In this episode, Cory Miller and Corey Maass discuss the progress with their product and plans for marketing. They mention ordering stickers and preparing for WordCamp US. They also talk about the importance of having a clear name for the plugin and creating a frictionless process for potential customers to sign up or make a purchase. They talk through their pitch and refine their messaging. They also brainstorm different ideas for promoting the product, such as creating unique business cards or flyers and offering branding and listing websites on a page. They also discuss the importance of having a clear and concise pitch to explain the product to potential customers.
Top Takeaways:
- Product Differentiation: The conversation highlights the importance of presenting a unique value proposition for a product. The speakers emphasize how OMGIMG transforms ordinary images into polished and engaging content, which sets it apart from traditional image solutions.
- Visual Presentation Matters: The speakers discuss the significance of visuals in content sharing. They emphasize how compelling images contribute to engagement and sharing on social media platforms. This insight underscores the need for visually appealing content.
- Simple and Clear Pitch: The speakers craft a concise and clear pitch for the product. They focus on highlighting the problem (unappealing images) and the solution (OMGIMG’s transformational capability) in a straightforward manner, ensuring potential users quickly understand the product’s benefits.
Mentioned in the show:
You can follow Post Status and our guests on Twitter:
- Corey Maass
- Cory Miller (CEO, Post Status)
- Olivia Bisset (Intern, Post Status)
The Post Status Draft podcast is geared toward WordPress professionals, with interviews, news, and deep analysis.
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Transcript
Cory Miller: [00:00:00] Nothing. Um, dang it. I’ll remember probably halfway through and I start forgetting about it. Roll that fabulous bean footage. Never ate the beans because I don’t like those beans.
Corey Maass: Oh, Bush’s, Bush’s secret family recipe. Roll that beautiful bean footage. 2000’s Bush’s baked beans ads.
Cory Miller: They were, uh, we’re rolling that fabulous baked beans footage right now. According to Cory and Corey’s show, that’s from 21.
Corey Maass: That sounds familiar. Yeah. Well, that’s, yeah, and you know, as, as a, a person who has done a fair bit of audio, uh, production and editing, I should have, I should have made us a theme song by now. Yeah, you’re really slacking on that regard. Yeah, because I have nothing else to do, you know,
Cory Miller: we, we all have nothing else to do. It’s just this
Corey Maass: you’ve got to be able to get on fiber and for like [00:01:00] 20 bucks, get a, get a little, you know, generic pre roll, uh, theme song. I can
Cory Miller: already tell if I spend three more minutes, um, harassing you about it, that like next week, you’re going to go on fiber and Corey build a product.
Corey Maass: There you go. I’ll sample that next. Put it through a vocoder.
Cory Miller: I feel like some 80s rock could be good. There you go. Well, okay. We were just kissing up a minute. Um, you’ve been doing some product updates, which are great. It was really cool byproduct of like just. Seeing me walk through it and you going, Oh, I’m going to change that. I’m going to do this. So some UI updates to the product. Um, but our main focus today is just kind of shifting gears to marketing.
Corey Maass: Yeah. Cause I think we’re going to get pretty close. It’s like the, the big thing that we [00:02:00] found missing last week was, The ability to configure the plugin in a bun, you know, use, use the template, the, the business card template and in just either decide to spin out a bunch of other templates or, you know, configure one that’s left and right in red and save that. And then we can include those sort of presets. Um, Ooh, maybe I’ll make a little marketplace. On the website, or you can like go check out presets and download them or something, but anyway, for free. Right. But like, you can go and pick and choose because I hate to include all of that in the plugin. Like I don’t want to, I don’t want it so overwrought cause I don’t want it to have like, uh, you know, a 30 Meg install or something that’s, and, and most of it’s not going to get used by people, but anyway, I’m digressing. Um, but yeah, so that, uh, and just general product cleanup on my ends, but so there’s not, um, I think [00:03:00] it’s, I think at some point we will have you walk through it again. And I feel like doing that in public helped a lot. Um, but week over week, I don’t know that I’m going to have big, big new features, um, to talk about. And then we are, um, I’m starting to see more and more people getting excited about WordCamp US and. Um, I think we’ve joked about this, joked about this on this podcast, but, um, I like swag a little too much and have been ordering stickers, um, basically sticker mule picked exactly the right time for them and the wrong time for me to offer a deal a day. And so I basically ordered stickers every single day for across all of my different Chrome products and had all of my, or Chrome. Profiles and had each profile give the other one, 10 credit. Like I’m, I’m doing some shady shit over here. Um, but I currently have a desk full of [00:04:00] stickers. Um, and I swore up and down that I wasn’t going to order any more and I didn’t order any more, but I didn’t realize that they hadn’t all arrived. And so still was getting more packages in the mail from Mr. Camille. Um, my, my wife is rolling her eyes at me, but anyway, um, but yeah, people are starting to get excited for WordCamp U S and. A couple of sessions ago, we started talking a little bit about, um, you know, how we want to maybe introduce the product at WordCamp US. Um, what kind of milestones we’d like to hit. that kind of thing. And then, and then you took it, took the ball and ran with it. I hadn’t even thought about like doing, doing like more of a rollout. Um, and we came up with like doing a page and doing some videos and stuff like that. So anyway, I just kind of thought it would be great to touch on that because now, again, a month out and, and both of us lots to [00:05:00] do and trips planned and things like that. Like now’s the time to make sure that. To basically start to create an outline, decide what we want to get done, because now’s the time to start. Executing on that, I think.
Cory Miller: Um, okay. I like it. Um, so what I recall we talked about was kind of like 150 sales would be kind of a good baseline goal to go get a hundred people interested enough in it to say, here’s 50. Part of it is, uh, you know, support of the project. And part of it is I can use this project. Um, So when I think about WordCamp US, um, that seems like ground zero to make some headway. Um, probably have, you know, get some user feedback, client feedback, stuff like that. Um, [00:06:00] but it seems to me it’s like, what, how do we, we can focus on that. Okay. We want to, our goal is when we get a hundred people, 50. Um, and what’s the best way to do that and get really good first start for this at WordCamp US, um,
Corey Maass: Without any official involvement. We’re not tabling. We’re not sponsoring. Like I’m walking around in a t shirt. You’re going to end up walking around in post status t shirts, but at some point, you know, can slip into the OMG IMG t shirt. Yeah, we have stickers to give away. Like I was just saying a minute ago. Um, and then, so I guess it’s the, you know, we’re walking billboards, but the like, but it’s, but, but so is everybody, right? So the likelihood that somebody [00:07:00] comes up and asks us something is low and, and they’re not going to see anything. There’s no literature out or anything. So it’s the, like you and I having You know, if our conversion rate could be 20%, right. We’re talking about a hundred people. Then we need to talk to a thousand people. No, is that right? 20%. We need to talk to 500 people.
Cory Miller: I think this context though, is really good because doing it in person, as we’re talking, thinking about the pitch, thinking about the, the way we’re going to talk about that is going to be great practice too, for the wider, where we reach the 2, 500 people or whatever it is to, in order to get that kind of conversion.
Corey Maass: Okay. So I, I already, like one of the things on my list to ask you. Like way deep down, super specific, but, but very pointed in this [00:08:00] context is, um, the name of the plugin, right? We’re only selling the plugin through our website. We’re not doing it at least right now. We’re not doing a free version. Okay, fine. So by the time somebody has installed it, hopefully they know what the heck it is. But. It still is good to have a name that is more than just OMG IMG. So what I’ve got in there right now as a placeholder is OMG IMGsocial image creator or something like that. Social image, social image maker. But I don’t know if that’s right. And, and, and the reason why I bring that up is because expounding on that, a few people have asked me like, Oh, cool. Like what did, you know, I’m, I’m starting to, to promote the domain on Twitter and people are like, cool, what does it do? And I’m like, well, you [00:09:00] know, and I don’t have the 140 character synopsis.
