.S audience and customer base and so sometimes you have to think about okay this is who we
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are as a brand these are our customers and is that really going to connect if I talk about for example Barbie to this
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customer base and sometimes it doesn't make sense so I think knowing your brand and really knowing your audience is how
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you can determine what makes sense for you and regarding that that kind of
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references something Katie was talking about in terms of where your brand is on social media a kitty who said you
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weren't on LinkedIn or you wherever you weren't active there uh our brand the gravity kit is on uh is on X previously
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known as Twitter uh even though I'm not personally uh how do you how do you
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choose which channels to get involved in uh as a product owner
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sorry was that for me or for kids oh sorry yes for you Carmen okay sorry
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just because because you want to have you want you would have your handles taken on all social platforms because
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you just want doesn't you don't want the situation where someone just comes in and try to say you know and ask things about your Brands because you don't have
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a handle so I think it's definitely a great idea to clean your handles but you don't have to actively participate on
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each brand I think that thinking about again where your customers at where they're talking to you already for
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learndash that's Facebook our Facebook group uh is amazing it's like over 25 000 members and it continues to keep
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growing and so that's like our main focus we do a little bit on Twitter we have an Instagram account but it's not
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updated that frequently and it's mainly just about showing up where our customers actually are online
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and we have a Facebook group as well um and we had been doing Facebook ads to
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try to to get people to like our Facebook group who may not have been known about it because we may not have
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communicated it well enough uh and we've been slowly building it and I I I admit
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that we haven't utilized it very well to communicate uh to our with our customers to interact with them
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um what advice do you have for product owners for Facebook groups in particular all right
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well I know it sounds cliche but it's really the community and you're looking at it more sometimes you will have
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topics that come up that you may um put into place but it's really the community themselves talking about it
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just also depends on your product itself because learn Dash can be used for so many use cases our Facebook group is
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very much thriving with people just asking all different questions like hey I'm a homeschool person how can I use
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sir Dash in this instance and it just also depends on your product itself so sometimes Facebook groups may not be the
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best thing but it just depends on like how complex your product is and it seems like the more complex the more that you
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have people that's asking those type of questions and really keeping that group going
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cool let's bring up a comment from Amber now which directly responds to that
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sorry I pressed the wrong button there it is um so Amber says we have a Facebook
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group but I have a hard time finding time to go in and respond to other people's questions and posts do you have
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any advice about that Carmen yes so it's very important to establish
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that the Facebook group is more peer-to-peer kind of support and anything official
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um if you have a you know direct question it goes to your actual support ticketing system um and sometimes you may have to remind
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people about that um but it's always like you have to make that clear like this is very much
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peer-to-peer we're here to help when we can but if there's something official that you need help with you should definitely go through our ticketing
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system so you just have to put that reminder out there constantly to people I feel you would need a very big user
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base in order to achieve that peer-to-peer support um maybe would that be better for bigger
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companies do you think I think so too but I mean learn Dash I
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mean for the last I think we required in 2021 um even before like liquid web like came
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on and purchased learn Dash it was still pretty much a thriving I think it's been around since 2013.
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um so it has been around for a while so we have had time to establish that user base so in the beginning I do feel like
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maybe it is a little bit more you're interacting in there and I've even seen I want to say and maybe be the events
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counter I can't think of which one of our Brands is like that there's actually someone else that kind of has the
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Facebook group and it's not actually owned by the brand but the brand is active inside of the Facebook group itself so sometimes that can be a thing
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maybe you can link with the WordPress influencer and they actually have the group about your product
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um in there as well so there's a lot of different ways you can do it to encourage Community it doesn't always have to be about your product I think
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one of the things I like the most um with Facebook I'll see groups about um online course Academy online course
