Launching a WordPress Product in Public: Session 30

Transcript ↓

In this podcast episode,Corey Maass and Cory Miller brainstorm marketing strategies for their upcoming WordPress product launch. They discuss the importance of creating engaging social media content, reaching out to potential customers, and leveraging partnerships with influencers. They also consider writing articles comparing their product with competitors to increase search traffic. Corey and Cory emphasize the need to share their journey, including their failures and successes, to attract a wider audience. They also reflect on the challenges of entrepreneurship and the importance of celebrating wins and seeking support from others. The episode concludes with them expressing excitement for the future and hinting at the topic of their next season’s first episode.

Top Takeaways:

• Importance of Collaboration: They emphasize the value of not going alone in the entrepreneurial journey. Collaborative discussions provide different perspectives, balance, and emotional support, helping navigate challenges more effectively.
• Readiness to Pivot: Corey and Cory discuss the significance of being open to pivoting and having no loyalty to ideas. This flexibility allows them to adapt to changing needs and find optimal solutions for potential customers.
• Customer Awareness and Education: Corey Maass shares insights into the challenge of introducing a product where customers may not be aware they have a problem. Educating customers about the problem and its solution becomes a crucial aspect of their marketing strategy.
• Gratitude and Celebration of Wins: They express gratitude for their collaborative effort and celebrate the achievements, recognizing the importance of taking a moment to acknowledge wins, whether big or small. They emphasize the need to pause and reflect on the journey.

Mentioned in the show:

• WordPress
• Post Status
• Twitter
• Open Graph
• Bob Dunn’s “Do the Woo”
• Adobe Banner Maker
• OMGIMG
• YouTube
• Facebook
• LinkedIn
• Yoast
• WordPress Weekly
• The Tavern
• WP Builds
• WP Minute
• WP Mayor
• WeWork
• Halt and Catch Fire
• The Social Network
• Below Deck (reality TV show)

Sponsor: GoDaddy Pro

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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.

Browse our archives, and don’t forget to subscribe via iTunes, Google Podcasts, YouTube, Stitcher, Simplecast, or RSS.

Transcript

Cory Miller (00:00:23) – All right.

Corey Maass (00:00:25) – Session 30 the age that I think that I am. I don’t think I’m 18 anymore, but I definitely do not feel late 40s.

Cory Miller (00:00:39) – Okay, we’re live on YouTube. I agree with you. I think I’m 30. Not. But 30. Cory and Corey launched a WordPress product. Or maybe we change it to launched a WordPress product, but we had our big launch last week. Thanks so much for everything you did. Got the product out. Now the question turns to marketing. How do we get exposure? How do we build audience? How do we get people to the website to buy the product? I look at all this stuff is like product is a part of the equation. We we have thought things we want to do there marketing, like that whole engine. I try to keep it as simple as I can, but I think we’re on this phase, which is great, which is okay, we’ve got a good product, we’ve made sales. How do we get more? So 

Corey Maass: Right 

Cory Miller: Um, we were kind of talking a little bit about the website. (00:01:38) – Um, that’s part of the equation for sure. I think I told you in the kind of prep for this is, I think the website’s fine enough now. But I still go to what do you get when you did that before or after? Like, here’s what it was after. I think some of that work we should do soon is just run. Maybe create more templates, maybe create some outputs that we can show. Um, I’ve got to check on the status of putting it on Post Status. Um, I need to put it on my own blog. Um, and then, you know, the second thing is probably actually blog. So but assuming that we’re going to work on those things, um, now, how do we get more attention? How do we build that fan base of people that start to have those inroads? You’ve done a lot of those conversations, too. Um, it does seem like you were mentioning the entrepreneur Entrepreneur Mag or something. And like their social share images looking kind of plan to.

Cory Miller (00:02:46) – And so you go could take one of those, which is great. We should think about that. Like people using it, showcasing what it can do I think is where we need to go. But before that is like, who do we start talking to?

Corey Maass (00:02:59) – Right. Yeah, I knew I should have bookmarked it. Somebody. Somebody tweeted literally like this was a great article. And then there was a picture of a mountaintop or something. And it’s because of Twitter’s recent changes of of removing essentially any context, which I, I get but I don’t get I mean. It just. I. They have to have seen click thrus just plummet because you have no idea. You barely can see the domain. You certainly can’t see the URL. So you unless a person actually tweets the words, you know, this article about SEO is amazing. You literally have no context of what it’s about.