Cory Miller: So this helps me a lot thinking of it like this. We’re, we’re there, we’re walking around, happen to be talking to a friend or something. And, you know, that two minute pitch, you know, um, so what I wrote down was problem solution to ask. So, Hey, uh, got this cool project named OMG IMG problem. We’re trying to solve with it is the solution we’ve come up with is it’s a plugin. It makes it easy, et cetera. And we’re trying to get a hundred people, 50. Um, I mean, there’s the bare bones right there, you know, that’s 30 seconds, like 30 seconds. Um, Hey, how’s it going? Well, I’m working on this cool project called [00:10:00] OMG IMG with Corey. Problem we’re trying to solve. Here’s how we’re solving it. Here’s what we’re trying to do. And then it leads me to like that ease. I’m jumping to the end. But as we need to have this almost as frictionless as possible process where they can go, I’m in. So like, there’s a part of this that you go, um, how, how somebody goes, I’m excited right then I’ll do that. You know, for sure. There’s the business card with the link or the QR code or whatever it is. Um, there’s also. I’m just throwing out crazy stuff here for a second, but like a lot of my life person in my household, we use Venmo for things for, you know, back and forth things. So there’s a Venmo option. Like, Hey, you know, 50. Here’s my Venmo, you know, here’s the Venmo, [00:11:00] whatever it is. Yep. Um, cause I, I go, my mind went is if you give them a card, they’re excited. There’s a QR card that’s going to get stuck in the pocket. They’re not going to have time to do something like that. Now, I also realized like somebody might just not go sit there and go, here’s my Venmo, right. You know, like in Venmo it right there. Um, but
Corey Maass: I liked it. I, again, we’re in, in a previous company, we had a, you’d, you’d put your hand up. I don’t remember. I think it was a fist to indicate not this, but something like this. So, so that’s what you’re doing. It’s like, you know, not maybe not specifically Venmo, but something like Venmo or something, something to capture that excitement.
Cory Miller: And, and, you know, I mean, here’s another option is like, can I, you know, Hey, I’m interested in that. Well, can I get you on my, our, our launch list and I’ll send you an email next week when you’re back home. [00:12:00] Um, like we could have the little page set up on our phone and go, okay, well, what’s your email?
Corey Maass: Okay. Yeah. Thanks. I’ll let you know. Yep. I like that. Cause that’s. Taking like a card that has a URL. I like the QR code would never have thought of that, but people are using them more, sorry about the dog. Um, and I S and I still like the idea of a WordCamp US landing page. That might be the same. Like if we come up with a pitch here, we record the pitch and that goes on the page. Um, if I can get to it, a quick little product video. So it shows what it does in 60 seconds or less standard, you know, and then that could go on the homepage ultimately, if the product doesn’t change too much. But I, I feel like I remember the, I [00:13:00] remember reading about, you know, and in different people have guides to like how to get the most out of conferences or whatever, like we’re going to meet thousands of people don’t try to pitch there, set up a meeting to pitch or set up a time to pitch or a way to delay that so that, yeah, they’re home. They’ve caught their breath, maybe, or maybe not. They’ve processed the business cards. And then that’s when an email should go out. That’s like, Oh, Hey Cliff, you know, great to meet you last week. Here’s the link, by the way, you know, we’re now, you know, here’s, here’s a coupon code, you know, for everybody we met at WordCamp US, you know,
Cory Miller: okay. So. Now it makes me think, let’s don’t try to get to the offer unless someone just goes, yeah, you know, uh, cool, but can I put you down on our, on our launch list next week or in, in the next week or two, everybody gets, when we get back and everything, we’re going to send out, uh, we’re going to try to get a [00:14:00] hundred. So, you know, it’s kind of like the petition thing, sign the petition, you know, we’ll send you an email. And then when you’re at your desk and all that kind of stuff, you can, you can do it. And it also makes me think we need to make this fun. Um, I think there’s a side to this that, um, I would just naturally gravitate to, and I don’t really apologize for this, but go, um, Hey, you know, part of my personal story in this is like, I like products, you know, we’ve had a lot of fun and I think we’re also. A by product of what we’re doing is showing like, can be fun, can be done, you know, and trying, we’re doing this in public for those reasons. And I think there’s an element for me about the cause of this. This is the part I say, I don’t apologize for the causes, like encouraging entrepreneurship within WordPress. You know, we’re not necessarily donating anything. We’re not, but I hope we inspire people. I’ve had people [00:15:00] mention they’ve watched the replays and been on live and stuff. And so like, I think there’s this element of like entrepreneurial product, fun, work, encouragement in here to say like, we need to keep this kind of going, you know? Um, and, and that’s the angle that makes it even like, I want people to very much. So first priority is see the vision for the product and see the need for it and their own need and go, yep, I need that. The other side is I also want them to go, we should encourage this kind of work within WordPress. Like nobody here is getting rich off this, honestly. Um, so that I’m, I’m kind of rehearsing my own angle on this is like, You know, I like to do product stuff. Uh, I know how hard it is to do product stuff. We’ve been six, what are we seven months into this? [00:16:00] Well, longer than that, probably. And, um, giving somebody at least something to look at and go, uh, see how they do it, even if they do it differently, even if you think these guys don’t know what they’re doing, I’m going to do this, I think it’s inspiring in that regard too. And, uh, we need to encourage this continued. You know, every month there’s new plugins in the repo. That’s a good thing. Every there’s still opportunity to innovate within WordPress through products. And we don’t know where this is going to go. We’ve had fun doing it. You know, this is us saying what? Okay. This is a very minimal bar for us to help us keep going, you know? So I think it’s a little blend of support, support the work.