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Builders and when you have a group like that it's very because we're all about online courses it's very easy to insert
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yourself but you don't have to worry about hey am I getting enough attraction because people are talking about so many
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topics when it comes to online course creation and it's just not just about your product so you can approach it in a
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few different ways even being a small company Amber has a follow-up question or
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comment rather it says we have about a thousand members and there are about 10 people who respond to posts and provide
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help um I assume that's people from inside the community uh like inside the group
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that are not employees that are 10 active people is that true uh amber but
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regardless uh what what how many active members do you see in your groups like
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do you how do you reward these uh these star contributors uh is that something you have uh set up
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uh for Amber for me oh sorry uh yeah for you okay uh so the funny thing is I don't
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really do a lot of moderation myself in our Facebook group uh and we do have like Michelle for I'm pretty sure
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you all familiar with her um I believe she has set up some type of gamification badges um in Facebook which is really
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important you'll see those little things next to people's name and that makes a big difference
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um also if you have any type of like an experts page on your website that may be a way to reward those people that are
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very helpful and you maybe want to screen a little bit more to make sure they really understand how your product works and helping people but that could
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also be something because you're you know so valued in our Facebook group we're gonna actually put you on our
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experts page on our website and send clients to you for the product so that helps them show recognition and you know
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support there and one thing that I was going to talk about later but seems like a good time
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now is how how do you use social media as a product owner to kind of gather
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this feedback into actionable items for the product team uh like either enhancements or bug reports or ticket
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like how do you ingest all that stuff into your company's processes
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so it's uh it's definitely work it's not a manual work that goes into that and I'm probably not as good as it as I
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probably should be but if you can commit to maybe twice a month just going to I
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like using G2 and capture as well even though they're not really social media sites like I like to go on like
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competitors um the review sites and see what their their customers are seeing about their
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products like what are they upset about and kind of just putting that all into a spreadsheet you also want to have like
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an official channel to kind of put those things in but just Gathering those things and it's just having it there is
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also very helpful um for you to help you know talk to your product teams about hey what should we do next in the product so
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yeah uh in terms of my social media story time uh when when we launched
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gravity view in 2014 uh I had built a lot of um I built a list already of email
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newsletter lists uh of beta testers and people who had signed up to be interested in it I had been promoting it
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on social media uh as as early as possible with like teaser images and
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teaser stuff and then when we finally launched uh it was a good response but
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it also didn't sustain itself uh what I found to happen uh what I found really
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got the word out was when we released a YouTube music video and people found that to be really fun
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and they were retweeting it and talking about it and commenting on it saying you know best thing ever I released that a
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week before a conference called prestonomics and it was the buzz uh at prosnomics or at least it was for me
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everybody was talking about how much fun they thought it was and how it you know told them about the product let them
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know it existed uh all while making them laugh and sing along so that was my that
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was my one viral moment where I felt like the WordPress Community knew what
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was going on because of the social media because of the silly video uh and I certainly helped set the brand tone for
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Gravity View you've done more than one music video haven't you I seem to remember you got
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Matt mullenweg to sing one time I did yeah Matt contributed during the
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pandemic I uh saw the the social media videos that were going around with
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people all collaborating on a music video so um I had the person who created the
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gravity view music video he created a song for uh for everybody to take part
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in and then he edited it together and we all uh sang along so um I believe that was the word process
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people song um strong yes yes thank you I how quickly
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these three years have gone so if you go to wpstrong.com let me make sure that
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Link's nope that doesn't work link uh wpstrong.org you can see uh a lot of
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people joining in on a collaborative video during the pandemic