Cory Miller (00:03:45) – But you can still post photos, right? And it still does pull an open graph image.

Corey Maass (00:03:54) – Yes.

Cory Miller (00:03:55) – Well, that’s prime opportunity for us.

Corey Maass (00:03:58) – 100%, 100%.

Cory Miller (00:04:02) – I’m thinking that’s. Being creative with that.

Corey Maass (00:04:10) – Yeah. Who? How do we. Who and how do we call people out without being jerks about it?

Cory Miller (00:04:19) – We could, you know, like, take that magazine and say this. Hey, you know, leverage it again. Like you said, a blog post about Twitter with their changes and like, okay, entrepreneur, this would have been a better version of that. That could be some marketing we do. Um. I’m starting from the point of. I think this is because it is a visual product. So me seeing the results of.

Corey Maass: Right.

Cory Miller (00:04:47) – That, you know. Um. (00:04:51) – And I still got. I got to get back to find some time with Post Status and do those easy way to do like really good featured image which can be, you know, we can share this like like this is before this is after.

Cory Miller (00:05:08) – And then Matt Medeiros did a great video for us. That was awesome.

Corey Maass (00:05:13) – Oh man, it blew me away.

Cory Miller (00:05:17) – Were you on his podcast too, or you’re on Jeff Chandlers podcast?

Corey Maass (00:05:21) – Uh,WP constellations with Michelle and Jeff. Um, which came out timely. Think like a week ago. And somebody tweeted, like, product’s not even out yet and was like, hold your breath. And then we put it out on Friday, so it all worked out.

Cory Miller (00:05:43) – Okay. So those are probably like Bob Dunn Do the Woo. There’s some angles there like. Doing some of that stuff seems like low hanging fruit we could do. We put it in the Post Status newsletter. I saw you did it on put it in slack at Post Status. Um. You know, our avatar with agencies is another thing. Like. Something. I want to make sure I think this through, but like a WordPress agency maintaining client sites. Could be a value add to to me is like, hey, here’s a plug in we got. We said we wanted to use it on their site, like the two site licenses the base uses on your site and a client site, so they can start testing and see if it’s a bigger thing.

Cory Miller (00:06:41) – So I’m talking out loud thinking this through.

Corey Maass (00:06:44) – No. It’s great. Yeah. We talked about doing. Potentially doing like. A proper. That’s not the right way to put it, but a press release essentially, which I think could just be a blog post. Where. Yeah. Mean something to. Something dry will get us nothing. Something very. Press release. We’re pleased to announce the release of a new WordPress plugin. Snore. You know, but, um, I think even a few paragraphs of us talking about our journey, the fact that people can go back and watch all the videos, um, how we got here. Might help because, yeah, I mean, there’s not I’ve been the thing I scrambled on over the last few days is getting us listed everywhere that I’m seeing Black Friday deals. Um, just basically lining that up because I think it’ll. That’ll. That’ll be a big deal. What I haven’t done is reach out to the normal popular WordPress news sources. (00:08:05) – Because I’m not. I don’t have anything prepared yet. Really? Um. So that might be, you know, if we do anything.

Cory Miller (00:08:18) – I was just talking to somebody and he was like, you know, we trained the industry on Wafer Black Friday, right? He’s big discount sales. So like that’s an anomaly in this whole launch thing is we’re a couple weeks before Black Friday, Cyber Monday and in kind of a down global economy.

Corey Maass:  (00:08:38) – Yeah.

Cory Miller (00:08:39) – Um. So like just riffing on some thoughts. I think we could do take some time in these sessions and create templates and outputs that we can share. You know.

Cory Miller (00:08:59) – Use this working time to kind of build a couple of things that will help us with product two and show like this is we’re making this better. This is better than it was. When we look at our problem statement, it’s the it’s the wugly. It’s like they’re not really doing a lot for you. And you can kind of look, I mean, I think a lot of people look amateurish anyway because it just doesn’t come out of the box ready to go.

Cory Miller (00:09:29) – Like featured images, social images. So this is a classic question. Do people know they have a problem? 

Corey Maass: Right. 

Cory Miller: Do they recognize they have a problem?