Corey Maass: Benefit from the work and build and build in public. Like that’s my favorite hashtag to follow on the, the app [00:17:00] formerly known as Twitter. Um, and it’s people, people dip in and out of it. People complain lately, especially that a lot fewer people are using it. And I think hashtags have. Life cycles, but the mentality, it has led me to find a lot of great entrepreneurs, WordPress and non WordPress who are in various degrees and in their own way talking about things publicly that they might not have 10 years ago. Um, and I think that’s huge. And so, yeah, you, if I can say it back to you, if I feel like we were talking about two different things, there, there are two things we’re possibly talking about with overlap and it’s. Because a lot of, like, when I’m at WordCamps, I very rarely go to sessions unless they, they very specifically, you know, scream to me to go. Most of the time, I’m hallway track. I’m in the sponsors room. I’m just talking to as many people [00:18:00] as I can. Um, often walking up to strangers, often talking to the same, going up to the same sponsors over and over and over again, hanging out at certain tables. you know, just to try to meet as many people as I can. My feet are screaming by the end of the day. I love it. Um, a lot of those people are WordCamp, no, WordPress insiders, developers, product owners, a lot more than like, we, we try to, we, the WordPress economy, um, WordPress world tries to appeal to writers and pure users, but I don’t feel like I think they are still the minority group, but maybe I’m speaking, maybe I’m wrong, but that’s not where I’m in my own bubble at Word Camps, which is entirely possible. But anyway, all that to say that I think based on the context, we are either pitching a product, oh, hey, I’m Corey. We absolutely don’t know each other. You are a user of [00:19:00] WordPress. You know, you’re asking me about my shirt. Let me give you the 60 second pitch. It is a product. We don’t mention Corey and Cory. We don’t mention Post Status. We don’t mention building product. It’s just a, you know, do you have this problem? And to me, the problem is, um, you know, when you share your, when somebody shares your website. On, on a social network, Twitter, LinkedIn, whatever that little image that comes up. Often isn’t the best image it could be. This plugin helps you build that. The other way I’ve been describing it is, um, which, which isn’t quite as poignant as that, I don’t think. But, but people get it is, is Canva in WordPress, which is, you know, very flattering to us. I don’t, you know, but people get it. Oh, you can build an image that you can then use. You know, um, [00:20:00] and so that’s the problem that it solves, you know, in the context of WordPress. And so anyway, that’s, however we refine that pitch, that’s the 60 second pitch. But if we’re talking to, you know, somebody at, who, who’s also building plugins or who is a developer or, cause often that’s the conversation I end up having. You know, I, I love that. We bring that, that thread into it. Oh, do you know post status? Do you know, Corey, you know, I’m the other Corey that is always talking about building all these products and, and has had podcasts and blah, blah, blah, um, you know, we are building a product in public, by the way, here’s what it does, but you can also watch our, and, um, and while you were talking, I was trying to think, I was like, we need a page on. OMGIMG.co that’s like called the journey or something. Like the way people have the blog, have a slash blog, we need, I don’t know if we call this a podcast or, or what, I still never know if it’s [00:21:00] a video, but it’s like You know, the videos or the channel or something. And just like every, every time we do one of these recordings, like we just add it to that feed because there should be a way to, um, you know, Oh, by the way, we’re doing a lot of this in public and here’s where you can go watch the videos, because I think that that’s so, you know, most people were going to be pitching the product to, but saying like, Oh, on this website, if, if this also this personal thread appeals to you, you know, here’s where you can find it
Cory Miller: like that. I was writing some notes down. I like your, um, problem solution. Um, I think contextually to, um, working with NPS, it’s going to be those that go, yeah, very supportive, um, not going to be like cold, cold conversations. And I think that’s where we [00:22:00] weave into both like, hey, we had a, you know, this is polishing our story here. So. We, we really love WordPress products. We’d love WordPress more with their products. And we stumbled into this because of our own need, which was when you share your website on the social, um, stuff, particularly processes, this problem, um, doesn’t look super awesome and it’s a laborious process to do that solution. And we did. Uh, that we stumbled into, like we found our way to this through another deal that we kind of put on pause was, um, doing it through a plugin, um, the Canva in WordPress type, like put your workflow right there, make things out of the box nicer. I was trying to come up with like a one more thing, like some kind of cause related thing is like make website images better on social. That’s probably not it. But. You know, our [00:23:00] focus or mission is to make blank better. You know, this helps me a lot too. I’m, I’m rehearsing some of my own stuff. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. Um, what’s, what would be our one, one, one liner, like make blank better. It’s, I think the clunkier one is make website images better on social.
Corey Maass: Make your, make your website look better when shared on social. Cause it’s, yeah, I’m fascinated by. The bigger option here of being, of, of creating images for every post, you create a dozen images that go on all the different channels and, you know, and, and can go up on billboards. And like, that’s the [00:24:00] fun, huge version, but the, you know, right off the bat, the simple problem that we solved by installing the plugin and, and clicking a couple of things is the OG image for the site. Followed by the OG image for every page. And so it’s, it’s a better sharing experience. It’s, and this is where it’s hard because there’s too many pronouns. It’s when somebody else, somebody else shares your website, it might be you sharing it too. But you know, if I, if, if I say you and I are talking on Twitter and I say, Hey, Corey, check out this cool website, crop express, and I paste in the link. You don’t just have a URL because some URLs like Yoast, you know, nobody knows what a Yoast is, [00:25:00] right? And, you know, so CropExpress isn’t even a good example because you’re like, Oh, I bet it’s a website that will help me crop things. But if you, if you put in, you know, Yoast or BeaverBuilderWP, you’re like, I don’t understand what, I don’t really know what that is. And so it, you know, there’s a little blurb that comes up and there’s a little description that comes up and there’s a little image that comes up. And if that image is just of a beaver, that’s not as as helpful as it could be.
Cory Miller: Okay, so we are when a website is shared. Yep. I mean, even text messages, right? Um, we saw, we saw a gap there that they don’t look as polished, um, polished, professional, those things on the site.[00:26:00] Looking
Corey Maass: for, we did a little write up. Yeah. Please hold. The next available operator will be with you in a moment. OMG website. Boring featured images. So we could be word, WordPress specific. People talk about featured images. But again, it’s the. It’s more about what’s being shared to me. That’s the value like, yes, your featured image is boring, but that’s still, you know, so images in general, make it make like taking WordPress images to the next level shared or on the blog itself, more valuable, the [00:27:00] tagline we, we started using what what’s currently on the website because your images matter, but it’s, but that’s, again, that’s, it’s a catchy phrase. That’s too vague. Um, words are great. Images are greater. The whole picture is worth a thousand words. Yeah. Make your content a party. Everybody wants to go to, we had some fun brainstorming this.
Cory Miller: I’m trying to think of a parallel. So like when you go to in networking or you’re out there, traditionally I brought business cards to show like the sharp image of what you represent with some information that leads you back to him. So like, I wonder if the premise is like, what, what’s really a business card. Cause this is, in a sense to [00:28:00] me, it’s like when post status is shared everywhere else, we want it to look nice, pull people back. Um, and like a business card is that leave behind, leave with saying, you know, I’ll have a dozen, 50 of them when I come back. And it’s like, well, those are remembrances. So maybe that’s not the straight parallel, but it’s this,
Corey Maass: it’s a representation of yourself. It’s an ad for yourself. It’s how you share yourself. A business card analogously is help people, you know, help people remember who you are professional images for your website. People think it’s stock stock photography.[00:29:00]
Cory Miller: What about stickers? Like you’ve made a bunch of stickers, we’ve got stickers, you know, like the sticker is more like a favicon or what does a sticker do? But maybe this is more like when your website is out there. in the world, which is what you want. You want to get your website out there. So people come to it. It’s an attraction thing. It’s that polish of showcasing.
Corey Maass: If everybody knew what an open graph image was, we’d be set.
