@textpattern on Twitter

jstubbs · 2010-02-20 18:00:42

This subject has come up several times in the past – its not new. It would certainly be good if there was a strategy for marketing and communication, but I don’t think its feasible or reasonable to expect the core devs to come up with this, and they may also have different ideas about marketing.

But since this is an open source product there is nothing to stop you or anyone else from putting a strategy together. As an example, Facebook (even though I dislike it) is necessary these days for promotion – at least while its still “cool”.

I have a project starting next week which should also help promote/develop TXP – anything that moves TXP forward is welcome.

Destry · 2010-02-20 19:23:37

Thanks for the points, Jonathan. I agree and disagree with yours, and I think you’re missing mine.

I’m glad you brought in the word “strategy”, though, because that’s what I’m all about.

Despite what you are suggesting, however, there can be no real strategy if everyone is off doing their own thing. The ‘more willy-nilly the better’ is not real strategy for Textpattern (the entity), nor does more automatically mean moving things forward. It’s that kind of logic that has got Textpattern nowhere (comparatively) but steady-state for six years now. Just look at the other open source projects and how their models differ than here, and the proof is in the pudding. “Open source” has nothing to do with it.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying people shouldn’t build things. By all means they should and have a good time doing it. I’m just saying don’t confuse real strategy with flights of fancy or personal projects. However good-intentioned they are, it’s not strategy unless it’s orchestrated harmoniously with other objectives. (A fact this community will likely never come to terms with.)

Facebook is just another channel in the strategy (like Twitter), it’s not a strategy itself. And speaking of which, let’s have a look there…

tap…tap…tap…Enter

Hmm. ~~Two~~ a group and a page:

~~A quick perusal of the three two tells me right away there’s no strategy going on whatsoever; not among the three locations nor in accord with the efforts of Textpattern itself.~~

The obvious outlier is the TextPattern group, which is not only falsely marketing the system, but is unnecessarily competing with the group correctly named. No offense to Viking, but if he really wants to help he should delete that group. This is clearly a good example that not all community efforts help move Textpattern forward. (As well a good example that Textpattern, the entity, should take better control of it’s potential resources so it can wield a stronger strategy.)

The actual Textpattern group on Facebook is promising, if but a little behind the times on the branding and no core representation. In fact, I’d say that group could give this forum a run for it’s money if it was properly promoted. I’m not a huge fan of Facebook either for personal use, but I’m perfectly fine with it for “group” objectives like this one. Frankly, I think this forum has outlived itself and then some. It’s like a Haitian presidential palace waiting for the first tremor.

I have no idea what the page is supposed to be doing. It has two posts on it’s wall, and the first post tells people to go use the forum. What? Another case in point of bad strategy. I’m not a socmed guru, but I do know you don’t put up shop in a social media location and then tell people that use it to leave there and go use something else. It should at least point to the Facebook group so that people who like using Facebook use the environment they want to use. (And like with the point of Twitter, each tool will have it’s specific characteristics of communication.)

I totally agree with the idea of putting a strategy together. I’m kicking ideas out there in this thread for those who might recognize it.

(Nothing but respect for Jonathan, like everyone else.)

[Ed. Edits per Viking’s quick action on the TextPattern group.]

Last edited by Destry (2010-02-21 01:29:01)

jstubbs · 2010-02-20 21:31:04

Destry, I agree with what you say so that makes me think I expressed myself badly!

My main point is I don’t know how this is actually going to work unless a) someone is going to manage this b) an agreed strategy is put in place first

With regard to the developers, what I meant was that they may not have the inclination or desire to make this effort themselves, and lets be honest we’d rather they focus on improving the product anyway..

I am not suggesting someone go off and do their own thing. What I meant was that you (or someone else) are quite free to come up with a strategy and then ask the devs for their blessing before implementation.

Personally I’d be happy to contribute with any efforts in this regard, but only as part of an agreed strategy.

Are we on the same page now? (Not Facebook!)

maniar · 2010-02-20 21:37:18

Actually both groups should be m00t and their members asked to become Fans of the Textpattern page. This is because Pages are really meant to bring out brand awareness on a larger scale – as opposed to groups which are meant to circle around a single cause (and are only limited to 5000 members).