Corey Maass (00:09:49) – Yeah. And that’s like we are. This is something that I’ve struggled with all along. Like it’s even in our current little tagline is. There’s. There’s wully and there’s. This is this is not the right word, but useless or unvaluable, lacking in value. Or, you know, if you again, if you upload a featured image. Presumably the right size and shape for the theme that you’ve got on your site. That’s one thing like it doesn’t. You could enhance that.

Corey Maass (00:10:32) – And then I think, as we’ve talked about or touched on, a lot of people don’t understand that there is a difference between your featured image and the image that gets shared, because so often they are the same thing, but they shouldn’t be the same thing. Um, and then and then your, your social image, it isn’t it, you know, if it’s the same as your featured image, it’s, it’s not so much that it’s ugly, it’s that it’s especially again, you know, with the recent Twitter changes, it’s it’s useless unless it includes the type, the, the topic of the article or the name of the product or whatever it is that you’re trying to get people to click through.

Corey Maass (00:11:17) – They have no context scrolling back to try to find like there was a tweet or literally somebody had said, like, this is a great article. And then there was a picture of like nature or something. And it was like. I wish I could find it. And scrolling back, back, back. But, um. You know, it’s. How do we. How do we relate that? Um. Yeah. And it’s and it’s, it’s because it’s behind the scenes. Like again, I think just to keep talking about the problem is that people aren’t at least like my clients are not thinking about. A third party tweeting to a to somebody else. To another third party like, hey, check out this article on our magazine or on that magazine over there.

Corey Maass (00:12:12) – And so that’s, you know, it’s it’s abstracted and so there’s, there’s. Which is why I mean I think. Your comments. About. Agency. And then also when we get to like publishing business or businesses that publish, you know, there are people whose job it is to know about this stuff.

Corey Maass (00:12:35) – And it’s, you know, in part it’s my job to like, educate my clients. But for the most part, they are not. They’re non-technical, they’re writers. And so all this stuff is supposed to just kind of happen for them, which is my job. This is why I created the plugin.

Cory Miller (00:12:55) – So like. We’ve talked about this, two examples of, you know, good use of like featured images on social. It seems to me like your YouTube thumbnail, whatever that, whatever that’s called where you can just look at it and it’s got some information on it. Second, it comes to mind for me is Facebook posts where something in that featured image. Is interesting enough and I’m trying to come back down to product. What we could do, but the framework are like the YouTube image that the purpose of the thumbnail is to get someone to click play.

Corey Maass: (00:13:34) – Right.

Cory Miller (00:13:36) – Um.

Corey Maass (00:13:37) – And all of the all the better channels. So they call them posters, um, or or thumbnails, but post like in uploading the video, my my walkthrough of the product up to YouTube, it says, you know, upload a custom poster here.

Corey Maass (00:13:54) – So I went over to our own product and created a poster, which felt awesome. Um, but you know, if you look at all the, the vlogs that that I follow that I watch regularly, if you look at what is recent, it’s like it’s not a thumbnail from the video. They’ve created something that’s got something clickbaity in it, you know?

Cory Miller (00:14:22) – Okay, so it’s called YouTube poster. Channel art. So Canva comes up. Banner with awesome layouts. YouTube banner maker. Okay. Oh. That’s interesting. Search results. Okay. Sorry. Okay, so Adobe has a banner maker. Okay. That’s not helpful. I mean, there’s probably a really good example of a, you know. (00:15:22) – Here we go.

Cory Miller (00:15:25) – Social media is pretty prolific on this kind of stuff. I’m like trying to find an article just so you know, you’re not seeing my screen, but. You know, it seems like the same principle as you go. Create a thumbnail poster. This could be really. We could take some things from that.

Cory Miller (00:15:43) – And I think really, Corey, it’s like, let’s take enough of that information and try to use our tool to create outputs like. Maybe there’s before and afters. Maybe there’s some room. Leveraging the Twitter conversation about the stripping, all that. I’m like, God, that’s that’s an opportunity.People are talking about that.

Corey Maass (00:16:10) – I just don’t know what to do. Like I wrote down, you know, write an article called something like recent Twitter changes and how they affect you. But what do we do with that? Like I don’t want to put that article on. You know OMGIMG.co. Because one we’re not getting traffic yet and two if I like spin up a quote unquote blog section, you know, articles on that site, it’s the you know, it’ll get a few eyes and we can obviously we can promote that article, but, um, you know, is that the best way or. And maybe it is. I’m just trying to think of like, we have these great topics.