Cory Miller: I mean, to this audience, we are, I [00:30:00] think my, my thought would be for WordCamp US, a lot of people are going to hire a majority are going to know what Open Graph is, that’s my, but I could be wrong. Um, cause you know, you got a lot of like core contributors that are very deep in the project. Right. Um, or invested in the project. I understand one of them graph images. It’s like. Um,
Corey Maass: and I presume that most people publishing, but again, it’s, I, I, I’m, uh, I can say that I’m, I’m confident that a lot won’t because like I, you know, my clients big publishing, like big online magazine don’t understand what, what this is, right? Like they know they need a featured image and they. Intuitively understand, like they have gone and shared written, you know, written a blog post, [00:31:00] published it, shared it on social and that, and the featured image comes up. And so they know they’re like, Oh, that’s the image, the featured image associated with the blog. Like I don’t even know that they use the phrase featured image, but they’re like, I wrote an article. Here’s the main image. When I share it on social, there’s the main image. Okay, fine. But so it’s the, but they don’t, they don’t know what open graph is. They don’t know. They don’t, they haven’t thought through, they’re non technical. They’re not supposed to, but it’s like, they have not understood. And I’m not saying most people should, but they, they have not understood that Twitter went back to the blog post, read some metadata, and then use that to display what is now showing up in front of them and is what is subsequently being shared. So it’s like, I. We can say open graph, but if people are are like, I don’t know what that is, then it’s then [00:32:00] you’re resulting was resorting to a sentence within a sentence, right? A pitch within a pitch the image when you share on social and they might or might not understand that. And then, you know, what are the consequences of that image? So I think to me describing the problem rather than it being, it might be more than a one sentence thing in this instance. I’m not giving up, nor should you, nor should you, but I’m so
Cory Miller: like, you know, the, the, the mission can be. Help WordPress show up better. There you go. You know, stand out. Yep. Um, show up or stand out. Like the bigger cause is we saw a gap. Most people don’t even know what OpenGraph is. Um, this Cory needed some training on it, um, by the other Cory and seeing that there was like a gap, like we’re not really showing up well. And, um, [00:33:00] we want WordPress to look like it is, which is a powerful platform. Um, and this is where we’re making our dent, you know? So I probably to help how I use this as ago, if you got one little tagline that kind of get, it’s all pregnant with mating, you know, you can kind of start to unpack that a little bit, like. So what is showing up really meaningful happens to be an open graph protocol, you know, but where when you paste in link to LinkedIn, they’re pulling an image and representation of your site. We want that to be better. You know, and also less effort than going out here, trying to build all these images. It’s right baked into the program. So it’s like, uh, expository preaching, um, you take a verse and you start unpacking it. And to me, having that little slogan, it helps me to go something I can remember and then. Start [00:34:00] unpacking, but we saw a problem, like the problem was, um, they just don’t show up really well out of the box. Um, they take a lot of effort too, and that’s why we built this plugin, which helps you do all that in there. The code’s in there attached. Where you’re not having to hunt down stuff, go to another software program and, you know, put that somewhere in that it’s just done, done automatically. So in the example, it gives like process, we have a lot of content coming out. We create custom OG open graph type images for those social. That’s a janky process. We wanted to make it better. And, you know, going upon my expository here is like. Um, WordPress is power is in content, publishing, um, blogging. So, you know, you take the effort to do content on your site. You want it to show up, you know, sharp on those social networks. And when you refer from [00:35:00] text messages to Slack, to LinkedIn, Twitter, I mean, it’s an all encompassing thing. And maybe we take out websites. Maybe it’s like we want WordPress to show up better or the other side of a stand out.
Corey Maass: Yeah, I love stand out. So it’s, we were sharing our websites on socials and the preview looked like crap. This makes it stand out. Our plugin makes, makes it stand out. We were seeing, we were sharing our, our blog posts, our articles on social and the preview, I think we can call it a preview only showed the featured image with no info with, without the title. This plugin lets you create beautiful images that stand out.[00:36:00]
Cory Miller: And like featured images is good. Good start. There’s a lot of room there to make it even better.
Corey Maass: Yeah, I, I liked, I liked what you said a minute ago. You put it in the context of WordPress, which I think is like, this might not be our tag for or pitch for the blue ocean going to word. We’re talking about a pitch for WordCamp US. So going to WordCamp US. Saying, you know. Here’s how we, here’s how we built a product that makes, uh, WordPress content stand out better on social. That’s good.
Cory Miller: WordPress content stand out
Corey Maass: better when shared on social. I like that. It’s very perfunctory. It’s not catchy, but[00:37:00] cause I think people understand, you know, in this context, people are like, okay, content in WordPress, I’m writing a blog post. I’m adding a product on to WooCommerce. I share it on, I share it on social or other people. Cause I think people immediately, either they have experienced it. Oh, I put this on my Facebook page and like, and the image didn’t look great. Or. You know, I had somebody come to me or I, I, I found that people were sharing me on Twitter and I was ashamed at how I was being, you know, you always get that like, oh, oh, it looks like crap, you know, and you feel you get that feeling.
Yeah.
Cory Miller: Okay, let’s, let’s, let’s, let’s switch to the negative for a second. And here’s the brawl. It’ll be polished, but like WordPress content on social sucks. Stagnant, uninspired. Like [00:38:00] we did a lot of that work,
Corey Maass: boring, afterthoughts, stale, homogenized placeholder,boring. Yeah.
Cory Miller: There’s something in there. Like, you know, we sound like for instance, post edits just kind of sucks. It just looks not professional,
Corey Maass: unpolished, unfinished, uh, unprofessional. We kept focusing on the word professional.
Cory Miller: How WordPress content shows up on socials sucks or some other adjective there.
Corey Maass: I, yeah, I, it’s important to me, like sucks is too vague. [00:39:00] Like I’m not offended by the word, but it’s, it’s too vague. Like it’s crap. It’s shit. It sucks. It’s like, no, like what is, what’s, it’s like saying something’s interesting. This is, um. Tim Ferriss’s, uh, bugbear, right? Like in conversation, he just keeps saying, that’s interesting. This is interesting. It’s like trying to find other adjectives that are more poignant. So it’s like, this sucks, but, but in what way, because it’s unprofessional because it’s boring because it’s, uh, an afterthought. So I. I think you know what I’m saying. I’m not criticizing you sucks, but it’s like what, what, what other word could we use that’s more specific to this? Because it’s, you know, it’s, it’s uninteresting. It’s on, it’s, um, it’s unengaging, right? Like it doesn’t, it’s not compelling. That’s another good word. Mm hmm.[00:40:00]
Cory Miller: I want something between that and sucks with just a little bit of teeth.
Corey Maass: Well, and something friendlier. So. Compelling is too, too much of a Frasier word. We’ve been watching Frasier, all this, all these words, you know, pontification. I’ll do this
Cory Miller: with me for a second. Okay. Let’s just take WordPress out of the box. Um, it does a lot like right out of the box. So much. We take for granted. For. When you take a plugin like Elementor, Beaver Builder, uh, Wordfence, whatever these things, it extends it. That’s not sexy, you know, but it extends it. It does something. It takes something really good and makes it better, great. Right? Like, that’s the concept of a plugin. Like, default, the natural state of WordPress content. Is boring, like it’s stale it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s [00:41:00] minimally checking the box, you know, and this somewhere over here, like that’s the afterthought somewhere over here is the compelling, you know, so I was trying to use that as kind of like a comparison to, yeah, it’s, it’s pretty stale. You do all this work and then you got even more work to do. It’s that final polish we’ve been talking about. It’s the final icing on the cake.
Corey Maass: Polish is a great term.
Cory Miller: Do you always go ahead?
Corey Maass: Yeah. It’s when you’re when you’re WordPress content is shared on social, this plugin gives it polish, makes you look professional. It’s [00:42:00] like, as you were talking, I’m like, WordPress is a Honda civic. It, it, it does everything you need, it gets you there. And that isn’t to say that you can’t soup it up because you see the people who have dropped their Honda Civics and put, you know, spoilers on them and stuff like that. But like what we’re talking about is, um, you know, or maybe it’s better than that, right? Maybe it’s, maybe it is a Ferrari, but it’s got the body on body of a Civic on it. And what we’re talking about, like you’re talking about Beaver Builder or Elementor or these other big plugins that like take it to another level. And so suddenly you’ve got a Ferrari shell on a Ferrari engine or something like that. And we’re, we’re talking about the adding that same kind of value. Externally, people know how good it is looking inward. And obviously this is metaphorical because we’re not talking about like the features of WordPress, but it’s the, the content that you’re, you’re [00:43:00] creating might be great. But it’s, it’s words on the page, like people cringe at a wall of text, even if it’s amazing. I mean, this is why you, you know, more and more New York times articles are those like crazy infographic as you scroll, there’s animation kind of stuff because like people just don’t want to read a newspaper format anymore. Yeah.