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directly for your brand but it would have helped raise awareness of gravity kit as it was then
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yeah and I I decided in order to make good at the business expense I figured it was it made sense to have a little
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thing at the end that said you know brought to you by gravity view um I don't think uh Matt was thrilled
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that that existed he thought it was just some sort of open source project like I don't know I had to be paid for somehow
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sorry man I didn't apparently breathe in on that sorry foreign
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type of uh project I don't know if you're familiar with Michael Jackson and all the people that contribute to that song so that's what it made me think of
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just just a random thought yeah and I I had originally thought that everybody was going to be singing in their in
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their natural voices Jonathan Mann in his uh in his wisdom auto-tuned people so that it actually matched the match
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the the melody rather than trying to make it uh you know just our voices so
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that was probably a wise move yes
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so now is our section for best advice for product owners um regarding social media so Katie uh
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can you share your best advice for product owners yeah I would say to
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choose a purpose for your social media marketing are you targeting potential customers existing customers or more
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generally raising awareness of yourself and your company in the industry and once you've done that figure out which
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social networks they hang out on and get active there make a habit of posting regularly and
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allocate at least 10 minutes a day per Network to scrolling through your feed and commenting on other people's posts
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too because that makes a difference and I think we should pull out some of that in a minute and once we've done all of
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our top tips and talk about pros and cons of different networks and things as well
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yeah I I agree that we should talk more about that um for my tip my best advice it's to
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find out who's in charge of social media um because our support team technically
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responds to some questions in our Facebook group then our our marketing team responds to the people on Twitter
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uh and sometimes things can fall through the cracks uh if we don't keep on top of it uh there there's a gravity forms
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Forum that they run like running discourse that's it gets complicated so
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make sure you know who's doing what and uh and then customers can learn whether
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or not they can rely on your response
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so Carmen what are your top tips and best advice for new product owners on
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social media yeah so I think I've already kind of alluded to some of these points but
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thinking about thinking about where your potential and even your existing customers are currently and then also
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you don't have to be on every platform just the one that makes sense but Reserve those handles I can't uh recommend that enough
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and I know that Katie uh Katie and I before the call uh Katie gave me a lot of grief about there's only one sentence
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oh there was so much there was so much Guff that was just embedded in that sentence uh because I'm a master let's
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make it live to the world let's make it live I'm airing my grievances right here live on the show
28:18
oh I left Twitter uh I am still I still
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I just scroll Twitter but I I refuse to engage I favor things but I'm not going
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to add content because of my I don't know my my ethics that aren't actually that strong
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principles I have principles darn it at least until the next time I choose to change my principles
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um so I'm on Mastodon only and I find that there's a great broadcast Community there but it's not the same as Twitter
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and it's certainly not the same as threads and it's not the same as blue sky and it's not the same as LinkedIn
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because who knows what goes on there maybe Carmen does uh
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Carmen can you help guide us on this uh I know you talked a little bit about finding where your customers are but can
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you can you go into more uh of the kind of nuances of different networks and
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what might be there yeah so um I think even if like not choosing to
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actively participate on Twitter uh or X so I feel like you can still maybe put
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in your bio and maybe even it's an autoresponder just reminding people like Hey we're not on here that much but
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here's where you can connect with us on other places so I think that actually works as well um you're not really actively adding
29:34
anything of benefit but you're just telling people like hey if you're here um you know just you know you can still
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you know talk to me on other platforms just talk about the brand on other platforms so I think that's what you kind of just have to decide just
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checking in every now and then but you don't have to say like I'm gonna do a whole strategy on this platform
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um because I feel like even threads we were very excited about it and then I'm just like I don't hear anything about
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threads anymore so yeah that was brief wasn't it
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I think that people are engaging on it I think it's kind of turning into a more Niche type of thing I'm like I have a