A good explanation is given about Pages vs Groups at Mashable

Last edited by maniar (2010-02-20 22:22:56)

Gocom · 2010-02-20 22:13:06

Destry wrote:

The obvious outlier is the TextPattern group, which is not only falsely marketing the system, but is unnecessarily competing with the group correctly named.

Everyone is after own boner, including me and you ;)

QOTD is, is TXP that big deal and is the userbase that huge? ;)

I love it personally, but does it have something to chew on. Something to make those groups and micro blogs bigger. Are ppl generally interested in TXP as it is, or are they just after a use and forget. And does the current community communicate in English?

Last edited by Gocom (2010-02-20 22:44:07)

vk · 2010-02-21 00:00:57

@destry : I already deleted pages “Textpattern” on Facebook :)

Destry · 2010-02-21 01:22:37

@jstubbs: We’re on the same page. Maybe after April when I have conference stuff off my shoulders I can focus on a decent article of thoughts, or something.

@manier: I didn’t know that about Facebook groups and pages (probably most people don’t). That’s interesting considering the Txp page is still a blank canvas, waiting for good use.

@Gocom: Very good questions. My own input in this thread has ran in two directions and I’m even losing myself. In one respect their is the strategy stuff, which to me isn’t about growing the community, exactly, but rather improving the communication and information linkage of the content/channels that already exist. If community grows because of that improvement, that’s a welcome bonus. In the other direction, I was simply talking about face-to-face meetup opportunities, and that’s a different beast altogether. Perhaps one new tack of communication is to promote the idea of such meetups, like Text Meets, or Textmeats if you have an appetite.

@VK: Wow! That’s action, Jackson! (My earlier post revised.)

trenc · 2010-02-21 10:48:54

Hi Destry,

I respect and I like your enthusiasm. :)

I mostly agree with you. I like the idea of a Community Manager, who aggregate and publish some promotional stuff and I like the idea of TXP meeting.
Your are fully right: Tetxpattern needs more promotion – but wait, more users means more support for plugins, damn. ;)

I only disagree with some points on Twitter. I personally think Twitter is overrated. I think you can’t help people or can really discuss with others with a 140 char limit. Twitter is useful to promote some interessting links, short personal statements. So I think Twitter is more a personal and privat thing. I don’t know any company, which is succesfully using twitter by promotional aspects.
But ok, maybe my knowledge are limited on this.

Bloke · 2010-02-21 12:05:56

Guess I’m just plain not very social :-)

Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, et al are very gimmicky and very hip with people who can’t spell. But, as Destry says, very powerful communiation tools that can make a difference in community terms (Rage Against The Machine for Christmas #1, anyone?)

I’m no strategist, I don’t hold the keys to the Facebook page, nor do I have a clue what I’d do with them if I did. Forums, IRC, wikis, and all that old-skewl stuff that I grew up with have their place in the social environment; just try and find something on a Facebook page that’s more than a few days old; the search sucks and if that was our only communication system we’d be inundated with a bajillion support requests!

Twitter, as trenc mentioned, is also very ‘now’ in terms of its immediacy. Stuff that happened yesterday is old news and is not exactly a basis for archiving discussions that other people can access one, two, or six months from now. fwiw, I think there are a few corporations successfully employing Twitter as a marketing tool. Dell for one, iirc, allow people to follow their tweets to get special offers or new product info. I believe one of the car manufacturers also does this kind of thing; I forget which one.

Google Wave (which I finally understand, yay!) is an interesting effort too. Whether it can be utilised as a coherent, threaded communication or doumentation system for hundreds of people is questionable but its aims are noble. Certainly the search is better than Facebook :-)

As jstubbs highlighted, we as devs (well, me, can’t speak for us all) do what we can but our focus is the code. If there’s something we could do more of, or something that needs to be done to kick start this kind of thing that doesn’t require our focus to deviate too far, bring a plan here and let’s find out how to do it. Everyone here’s a TXP ambassador, right? Everyone has the capability to organise something. We’ve just gotta find the best mechanism for allowing people to stick a brightly coloured stake in the ground and draw people to it; whether that’s done via FaceSpace, MyBob, Twatter or whatever doesn’t matter. One of our strengths is that the community here on the forum is so awesome. That effort probably just needs channeling to an appropriate platform to avoid the segmentation things Destry pointed out earlier; that implies a plan/strategy of some sort.