Cory Miller: And I remember this, uh, do you have that doc by chance where we did that? Unpolished all those words. I’m looking at it. Yeah. Would you share that with me real quick? So I can look at that. I know we did a lot.
Corey Maass: Recite it from memory or you’re getting an F. Yes, I will absolutely share it. Do, do, do, do, do.
Cory Miller: As soon as I can find that tab. It’s the final polish. There’s something there with the funnel. Like you said, you can do all this work. I remember, um, [00:44:00] when I would do talks at word camps and stuff, I would just use the generic black on white, um, keynote theme and somebody came up to me and like, you want some help with that? And I was like, yeah, it’s my last thing I do because all the work I spend on the, what I’m trying to get across, I don’t really care when it gets to that stage. Somebody is like, um, what if we just took that and made a little nice? And I was like, yeah, but I don’t want to do that work. Like, my work is focused on this. That work is like, I’d rather hand that off to somebody.
Corey Maass: Yeah, the content is supposed to be key, but we are still human, and we still live in modern times.And so there’s still an element of Entertainment of being designed in that case, like being designs, modern design elements. Um, [00:45:00] we’re modernizing the way WordPress content is shared because social is, you know, WordPress was a blog, WordPress was created and word subsequently WordPress content and templates and all that was created before social really existed. Francis.
Cory Miller: This is definitely not what I would use. And I’m even. Homely comes to mind, like WordPress content, um, on the socials, it’s kind of like homely, plain looking, um, the source plain, fugly. That’s actually in this dictionary.
Corey Maass: Uh, Oh, that’s awesome.
Cory Miller: Basic. It’s just basic.
Corey Maass: Ooh, instead of fugly, it’s wugly. It’s [00:46:00] WordPress ugly
Cory Miller: See, we need to, I’m glad we’re recording this, but we need to capture that because like, that’s a marketing campaign. Mm-hmm. , it’s ugly. . It’s, it’s WordPress is fantastic. Powerful. It’s not meant out of the box to do some of these things. Shouldn’t. That’s where
Corey Maass: IMG MG comes out. It’s word, it’s WordPress, not image Press.Right. It’s fantastic for words, but it doesn’t do anything for images.
Cory Miller: Okay. Like, you know, that I’m, I’m introducing slang in the creative process here for a second, but like, you know, the, your basic, you know, [00:47:00] like, Hey, WordPress content. Yeah. Basic. What’s the other, what’s the other slang of that? What’s the, you don’t want to be basic. You want to be whatever this is. Fabulous.
Corey Maass: Fabulous. You want people to, you want people to be obsessed with you. That’s the, the phrase that everybody uses. Now. I’m obsessed.
Cory Miller: The ley is like, really good because it, that’s kind of funny, right? It would speak to Word camp us people like mm-hmm. . Hey, you know how it is. If you don’t have a nice theme’s, if you don’t take all this effort, effort and time to go over to Canva or Photoshop, whatever it is, and create these OG images, it’s gonna be ugly. I like that. That’s like, [00:48:00] it’s supposed to be, that’s not a knock on WordPress, but out of the box, it’s basic
Corey Maass: The default WordPress theme. Now is, is nothing. It’s almost blank, you know, Wugly.
Cory Miller: I need to bench this with like Lindsay, but, um, I don’t like it. Uh, because it’s like. No, let’s just own it. Let’s own it. Listen. No, this is why the ecosystem exists. From Post’s perspective, I said, this is why the business ecosystem exists. Powerful tool, but out of the box, it’s wiggly. It’s Word, it’s WordPress basic. You know, you extend it. You do all these cool things to make it awesome with Elements Reaver Builder, whatever plat, you know, gravity forms. Like you, that’s why you, the commercial industry exists.
Corey Maass: WordPress without [00:49:00] plugins is it used to be much more of a thing now. No, like only, only dogmatic people running personal blogs are, are just running WordPress. Without plugins and even they’re secretly running plugins for security or for, you know, whatever features that they can’t stand. So it’s like WordPress without plugins. So I liked what you said. It’s like, you know, you, you have to extend WordPress essentially these days. I hadn’t really thought about this, but it’s true. Like, and so you, you have to, you have to go beyond what WordPress offers. And that’s fine. That’s the point. It’s more and more of a, it’s a platform. And so the word you use that I loved was extended. You extend WordPress. So what we’re talking about is extending featured images. Like this is features featured images, uh, you know, 10 [00:50:00] X featured images on steroids featured images. And I think if we’re talking to a WordPress audience, the phrase. Featured images is safe. Like, again, I don’t know that my clients know what a featured images because it’s, it’s a WordPress term. They know, you know, they know, they put another way, they know lowercase F featured image, right? They know they might not call it that they might think of it as the main image or the first image. So outside of WordCamp US, I don’t know that that’ll, it’ll translate, but to us, like it’s, it’s featured images. It’s a, it’s. Like WordPress has plugins to make it amazing. We are the plugin for featured images.
Cory Miller: WordPress content on social is basic. It’s plain. We call it wiggly nice WordPress basic, you know, like right out of the box. If you don’t [00:51:00] have a theme, you don’t do all these different things. It’s just going to be basic. And we call that wiggly. We want. WordPress content on socials to be fabulous, to be awesome, to be enticing and sparkle, you know, to really draw in, to be compelling.
Corey Maass: Yeah. I like the, I’m looking at our doc sparkle, great word, enticing. It hooks people. It’s more engaging. It’s more compelling and a boring word, but a very powerful word is it’s more valuable. I don’t think we can ever actually use the word more valuable because it’s so boring. It’s not an emotional word.
Cory Miller: We [00:52:00] set out to create an easy way for WordPress content to sparkle, to stand out, to show up better on socials,
Corey Maass: on the socials when, when shared. I like what you, cause like what you said earlier is like, even in text messages, I’m like, Oh yeah, so we’re, it’s not just socials, but it’s when shared and it’s shared by you, the site owner, or it’s shared by somebody sharing it with somebody else, a third party to a third party. So it’s like WordPress content shared is. Basic, simple, boring, wugly, WordPress content shared, WordPress content plus, OMG, is compelling, amazing, interesting.[00:53:00]
Cory Miller: There’s a part in here where it’s like, if we kind of coin these ways to think about and to To talk about it, it’ll really resonate, you know, it’s like, I didn’t even think about that much, you know, I’m doing work for my clients and they’re, they’re blogging and doing work on, and sharing. I mean, it’s, it’s a essential to share your work, your WordPress work, website work on socials. That’s what clients need. That’s where people are, uh, in addition to Google and the other places. Um, but we took it for granted, you know, like. We, we take it for granted. Well, we’re giving them word, Wugly. It’s just Wugly. It’s WordPress basic. It’s plain. It’s meant to be plain. We want it. We set out to help it sparkle, compelling, to add the final touch. Sparkle, [00:54:00] stand out, add that final touch. Okay. I think we got something there. Um, let’s bench this with our significant others, the wiggly, but I’m like, you know, it’s WordPress plain, I mean, it’s meant to be, it should be, it should stay that way we want, because you can’t bloat the project, all this stuff, but like, that’s the opportunity for people is to take that extra, that last final step and to make all this work you’ve done on the website, ticing, compelling, valuable. We help you stand out through OMG IMG, make it easy to, you know, you’re putting out content. You’re not having, you don’t have the time to, or whatever to make it look nice. We’re taking that step [00:55:00] out for you. We’re helping you like take that from, you know, minutes to hours to. Minute or two, like right there, but the final touch before the thing goes out, if you’re baking a cake, it’s the final, like, look over, you know,
Corey Maass: it’s a word. WordPress is the plain white sheet cake, white sheet cake, but it’s a blank canvas. You can, you know, you can put unicorns on it and rainbows and, uh, Disney characters and fancy fabulous. I don’t say no to a piece of white plate and cheat, you know, sheet cake. It’s still sugar, but it’s a lot more fun if it has, you know, a race car on it.