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friend she's a hair stylist and she said that hairstylists were doing a really rare I mean really well on threads so I
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think it just depends it's back to where your audience is so
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I've noticed that when people apply for marketing jobs with me they start
30:31
recommending that we go on all these social networks that we're not um for example one person was adamant
30:39
that we should be on Pinterest and that that was like the third biggest search engine in the world or something like
30:45
that but I've never heard of any WordPress company having Success Through that and similarly others are saying we
30:52
should be on Instagram um which I can't see any relevance of Instagram because that's like photos
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isn't it I know I'm showing my age here um but we don't have photos of our products maybe screenshots but who wants
31:05
that so what about these other networks are there any others you think people can find success with carbon
31:12
I definitely think you can find success with Tick Tock and Pinterest but it's
31:18
not just a simple thing as just posting it still has to be a funnel to like get people because the ultimate goal is we
31:24
want people to buy our products and find success in them and so it can't just be oh we should be there because it's cool
31:30
and everybody's already there like you can't just do it to fit in the crowd like you have to have a strategy because at anything at the end of the day like
31:37
you know you're paying people to you know do this job and they also have to be producing something from it so it
31:43
would be nice to have a presence and be posting on all these platforms but you just have to choose one do that very
31:49
well and then maybe move on to the next platform if you can or if you want to and in terms of strategy how long should
31:57
people try a network like how long should a brand be building and building before realizing that it might not be a
32:04
good fit for the network um I know it sounds like a long time but I would at least give it a year but you
32:10
have to be very focused on making sure your content connects and that everything you put out there it has an
32:16
end goal to it so I would say at least a year um I started a tick tock for learn Dash we have one video up and so I'm very I
32:24
even did the Pinterest thing it's just like hey we can't let's just focus on what we're actually good at so I did a
32:31
Instagram so we joined we have a mascot called floaty he's an astronaut he may
32:36
or may not be human we don't know uh he joined Instagram and he has posted maybe
32:42
once or twice um but when we did a paid ad for
32:47
Instagram where somebody made a cookie that was uh a floaty cook floaty
32:53
designed cookie and they did like a Time Lapse video them decorating it all nice
32:58
it got no play like nobody all the cooking Community loved it like the few
33:03
and uh no it didn't go beyond the cookie making community so in terms of
33:09
strategic blunders I would say that was it uh and we have not been back on
33:14
Instagram uh since then so I don't think we're going to be uh staking a claim there
33:22
yeah it goes back to that funnel
33:28
something sounds like Instagram for example or ads it's like hey what are where are the people at in their Journey
33:33
do they already know about my product are they looking for that solution and then it kind of just goes from there and
33:38
how that flows so it could work but you have to be very very detailed on what you want that to look like I didn't have
33:45
a strategy I just wanted a cookie about our mascot is that okay
33:56
opening Mastodon is diluting um the impact of say Twitter because I
34:02
don't want to double the time I spend scrolling through feeds and I I've heard that there's a lot of duplication
34:08
between the two as well um so it's like I think if you do one you have to kind of embrace it as we
34:15
just touched on with not being on too many and do it properly so that you can really build a following and make it
34:22
work so the more you're on the less likely that is particularly as an individual rather than a brand where you
34:29
might have different marketing colleagues to handle different networks potentially
34:34
right Herman are you concerned at all from a brand management standpoint uh
34:41
associating with you know X because is there like a are you on
34:47
Truth social for example like is there is there some sort of brand management question as to what networks you join
34:54
versus what networks you don't join from a from just an associative standpoint
35:00
yeah so I'm very much in the mindset of what's best for the business
35:06
um which can be you can toe the line with that because some people have used that excuse as to do very unethical
35:12
unreasonable things um but it's to me it's about what's best for the business me personally I'm
35:17
getting older so I don't want to be on every new social app that comes up but
35:23
if it makes sense for the brand and if my customers are saying you know we don't like what x is doing and we're
35:29
moving somewhere else we're going to Mastodon it totally makes sense to establish your presence there because your people have made it known
35:36
um and so that could be maybe accomplishing me maybe even surveys send out to your customers like hey where are
35:41
you hanging out online and you can make those decisions those sound decisions based on actual research you have from
35:47
your customers so and Carmen one thing I've I wanted to
35:53
make sure to get all your all your knowledge and insight on uh was using
35:59
social media for product launches and like what what are your tips for
36:04
specifically how to sculpt kind of a product launch campaign I would love to learn more about that
36:12
awareness thing on social media like hey it's out there but our biggest one is going to be our Facebook group so
36:18
anytime we have a product launch I don't care if we don't touch Twitter Instagram we are definitely going to put out an
36:25
announcement in our Facebook group and that's how we handle it we like we don't have to do every single platform it just
36:31
makes sense I keep saying this like what our audience and what our customers are actually engaging with and what they're
36:37
going to see because we can put something on Instagram or Twitter and we all mention it in Facebook group and
36:42
then someone finds it and screenshots it and like hey why didn't you guys tell us about this and I'm like oh my God we
36:48
just forgot to do that so we've learned that the Facebook group is the most important for announcements
36:53
and do you do the same for sales uh like how do you how do you approach like
36:59
specific social media sales do you do that versus like email newsletters uh on
37:06
the website how do you do promotions so email is always our biggest driver
37:11
when it comes to conversions social helps social is more so to me social ads
37:16
and it's uh retargeting people that may have gone to the site or something of that nature and so when it comes to our
37:23
sales we're that's what we're basically doing what we're doing retargeting on social and not so much as trying to get
37:28
the word out about it because at the same time WordPress products they can be kind of Niche and so it's not like
