Preparing a coordinated marketing campaign

Just amazing, you are very gifted

3 Likes

You have nailed it with that video! Fantastic!

2 Likes

Thanks for the kind reactions guys. I really appreciate it. Just my 2 cents. You can’t really do anything with the video’s, and they’re far from perfect, but I’m glad to be able to share some of my inspiration and creativity with you all.

13 Likes

And worth a hell of a lot more

5 Likes

Just wanted to share quickly I was at one of those douchey conferences recently where all they try to do is sell you stuff. But the positive side to it was that the keynote speaker was Gary V.

he spoke a lot about social and was basically saying that the current spending on Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat is so undervalued its like back in the days of Google Adwords before the big companies took over. His advice was the next five years learn everything there is to learn about these platforms and invest heavily in them and the outcome will be you’ll dominate whatever market it is that you want.

I wonder what actions we can take in this area?

Should we maybe all throw $50 into a hat, pool our funds and start buying up ads?

Could be an idea. But for that we might need to have a foundation of sorts.

What are your thoughts guys on getting the word out via social media payed and sponsored spots?

Poll here Poll - EasyPolls.net

If anyone decides to do that, you should blast out my weekly MaidSafe update images. Feel like they have the potential to go viral :slight_smile:

MaidSafe Asia is supposed to start that next week, but every extra bit helps

Im thinking images from the office and people involved with the project or just fans for Insta, Facebook more in depth content and Snapchat I have no idea because I am too old lol…

Just to get a quick poll going.

Who would be up for contributing between $10-$100 for a central fund to be used on marketing efforts via Social Media?

Apologies guys, this is a pretty long post.

I thought about this one a bit before posting and will pre-cursor it by saying i’m a big supporter of any community driven initiative when it comes to getting the network out there but i’m not entirely sure it’s been fully thought through.

Please bear with me, I really love these videos from Dewild (they’re really cool mate, please keep making them) and I would happily chip in for funding for anything along those lines if needed no questions asked.

But there is something bugging me a bit with this topic, not trying to be a baddie just raise a point which hopefully might lead to a bit further discussion from some far more knowledgeable people in this field than me.

This isn’t an easy question to ask given the poor guys are constantly harassed, but what would be really nice is to hear from Maidsafe themselves a very brief and succinct thought process as to how they are thinking of approaching the whole marketing side of the network prior to Beta (Please note i’m excluding Maidsafe the company and their advertising from this discussion).

I’m not asking for “we plan to do xyz on a particular timeframe”, that’s not fair and something they honestly should be keeping very close to their chest (yes, even away from the Community for now). What I guess i’m looking for is something along the lines of (and this is just an example of a possible response) “we’ll drip feed the market with lower tiered marketing/advertising that we feel appropriate as we iterate through the next alpha stages before re-evaluating further decisions from this point onwards”.

This is of course just an example (and what my gut/observation tells me) and there could be a bunch of reasons why again this response may not be forthcoming.

I’m sure Nick in particular knows very well about balancing the whole concept of moving to a high burn rate far too quickly. Once you take that route there’s usually no return. and it’s hard to go back. Not many companies get this right and don’t work out their exact market fit and believe that it’s just a matter of spending money to reach the right customers or users. I think we are super lucky with Maidsafe and in particular Nick (that I can read from previous posts and documentation) he/the company gets this.

In the end marketing itself in whatever form, unlike effort invested in the network itself, can’t be leveraged unless the company is ready to send the product out to the customer.

Why am I raising these points, well I don’t know whether there’s been enough direction filtered down to the Community as to how we can best assist Maidsafe with this aspect of things.

Please, I don’t think any of us are entitled to a response but it would be really nice to align ourselves and our efforts as a community to the vision Maidsafe have for the Network and the people they think we should be trying to reach.

It’s been hinted on here before that a product with a truly great value proposition in the end practically sells itself. The right time to really dig into the sales and marketing is when it seems you have a market fit product. I’ll try and be gut wrenchingly honest, it doesn’t appear we’re actually there yet (and won’t be for a little while yet).

There was a really good post previous on here by a forum member that directly mentioned the importance of scaling (sotros25 i think it was). In plain english needing to know who you’re selling to, the tailoring of that specific message etc etc.

Watching the forum it appears as though there’s a tonne of talented people literally bursting at the leash to throw themselves into action in this department.