Cory Miller: I like the sheet cake, [00:56:00] you know, you can buy, we have Homeland here, but you can buy a white sheet cake from a grocery store, you know, but when you put the icing on and you personalize it, you make it nice, it’s, it’s more compelling and that’s what, what OMG IMG does.
Corey Maass: Yeah. I mean, to take, to take this metaphor too far, like part of the challenge here, right? Is there already is icing, like on a white sheet cake, there’s white icing, vanilla icing, but what we’re talking about is like, you know, and so a kid who’s, you know, I don’t know, two doesn’t care, right? Or a one year old doesn’t care, but.
A four year old, you know, it has to have ponies on it or whatever. And so it’s like, that’s what we’re talking about is, and that’s why it’s like, it’s not just, it’s not about adding images and people. And I think one of the challenges we’re going to face is that people are like, well, when I [00:57:00] share, I see my featured image. It’s fine. And I’ve spent, and I’ve, and I may have spent 10 minutes trying to find a featured image and, and you’re like, okay, but if somebody just looks at an image. Like they don’t get all the information and they don’t get the URL and they don’t get the branding and they don’t get all this other stuff. And that’s what we make easy. So it’s the, it’s taking it from, it’s not taking it from zero to one, it’s taking it from one to 10.
Cory Miller: So Coca-Cola worldwide brand, if you put Coca-Cola, you know, in a red solo cup, false flat, the packaging matters just as much to then the thing drink. Oh, good word. The bottle is iconic. You know, like, would Coke be the same without the bottle? [00:58:00] No, I mean all the way back to the glass bottles. So like that’s the way your content is. Do you want it in a red silica, bland red silica, or do you want it in a coke bottle? I want it in the bottle that packages it, showcases it. And coke, coke is global brand, you know, it resonates like. Coke does all of their advertising, not about the fact that it’s loaded with sugar and it’s, you know, it tastes good. They do it on the aspirational packaging side of things, like Palmer beer is drinking it in the iconic bottle. Like what could be without the bottle? Well, that’s WordPress content
Corey Maass: without really want to, as we often joke about, you really want to date us go, go all the way back to, I’d like to teach the world to sing that whole thing that they brought back every 10 years for decades. But. Here’s a really specific, like, this is not the big problem, big [00:59:00] solution, and this is a feature, not a benefit, but what you just touched on that I bet would resonate with a lot, a lot of people. And I wonder it, it, it made my product brain start spinning out is if there isn’t. A one click and maybe this is, this ends up being our free version in the repo or something, but it, all it does is add branding to featured images, like every featured image, you click a button and like some somewhere you add your logo, your tagline, your URL. And so every time you upload a featured image, it comes back with your brand in the corner. You’re branding in the corner, just dead simple, but I, but that’s going to make, like, that is to me is. The perfect example of everything we’re getting at is like, do you, do you share a, you know, when you share on social, does it have When your featured image comes up, if somebody [01:00:00] just looks at that image, do they have any idea of what your website is called, what your brand is called, what your branding colors are? So if nothing else, you use this thing to featured image in the background, your, your logo in the corner, and already your, your packaging is your, your product is now in your packaging.
Cory Miller: That add branding to featured images. You just encapsulated for that audience. For sure. Post test audience is like, if anything, it’s adding some branding to your featured images.
Corey Maass: I love that. Yeah. And to me, that’s like, that’s the, it might be first or it might be last, but I remember having that kind of tagline or that kind of sentence in my back pocket for, if I was trying to pitch something to people and their eyes are glazing over, I’m like, this cuts right through. It’s like, people are like, well, you [01:01:00] know, my, when I share my images and it’s like, without going to Canva, whatever it’s upload a featured image, share it on social and it has your logo on it. Can you imagine the power dead simple. And I, and I think that if nothing else, everybody’s going to at least be able to get that. Oh, well, but I have to go to Photoshop. I have to go to Canva. Right. No one click. It’s just there. Can you add that somewhere to this document? And I want to go build that now where it’s just like, [01:02:00] right from the editor, you go to posts, you go add new set featured image, you know, in here, right. Or set featured image with, with logo click same work through, but when it gets uploaded, it has your, your icon, your logo in the, in the lower right corner, whatever you’ve set it to. Holy cow.
Cory Miller: Featured images. Mostly take up space. That’s it. Um, this is
Corey Maass: a way. You’re told you have to. How many people use tags and categories? Because they’re there. Like, [01:03:00] these are all, this, you know, adding a new post is a checkbox. Or a checklist, right? You have to give it a title. You have to give it content. And then people, you know, click, click, click, what am I publishing it? Give it a category, give it a tag. Like, and I don’t know that this is, this is as ubiquitous as I’m, as I’m, obviously this is a mental exercise because I think, you know, a lot of people are now just using pages, like how many people are using posts as posts and that kind of thing, but still, you know, these are check boxes, people add featured images because you’re supposed to add featured images and, and almost any. Blog template has, you know, highly features the featured
Cory Miller: image. Even if it’s not useful, we, we put this in the doc featured images are often an afterthought like a, [01:04:00] Oh, check the box afterthought.
Corey Maass: Yeah, we have that there.
Cory Miller: We think it’s an opportunity. Nice. We see it as an opportunity to package your content better, to make it more enticing, more compelling to draw people back to your website.
Corey Maass: Featured images are often afterthought. We see that when shared on social, they don’t, they don’t include branding. They don’t include a title. They don’t include any of anything, any of the other compelling content that would draw somebody in.[01:05:00]
Cory Miller: Featured images are afterthoughts, are often afterthoughts. They’re plain, basic, taken up space. We think, we see them as great opportunities to package, To, to brand, to entice, to compel, to make them sparkle, to draw people back to your website, which is the purpose of your website. Get people in there engaged in some way to buy, to sign up, to, to come back to share.
Corey Maass: And to share. Bottom line, no matter what their reaction is, no matter what the call to action is to say, if it isn’t first, the second thing you want everybody to do with your content is share. Exactly. That’s where this is sort of, there’s, there’s also, there’s some, there’s a, um, [01:06:00] a viral loop, right? Like the perfect products are the ones that get shared. Wordle, it’s not just about doing Wordle. It’s about sharing it or, or Dropbox. There’s the, there’s always the epitome, right? Of. Literally in order to use the product, you’re putting the product in front of other people. And so it’s the same thing here where it’s like, we’re making it, making your website more shareable because, because you want people to share it. That’s the story.
Cory Miller: You create content to share it so that people come back and then share it. And we’re closing the loop with OMG IMG. We’re getting it, making it nicer. Easier to draw people in there here and that’s a, that’s a loop then they can, they want to share. They feel compelled to share because it looks polished and final and packaged appropriately.
