Originally discussed in fedora-commops#48.

Summary

This ticket contains some research from November 2016 about the Marketing team, how they operate, and some of their needs. The information here should be helpful later on when designing a hub for the Marketing team.

Explanation

The following is copy+pasted from the CommOps ticket. Some of this may need to be updated, but hopefully an active member of the Marketing team can add more info as needed.

Originally discussed in 2016-10-18 meeting.
Briefly mentioned in 2016-11-29 meeting.

Existing resources

This section serves as an index for useful pages for the Marketing team.

• Marketing team: Tasks and roles

Identifying problems

In order for us to find solutions to improving on-boarding to Marketing and retaining those contributors, we first have to identify the specific problems and issues that Marketing faces. The following list is a summary.

• Unclear tasks
  • Isn't clear what kind of tasks Marketing is working on during a release cycle and how to participate
• Visible tasks are overwhelming
  • Most visible tasks in Marketing are highly intimidating to a newcomer, like release announcements or talking points for new Fedora releases
• Temporary contributor lifespan
  • Many Marketing contributors come in cycles. Some people contribute for one, maybe two releases, then they might drop off. Retainment is an issue both with members and Marketing team leaders
• Oversimplified on-boarding
  • Current on-boarding steps are simple and don't provide a chance to engage: introduce self on mailing list, say hello in a meeting,and then…?
  • Strong need for more "easyfix" / low-hanging fruit type of tasks
• Creativity is stifled
  • Because of difficulty engaging new members, is challenging to focus on non-essential but important tasks, things other than release announcements and talking points
  • With increased communication about how to contribute ideas, Marketing could push to be more innovative with how we engage users / Linux community

Creating solutions

We talked about some of the potential solutions to solve some of the problems (think cause and effect). Some of the ideas we had are in bulletpoints below. Note that the list has not yet been refined.

• Working closely with others
  • Presented itself in many ways
  • Collaborating with Join SIG to engage Marketing newcomers with other areas in Fedora they might be interested in
  • Inviting other sub-projects to request help with writing or summarizing something, and have Marketing team members help write a report or short article on something happening elsewhere in project
  • Highlighting a subproject every month to showcase the things they do in Fedora – newcomers could reach out to some members of those teams to gather info and write an article
• Improving current on-boarding pipeline
  • Going beyond the mailing list introduction and meeting attendance
  • Break down the Tasks and roles wiki page into better communicated roles and smaller tasks (low-hanging fruit) to engage new contributors
• Better communicating with press
  • Establishing relationships with contacts in media and how we can convey Fedora news to them (and how someone could contribute towards this)
• Social media engagement
  • Creative strategies to promote stronger engagement on social platforms like Facebook/Twitter/Google+/etc.
  • Better ways to introduce newcomers to social media presence and encourage engaging with us there
• How I use Fedora!
  • Similar to talking points, but more general
  • Things that contributors are currently doing with Fedora, and convert them into a format that can be spread widely or shared about doing that activity
  • Later can be used for videos, interviews, streaming, or example work to share on personal channels or platforms
• Creating a badge
  • This should be considered a low priority task until we figure out a strategy for the bigger issues like retention – a badge will attract but won't retain
• Podcasting
  • Low barrier way to encourage contributors of doing things like feature profiles or interviews, like Chris Ward's Flock Stories podcast on Community Blog

CC

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