[ Thin client — which, let’s face it, is what all this cloudy, network-centric, webby, Chrome stuff really is — failed in the 90s for various reasons, but is now socially acceptable. Storing and documenting stuff on someone else’s servers using someone else’s backup strategy and someone else’s 3rd party storage company is big business. If people are comfortable being given a loudhailer with a record button, who are we to argue? I have a suspicion it’s all cyclical anyway and we’ll revert to old-skool private networks soon enough, and then public ones, then private again… that’s just society ]

On the meet-up front, btw, if ever I’m travelling I’ll post my whereabouts (shame I left it too late recently) and try and find some folk nearby for a beer. I’ve done it a few times already and it’s great to put names to faces. I’ve forged some very cool working relationships with other community members that way. Similarly, if anyone is unfortunate enough to visit my neck of the woods, just yell.

The idea of doing this kind of thing on a larger scale has been brought up before and my thoughts are the same: I’ve no idea how others do it. Anyone have any insight how we can learn from them? Our community is smaller, for sure, but other communities must have started small too. A strategy/strategist is a good foundation to build from :-)

Last edited by Bloke (2010-02-21 12:08:16)

Destry · 2010-02-21 14:36:12

Trenc,

I hear you.

Everyone has their preferred systems/tools of use, and that’s OK. A good strategy takes that into account by catering to the ones considered to have the best value/return and not forcing people to use what they don’t want to.

Of course knowing where to draw the line is part of the strategy too — being realistic about how many channels to manage and why. It’s pretty well shown that the three biggies outside of a central website are Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin. There is currently Txp representation at all of these locations, though granted not used to their best capability.

Twitter is an important channel, and it’s scope of use is wide; much greater than just the personal vs. work scale. Usually the best use is a mixture of reasons, with the best case scenarios being where “promotion” happens as a result of simple engagement/dialogue, and not from direct promotional attacks (usually recognized as blatant marketing spam). There is a difference, and when the tool is tapped properly, it can make a difference too. But again, it’s more than just promotion, it’s about helping and sharing most of all.

With regard to companies, while it’s true most have yet to figure out how to use Twitter effectively, many have and certainly do use it well. Here are a few examples I know of: publishers (rosenfeldmedia, xmlpress…), airlines (jetblue...), music industry (ticketmaster…), and I’ve had good customer help from steelcase, typekit and a few others I’m forgetting off-hand.

———-

For clarity (following on Bloke’s heals)…

I should add that I’m talking about the 3 biggie social tools, not tools in general. Just like social tools are part of the strategy anymore, so are the old school tools like forum, wiki, etc. (It’s important to leave personal biases out of it.)

On a subjective level, I’m less concerned with the kind/nature of a tool and more concerned with the security/privacy issues that come with one. That’s a large reason why I’m not a heavy user of Facebook (too many ways to trip up there).

On an objective level, I’m all about using what fits the needs of the community and it’s goals, and that includes consideration of all audience types too. The “technical strategy”, as it were, is finding the right, manageable mix of tools for the goals at hand and under the resources available (including human).

Last edited by Destry (2010-02-21 15:26:16)

jstubbs · 2010-02-21 15:39:01

Twitter is very useful in many ways. Its helpful to think of it as an informational resource.

The TXP Facebook page is a disaster. For a start it should have a vanity URL i.e facebook.com/textpattern. One can get this once the page has reached 25 fans. Its more harmful to TXP to have a poor presence on FB than none at all – same goes for Twitter or any other site.

And for meet-ups – always happy to have a beer with anyone visiting Barcelona…

Destry · 2011-08-17 06:57:32

This dog looks like it needs a good kick! (Sorry, Els.)

I“m wondering if automatic tweets about bug reports is the kind of thing you want to push out to the world. If it was my account, I’d say no.

Also, if the owner of the account is willing to have a few promotional tweets from a human once in a while. I’d be willing to contribute. I operate in 4 twitter accounts already, three of which are collaborative. One more won’t hurt me. I don’t intend to be tweeting all day long or anything. But even a couple human-sourced tweets per week would be good for the textpattern account.

As an admin in the Facebook group, it’s easier to sync and share messages if I’m using The Twitter too.

Just an offer. Take it or leave it.

Textpattern CMS

Textpattern CMS support forum

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