Corey Maass: Yeah, there’s, there’s a nice side effect of the psychology, [01:07:00] which is the, I, I want to share clever things with other people because it makes me feel and look clever. Right. And I, when I, I’m a big product guy in, in real life, right. I love stickers. Um, as an example, I like physical things. And so I love getting on Amazon or, or scrolling through other websites where they have random, you know, even random crap, but it’s physical products and looking for the perfect product as the perfect solution to some real world problem. Um, and my buddy and I are both like. We, we are better consumers than we used to be more conscientious or more conscious consumers than we used to be. But anyway, the point is anytime either of us find some awesome product, we’re sharing it with each other. If I drop a link to a product on Amazon into Slack to him or into, uh, we use signal and the image that comes up, looks like crap.[01:08:00] I’m heartbroken because I’m not going to sell him on this product. If his first impression is some crap product image. So there’s, there’s this, yeah, all this stuff we’ve talked about, but there’s a surprising amount of emotion in, in images, especially in the context of sharing them, because it’s, it’s, it’s either you trying to me trying to sell you something, even if it’s. Even if it’s five minutes of your time to come read my blog post, or it’s a third party selling you to another third party. And making sure that you are represented it as well as you can, but you are also, you know, uh, you’re making the other person look smarter, look better, whatever, by being the best thing you don’t sell a car on craigslist without cleaning at first kind of thing.[01:09:00] We have a lot of good stuff here. Okay.
Cory Miller: We got some good pitches, good ways to tell the story. Yeah. Um, I think one thing we need to talk about. Uh, soon is okay. The, the ass, the, okay. Love to put you on our launch list, you know, um, I mean, that’s simple as us just having the pay, the newsletter page on our phones and saying, can I get me signing up right now? Kind of thing. Right. Can I get you signed up?
Corey Maass: Love to put you on our launch list. So yeah, like on our phones, like how do we capture people’s email addresses? How do we want to capture people’s email addresses?
Cory Miller: Well, we need the WordCamp US [01:10:00] page for sure. So somebody could just do it on their own, but we need something that’s private for us. I think to just like real simple, it’s just the email box and we can just type it in, push, push, uh, sign up and next couple of weeks we’re going to be launching.
Corey Maass: Um, I’m well, and so I guess what I’m getting at is like. I don’t, I’ve, cause I’ve tried to do this. Like I, I brought an iPad to, uh, WordCamp New York, I think. Um, cause I saw people doing this, like, here’s, here’s a sneaky way. Don’t do this at WordCamp US, but like at little local camps, like I saw it. Cause I saw somebody doing this and I’m like, this is sneaky, but clever. It’s like brought an iPad. sort of stood off to the side at one of the like breakfast tables, stood the iPad up and had the little like Kanban for WordPress on there. And just kind of hoped that people would come over and chat to me about it. And it worked a little bit. [01:11:00] Um, the guy who I saw do it was amazing at it and like hat was giving whole product demos and stuff. So it was basically a sneaky way to be a sponsor without, or to, to promote table without. without being a sponsor. Um, there’s your black hat, um, suggestion for today, marketing suggestion for today. But anyway, um, one of the things that I found, uh, overall of trying to like, of chatting to people and being like, Hey, can I add you to the mailing list? Was like pulling up Safari. And loading a page and then focusing on the box. And then, so what I’m wondering is like, if we don’t just, um, like I can, uh, you know, I have a Google phone number, like what if we just texted all of the email addresses to that? So it’s like, just easier to, to send, send a text message with people’s email addresses rather than futz with a page while we’re standing there. Yeah.
Cory Miller: That’s something like that. That [01:12:00] like, I’ve got my phone in my hand. I’m talking to Corey, Hey, can I put you on our list? We’re going to be sending an email in two weeks. And I can type that in to my phone.
Corey Maass: And maybe it’s just a note. You know, we just, Hey, I have a, an, an open Apple note going. You hand the phone to them, give me your email address. I’ll add you to the list. Yeah, exactly.
Cory Miller: Something like that. I think that’s as simple as it needs to be. Cause like, I think this audience is people we know no lack of justice and like, Hey, want to support us? Hey, can I, can I get you on my launch list? So when we launched in two weeks and okay. Yeah. What’s your email? You know? Okay. Gotcha. So that’s that Safari. Thing. I’ll just have my phone, pop it up and tap it in.
Corey Maass: Let’s just figure out a way to, cause it’s like on my phone and maybe it’s just my pet [01:13:00] peeve. Like I want it already opened. And so it’s like, I, what I’ll probably do if we, if we have like a Safari page, that’s, I might make a secret one. That’s literally just an email input. Cause it just takes a second, like the same signup form again, but nothing else on the page. And then save that as a bookmark, you know, on my phone. So it’s like one click and just start typing. Cause it’s, that’s exactly what I’m talking about, scrolling, blah, blah, blah. Yeah. No, you’re right. That’s probably, that’s the good middle.
Cory Miller: There’s a Cory Corey ww version just to get people’s email in. I’ll do it for you. But there’s also. Okay. You know, click, just go to OMG. I’m G you’ll see it says word word camp, you know, um, and click on that or just, there’s a box right on OMG IMG um, that we could tell people it does make me think, can in sticker meal, can you put something on the back of [01:14:00] the sticker?
Corey Maass: Like on the, right. I was looking at that earlier. I, I don’t, I don’t know if you can with them. I haven’t seen that. Custom stickers, pick a sticker. Yeah, it’s only upload artwork, but there’s other ones I’ve seen where you can do it. I have ordered stickers from other places where it was like, I did a full business card on the backside. Yeah.
Cory Miller: Let me think about that. I mean, I guess the stickers just do that. Like, Hey, here’s this, you know, if they take the sticker,
Corey Maass: well, we have like generic stickers, right? That has the URL, OMGIMG.co, um, but it, but I’m thinking we want to direct something that will direct people to slash WC U S [01:15:00] um, and, or I like the idea of like, I want to design, because it’s also a thing that I do compulsively. It’s like, I want to design a little business card and we’ll only print up a few hundred of them, but it’s like WordCamp U S. 2023 super secret launch invite, you know, you have been hand and you have been handed this from Cory or Corey, you know, put this in your pocket. Do not lose this. It’s worth a gajillion dollars. Actual value is zero, you know, is one millionth of a cent. Um, you know, like we can be funny, cute. But it’s like, it’s not, it’s not a, a generic sticker. It’s not a generic business card. It’s a, like, this is a one time funny, maybe, you know, like we’ll do our best, but you know what I mean? Like [01:16:00] something, something to make it a little more compelling. Here’s here are branded trash bags for all the money that we’re going to make you. You didn’t laugh at my dumb joke. I thought
Cory Miller: I was, I was thinking of something like that. If we did a card, something that’s like, I loved it. When you were talking about like this super secret thing, you know, it’s like burn after reading kind of thing that would be fun, like, and I’m not trying to add extra work, I’m just adding, but I’m like, Hey, Hey, get your, uh, word, word camp code name. And the page that it goes to is, um, you know, random generator of something. [01:17:00] And then it’s got the email box right there too, you know, and it’s like, go get your code name, go get your buzzword, bingo, go get something, something funny like that. Like fortune cookies or information for the day or, um,
Corey Maass: well, and we are, we are image based. So I’m like, what’s a, what’s a random image generator. Anyway, let’s think, let’s keep thinking about that. Cause that’s cute. And that’s actually something that like, I’d want to go play with, you know, even if it’s just for a second, but it’s going to make it stick in my head. And if it’s something that Corey can build in an hour. Awesome.