I know from their nice posts that Maidsafe are so appreciative of these people and realise how special a community they have behind them. I guess though the direction we are starting to take in this regard as a community isn’t wrong or misguided but would be much better served having some direction as to how best we can get our message out to the wider (targeted though) world.

Pushing out videos that you can see people have put their hearts into makes me genuinely happy to know there’s like minded people prepared to give anything of their time to make this network happen, but I do ponder whether burn out over time from the community becoming a concern if we just are aimless in heading down the path of our marketing.

Sure the fire burns bright and we could get the message out there I’m sure, but what in 18 months if we’re still waiting for Alpha 4 and the air has gone out of the creative tyres of all/most of these community members. I would really hate to see that happen.

I’m sure there’s arguments otherwise but well-intentioned (and really great) community efforts really end up losing a lot of their initial value if their not specifically targeted at the right time and to the right audience.

To borrow a term from Jabba, I genuinely don’t know my arse from my elbow when it comes to this stuff but I can see a big red warning light flashing in the distance if we continue down our own path in the marketing/advertising department.

The community 100% should be involved doing this but it needs to be with the end goal of the networks arrival and the goals that Maidsafe have clearly outlined to get to that path.

This post isn’t meant to dismiss any efforts so far (I’ve sat and watched those latest community videos at least a dozen times and shared them amongst everyone I know) and they deserve nothing other than encouragement and big pats on the back for those involved.

I guess i’m saying direction is needed as to how we can best help (if we are actually helping at this stage).

I know Maidsafe know exactly what they are doing and 100% trust them and don’t want them to give too much away. Just maybe encourage some input from them onto the forum as to what they think is best in helping them push this product out from a community marketing perspective and at what stage that should all happen.

Ps: I know this was a super long post and people are busy including Maidsafe themselves so I apologise, I just am seeing a few little flags that can be easily removed if communication is able to be facilitated with Maidsafe in this regard. I know they are so busy and don’t want to distract them, but the community is a massive weapon and it needs to be used correctly.

Feel free to give me a serve if this post doesn’t read well, just needed to be put out there for consideration and discussion.

11 Likes

Thanks for taking the time to post. With @SarahPentland starting a few weeks back marketing has been getting a lot more focus internally, not just with the increased social media activity, but more so from the planning and strategic side. Sarah is working to get the community much more involved and utilise the amazing enthusiasm and skill that has been evident on this forum for the last few months. We are also looking at our roadmap and objectives and tailoring our strategy and key messages around that. Once these are established and agreed we will roll these out using multiple channels and media. You’ll here more on that soon.

I think we need to do a much better job of explaining the network and it’s potentially in an easy to understand way and I think that video will be a key element here and I would anticipate how to videos (screen capture with commentary) explainer videos that break down the network’s unique aspects/features, and we’re considering town hall style Q & A’s amongst many other things. We’re also going to be looking internally with our marketing and getting more of the team involved rather than the just the familiar faces so that the community get a feel for the depth and talent that we have here and it would be good for our engineering team to be more engaged with the people they are building the software for.

The talent and skills that exist within the community is very much noticed and as soon as we have concluded the keys parts of our strategy we look forward to getting you more involved.

22 Likes

Thanks for replying, I was hoping to not come across as a whiner/complainer and am definitely noticing the good work the new recruit (Sarah) has been up to :slight_smile:

Was probably more a case of me knowing (thinking) deep down there’s still a decent amount of the journey left and didn’t want the community burning the mental/emotional rubber a little earlier than maybe they should.

It is definitely breaking new ground as to the strategy you have to lay down with no end date and an (at times) impatient and eager community constantly pushing you all for the next bit of good news.

Looking forward to what’s on the horizon…and please there’s definitely no rush :+1:

10 Likes

We are looking to move quickly though, all be it in a considered way.

This is a journey for sure, but I believe it will become much easier to get our message and perspective across as the network rolls out, as concepts become features. Our focus will be very much on investing in our content, meaning that we are creating material that has some degree of longevity, is useful and can be shared by others. I personally feel less inclined toward things like advertising (PPC, banner ads…etc…) as they are transactional - gone as soon as you stop paying, and while they have their place are not appropriate at our stage IMO. Our call to action also needs to be carefully thought about, so once we have peoples attention what do we want them to do - download and run the alpha, engage in community discussions, become advocates, buy maidsafecoin…all of the the above :).