37:34
somebody with learndash they may be looking at a teachable and said we can't compete with the teachable
37:40
um so it's better to try to get the people that are already looking at erection and put more attention on that
37:49
interesting and I wonder whether we should widen the net of what we would call a social network for example within
37:56
WordPress there are other things which are basically equivalent such as the
38:01
post status slack community in terms of the benefits actually that is pretty
38:06
much a social network isn't it even though it's a closed one um would you say that should be part of
38:12
the strategy and are there any others like that that I've missed yeah I think when you say that to me
38:18
social media just means community and uh with something like uh Discord or a
38:23
slack Channel you kind of have a little bit more ownership on what happens there so it's not even just thinking about oh I need to be on these top platforms I'm
38:29
focused on building my community and I think that's the best way to look at this
38:35
yeah true and with each one I find it's more and more time and overhead like I
38:40
don't get much out of the post status one because I haven't made the time to go through all the different threads on
38:48
it and sometimes people comment me on something relevant and I join in but I find it's more and more places to check
38:55
every day and there's obviously the official ones as WordPress and woocommerce and there's absolutely tons
39:01
of them so I find that challenging but I think there's a lot of value in those WordPress ones
39:07
yeah definitely I just lost my point that I was gonna say behind that about
39:12
the community building piece to it but oh I know what it was so a lot of things are changing on social media platforms
39:19
like I think it's they're calling um staying on the platform there's a
39:24
special name for it but it's like basically no linking out and for us like we need the traffic from people linking
39:30
abilities platforms they don't want people to leave so it's honestly best to try to figure out your best way to build
39:36
can be like using these social media platforms to get people to your actual own Community is what it comes down to
39:41
because the rules are always changing and it's also always to their benefit and not ours is product owners
39:49
yeah I have heard heard that that linking out they don't want even things like
39:54
um apparently it's better to embed a video directly into Facebook or Twitter rather than host it on a YouTube site
40:02
and then put the link in and things like that because it's all about um creating that um kind of echo chamber
40:10
where nobody can get out they just want you to stay within there and yeah and one of the things that we explored was
40:17
setting up our own discourse not Discord uh but discourse which is like a forum software and we chose not to do it
40:24
because we would have to build that whole network up um there's self-hosted uh like buddy
40:31
boss for example Community platforms that allow you to try to build a community on your own domain that you
40:37
don't have to use Facebook but uh it seems like you would have you've been
40:43
talking Carmen about bringing people meeting people where they are at the platform that they're currently using
40:48
addressing their their concerns wherever they are and building a community of your own is a lot more work than than
40:55
going to where they exist already um have you what's your opinion on trying to build a network on your own
41:02
domain that uh from like from scratch I think it's a two-prong approach it's
41:09
like you still are on the networks that already exist but you're still finding ways to push them into your own
41:15
Community or wherever that may live on your own domain so I definitely think it's a two-party you're definitely not going to just build it and have people
41:21
coming there from day one but pushing people there um there's a game on my iPad it's called like Township and it is just like
41:28
amazing to me all the things in the game that keeps me coming back too because I've played plenty of games before but
41:34
it just keeps me coming back so like you really have to strategically think about what you're building your own community
41:39
and like how do I keep these people coming back how do I keep them engaged so
41:46
yeah like the whole gamification thing and um yeah those Rewards
41:52
it's hard with knowing whether to create your own Community or bring people into Facebook or something because on the one
41:58
hand you've got to build the whole thing and people would have to create accounts on your buddy boss website or whatever
42:05
but on the other what about the people that have refused to join Facebook for example which seems to me to be
42:13
declining fewer and fewer people are on it so at the moment I can't think of one
42:18
universal place where everybody is where you can guaranteed meet all of your customers
42:25
yeah I think the only way that's kind of solving that problem is I notice a lot of sites are using social
42:31
um sign-ins so it makes it so much easier versus having to create a new account because a lot of people are using things like Gmail for example uh
42:37
Facebook and Twitter is off often options but it kind of meets people where they are and they don't have to create a brand new account and it's
42:43
something that they're already using to try to get them into your own community so I definitely recommend using things
42:49
like that yeah true right well we've nearly
42:56
um been 45 minutes which is when we normally end so does anybody have any final points they want to make before we
43:02
close okay I was I'm sorry I just want to say
43:08
this was a really great conversation um I really enjoyed it so I just want to put that out there
43:13
out there well thank you so much for being on the show it's been great and I think we've covered a really great breadth of the issues around social
43:20
media marketing for product owners which is exactly what we wanted so hopefully
43:25
that'll be super useful to people and you've been a brilliant guest uh next week we are not doing an episode
43:32
because all for uh actually Maps off at a wedding and the other three hosts are
43:38
at Work Camp us so um we're gonna skip a week and then we will be back on the
43:43
30th of August with special guest Rich table uh product manager at automatic
43:50
and we're going to be talking about product user experience so that's a totally different topic uh to this week
43:56
and that'll be really interesting and uh I love that Katie says you've been a brilliant guest that's uh British for
44:03
you've been an amazing guest uh or excellent thank you
44:10
apparently sounds good is negative in America so I don't know about that no
44:15
it's been in Germany too long I'm not gushing enough yeah so thank you Carmen and uh special
44:22
thanks to Pro status as well for being our green room where we coordinate things if you're enjoying WP product
44:30
talk uh please do us a favor hit like hit subscribe share with your friends
44:35
add us to your newsletters uh no add us in sign up just go go sign up follow us
44:42
on all the socials uh even Mastodon where Katie is not yet but she should be because that's where I am
44:50
and most of all uh we hope to see you next week uh thanks again for Carmen
44:55
Kendrick from learndash and uh thanks everybody hey