Cory Miller: Okay. So you said the image base for a second ago, the whole post a picture thing I was
Corey Maass: thinking. Hmm.[01:18:00] Something with selfies too. Like if we’re at WordCamp US, we’re like, if you’re in take a selfie with me, it’ll show up on the OMGIMG.Co. WordCamp US page, you know, in three seconds. I don’t know what the value is there, but it’s, you know, something fun like that, something interactive. Um, we also talked about, um, there’s also a, so the, the benefits, one of the, um, benefits of joining we’re running long on time. I want to make sure you’re all right. Yeah. Um, the benefits of joining the launch. So[01:19:00] we’ve talked about a 50 intro rate. But is there not also opportunity to, so I don’t need that help guide the product design and future features, but I’m also like, what’s, what’s something fun, like, can we, you know, can we offer branding, can we offer a page where your, where your website gets listed? These are sort of boring things, but you know, obvious value. Um, do we also, do we want to offer a limited number of seats? Probably not. [01:20:00] Do we want to say that we’re offering a limited number of seats?
Cory Miller: I’d say we just say our goal is a hundred.
Corey Maass: Um, for a minute I was looking at, I know their companies. Um, where we can even just do it on our home printers, but like where you could have a unique number for each, but I was like, that’s just more, we don’t really care that much. Yeah. So, um, but I think we, we, what I can do is we like the signup form on the WordCamp US page will tag people with, you know, WCUS 23 or whatever. So we at least know how many people signed up through that page. [01:21:00] And then we can also, I think specifically we will, those, anybody who signs up there, we can send them an email that says, you know, here’s a code or whatever, because I assume that we’re going to, the intro price, we’re going to do a coupon or a discount code rather than actually have a separate price point. So somehow eventually we’re going to have to get that to people.[01:22:00]
Cory Miller: You got me thinking on that. Something fun on the front. It’s something neat on the back is our thing. It’s like, by the way, here’s a,
Corey Maass: I didn’t follow any of that.
Cory Miller: Sorry. I was thinking about the business card sticker or something like that is that we give out that also has on the bat, like something fun on the front. And then it has something, it has our stuff on the back.
Corey Maass: Um, yeah. I, what I, one of the things I was trying to capture while we were chatting, uh, and I’m going to have to recreate it, I think, is if you share a page on Twitter or Facebook that does not have, or in Slack, that’s probably where I saw it, um, that does not have [01:23:00] an OG image, it looks like a gray box, like it really is the worst Thing, you know, and so I was like, Oh, what if we handed out, you know, like something like a flyer essentially that says, um, you know, does when you share your website, does it look like this?
Cory Miller: side of the card is like the fugly, uh, wugly. The other side
Corey Maass: is the nice. There it is. Before and after.
Cory Miller: That’s, that’s a cool, with the, with the OMG IMG super secret.
Corey Maass: We’re going to have to repeat.
Cory Miller: I like your wugly.
Corey Maass: I do too.[01:24:00] Wugly version. And we’ll, we’ll start playing, like, let’s keep thinking about that and we’ll start playing with. You know, what does one side look like? What is the other? And it’s at the bottom, it’s like, join the revolution. That’s too, that’s way too grand, but you know, Join the super secret launch at OMGIMG.co slash WC at WC us
Cory Miller: that dude, that card could be the best. It’s like, well, I say like, like, here, here’s what we’re doing. This is how it looks. This is what we’re doing.
Corey Maass: There you go. Like, actually that’s great. And, and cause I’m over here looking at, I’m trying to grab one. Yep. There’s one. So a guy [01:25:00] shares, let’s see if. I’m still sharing, right? Yeah. Oh, come on. Down. Upload. All right, so I just captured this off of Twitter, right? So some guy shared his website and that’s his OG image, right? That’s the Twitter card. And so it’s like if we go create, you know, share a post status page that does not yet have an OG image and show it as Uncompelling. And then on the flip side, and this is where. You know, I keep getting these stickers that are holographic. So it’s like, I, I almost wish that our sparkle side could actually be sparkly or holographic or something. Cause I think it would be a riot, not glitter because we all know how evil glitter is. [01:26:00] Something like you said, you know, like there’s the plain side. We can also do black and white. Like I used to do that with, um, party flyers because most places would charge, you would just do, they would only do color printing on one, but they’d let you do black and white on the other. And so we’d do, you know, the information on the black and white side and then the actual cover of the flyer on the color side. So if we just did like a black and white side that was like, here’s, you know, here’s boring. And then on the other, on the color side and did fabulous sparkly. Um, that’s like an easy way to convey that as well. I like that idea. Something like that. But yeah, you, uh, your Lindsay does words, things with words, [01:27:00] see if you can, uh, get her to come up with funny and clever things to say. I’m just a nerd. I have no sense of humor. I just think in zeros and ones.
Cory Miller: I think if we had those cards in our back pocket and be like, Oh, I’m working on the school project called OMG IMG like, and basically we’re trying to transform, uh, WordPress content. Anyway, you get that down, pull the card out and like, this is how they’d like now. This is how we want them to look. This is the, you know, this is the opportunity. This is what we do, but it’s the simple like problem. This is the problem. This is the answer.
Corey Maass: There you go. It’s the classic. This is your brain. This is your brain on drugs. Yeah, there you go. This is your WordPress. This is your WordPress on OMG [01:28:00] IMG. Any questions? Yeah. Can we actually bring that back? We’ll also start every pitch was, what was that? Or some other dated, uh, terrible joke.
Cory Miller: Oh man. Well, I, uh, so I think we got the forming of our pitch. We got the ask, which is we can give the card. We’ll have the phone or phone on the page. And I think those two, like having some of those little business card things with, I think that’s simple and it shares what it is. Well, let me share you. Right. Like this is what the product does. And we thought this is the best way to show it. This is the way they look now. This is what we’re, this is what we help you do. And it’s OMG IMG. Yeah.
Corey Maass: And something that says WordCamp US 2023 super secret, blah, blah, blah, [01:29:00] to make it because like, yeah, I don’t, I don’t like to do the, you know, buy now kind of thing, but. Hey, this is what’s happening right now. It’s just more interesting, a generic business card or a generic thing that promotes our generic website or something very specific to this event going on right here right now. Like that’s kind of cool. All right,
Cory Miller: cool. Well, let’s do a sink. Um, since I’ll be out next week. But, uh, we can get cards in like seven days, probably, right?
Corey Maass: Oh, absolutely. Yeah.
Cory Miller: So, I think that gives us enough to continue to talk about and hone in, um, to talk about when we get there. And then just as we’re talking to people and seeing our friends again, like, Hey, can I, can I give you my 30 second pitch? Absolutely. Can I give you my 30 second pitch? This is where they look now. This is what we’re working on.
Corey Maass: This is what we’re trying to do. And, and I [01:30:00] didn’t, I didn’t really absorb what you, when you said it. A few weeks ago, but it’s like, we are essentially pivoting the launch around WordCamp us. And so that also makes it really, it’s like, I’m not just pitching you a product, like we are launching soon or around now. Like, so here’s a, here’s great to see you again. Here’s, here’s the, yes, the product solution, but also be part of the launch. Like, even if, even if this isn’t, even if you ask for a refund or even if it isn’t the top of your mind problem or whatever, it’s like, this is this neat thing that’s happening right now. So that also makes it very timely, which I think is very cool.
Cory Miller: This is the problem. This is the solution. We need a hundred people in our launch to get us to the next step. Click a button, goes, [01:31:00] go get access to it and support us in the process. Love it. Pretty simple pitch, man. Hey, the best way I know how to tell you about it is to show you this is the way it looks and maybe that’s a, you know, a screenshot of a social like take LinkedIn or Twitter, whatever it is. And it’s like, this is the way it looks. This is, this is the way what we help you to do.
Corey Maass: Love it. All right, man.
Cory Miller: Thanks so much.
This article was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.
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