So lots to think about and we look forward to getting whoever is game involved.

13 Likes

People come and people go. With the rate of this community growing these days, the potential loss of one or two people motivated enough to help now (in whatever way possible) might very well be replaced by six or seven of them in the same week. I believe the truly motivated will stick around though…

7 Likes

I strongly agree with this.

IMO, just seeding news and blog posts, linking related news, starting discussion on key topics, letting people know there is progress, etc, are all key.

In short, I’d like to be seeing and hearing much more in general about the Safe Net. I am subscribed to daily google updates when maidsafe is mentioned and I get close to zero emails. I got one yesterday from some obscure crypto ranking site, illustrating that maidsafe is losing influence (based on whatever metric they peddle). Last week I received an alert (again, pretty much the only one) highlighting how the crowd fund went badly (I posted about it here too already). This lack of any news, compounded with occasional bad news, just looks like decay, rather than optimism.

I’m not suggesting that any news is good news, but we need to be making the most of the good news that there is. My google alerts didn’t pick up on the excellent recent blog posts by David Irvine, for example. I saw them linked via LinkedIn, but google seemed oblivious. How we link this data (to reddit, to this forum, to online crypto magazines, to facebook, etc) is really important - a constant trickle of interesting content from the regular channels fills the vacuum and/or overwhelms the negativity.

There is just so much to like about this project, but I just don’t think that many people understand it. Even if they do, they don’t hear enough about it. Then they conclude it is some old, obscure blockchain project, that had funding issues, has taken too long and still has no delivery date. It is easy to have empathy for their position too, as not everyone has as much time to research, is technical enough to understand or is an independent thinker.

So, for me, it is not about big glitzy advertising campaigns. It is about a drip feed of interesting stuff which shows why the network is needed (how it gels with other tech, how consumers will benefit, etc), how well it is progressing, some insight into the team and how great they are (as we know!), what side/similar interests to the team/projects, etc. There is just so much good stuff to talk about and much of it already is - it just isn’t accessible enough to those who would benefit from seeing it.

EDIT: To add, there is a community responsibility here too and the moderators and loyal folk do great good. However, I think this is a raw team which needs some direction from Maidsafe. As others have said, everyone going off in different tangents at different times doesn’t make the most of peoples’ time and skill.

10 Likes

@nicklambert do you think it would absurd for you to speak at Burning Man Festival? I feel like there is a whole culture there that would be potential users and developers. There are all sorts of developers from Silicon Valley that go there, old hippies who have ideals that align with SAFE, scientists, adult film stars that would see the value in easily publishing and monetizing their self produced content, young people that have their fingers on the pulse of what’s up and coming. I think it’s a match.
Also SXSW music festival is a popular one, that all walks go to including, of course, musicians (who would obviously get the publication and monetization), as well as comedians (of which constantly mention the dark web and bitcoin in acts and podcasts), bitcoin has booths there. I’d like to see these kinds of efforts from Maidsafe hopefully next year if launched or close enough to make a case for usage for these groups.

5 Likes

I agree festivals are a great crowd to target, Glasto too.
I volunteer to be the fling merch into the crowd guy :sunglasses:

6 Likes

Not absurd at all @Nigel, although I would need to look into how you get on the speakers list (it varies from event to event) and consider what we could take away from each event, costs for getting there, audience…etc… I think it is good to build awareness, but always good to have a call to action for each - so now I have your attention what can you do on the network.

4 Likes

I see your point with the targeted message, especially in a sea of different demographics. It is more difficult to convey such a broad message to all. What’s important to me is that it empowers all internet users regardless of trade. You can fold proteins (after compute), you can publish your own website and monetize content in just minutes, you can earn revenue without ads, and app security and availability are simply a cinch. I might just throw up a sign that says “Ask me how the SAFE Network can help.” Although @Zoki and @JPL have been coming up with some really eye catching phrases :smile:

2 Likes

How many people responding here have a Reddit account? If you don’t have one I’d suggest you get one and start help upvoting postings by @SarahPentland.

12 Likes

How many people went to Reddit? :stuck_out_tongue:

image

EDIT: Just one more example of why we need The SAFE Network!

6 Likes