Corey Maass (00:16:53) – I’m just not sure where we’re yet to put our time.

Cory Miller(00:16:57) – Yeah. I mean.I think good.

Cory Miller (00:17:03) – Product use is like a main thesis is better displays on social back to your company. You know stuff out here that leads back to your site. So like. What if we don’t even create posts on our site? We create social images using OMGIMG. And just do social content because I’m thinking like how do we get traffic? It’s like using our social profiles to draw people back to get some attention. And I mean compelling cases like create, just create the images with OMG, even though on the site we’re not creating a banner post or something, but like made with OMG IMG like you know. It. It’s kind of a blend of adds like the thought something. But that’s the premise is make these better to come back. So like maybe we don’t use do blog posts, maybe it’s let’s get out there in where we’re trying to effect and do it. So like. And we can also show evolution of the platform.

Cory Miller (00:18:17) – And we can ask people like, hey, we’re trying to use the product. And showcase it to get people understanding like this is what you’re trying to get. So create social images. That’s it. And then post them on our accounts. That’s a we already have followings on LinkedIn and Twitter. I’ve got some Twitter following. So like don’t know. What? Like you could be creative with it. Like a Twitter thread. That’s only images.

Cory Miller (00:18:53) – Twitter. Just. Took out whatever that is. You know, we’re showing. Some message going like, well, we created this to make social images better, and we’re showing how our tool is actually doing that, where it’s getting around some of those artificial limits. And it seems to me it’s like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook. Those are three things that I’m sorry. Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn. Those are three I know I have fallen on and can do some of those. Yeah.

Corey Maass (00:19:32) – Yeah, Facebook’s pretty much fallen away. Um. Yeah.

Corey Maass (00:19:41) – I want to talk about the problem. Like. And I don’t mean between us like we have talked about the problem, I want to. Like what? What images do we create? And what is the wording around it? So that because it’s like what I, what I want to do is I want to take an innocuous picture, a picture of a bunch of trees. And tweet like. If you click on the image below or why would you click on the image below? You have no idea what what this links to. And then like reply to myself. The problem is, is nobody’s. I don’t know that anybody will click will view the reply to that initial tweet, but it’s like you could show that same image picture of nature, but say have a fake title over it or say this is what.You.(00:20:33) – Know, this is what you’re clicking through to. So, you know, so how do we illustrate that. And and maybe we can use that same paradigm of. Before and after, you know.

Corey Maass (00:20:49) – Twitter I think yeah, Twitter. I think I’ll do animated GIFs and things like that. So we could actually even show it like. If we created a couple of examples of like the slider going back and forth of like, you have no idea what this is about, now you do.

Cory Miller (00:21:07) – Which is where we could just even if we did one of those a week, you know, my beautiful mountain. To something we did in on OMGIMG that made it more interesting for the user.

Corey Maass: (00:21:22) – Right.

Corey Maass (00:21:25) – The other. The other thing to talk about is. Saying everybody has this problem helps nobody. This is one of these marketing 101 sort of things. So it’s like, are we talking to. Or we’re talking to site owners. It’s like anybody who’s publishing. So if you’re if you’re publishing a blog post, articles, whatever it is. But it ties into SEO. Right. And so are we. Are we trying to you know, this is this is a it’s interesting because it’s like. Yoast or SEO framework or all in one SEO.

Corey Maass (00:22:16) – Are targeting everybody who owns a site, who publishes. Great. Good for them. Um. And so we because we are almost a like we stand on our own, but we also are a companion product to those plug ins.

Cory Miller: (00:22:36) – Yeah.

Corey Maass (00:22:37) – Um. You know. Where? Where are. Where do the Yoasters hang out? Where do the frame workers hang out? Um.

Cory Miller (00:22:48) – Well, there’s a there is a post there of, you know, Yoast has basic. The OG image stuff, you know, so but people probably have problems with it like want more. And so, you know, there’s probably someone typing Y-O-A-S-T. Whatever those. And there’s probably not a ton of traffic, but enough to go. Here’s the plus one.

Corey Maass (00:23:17) – Yeah.

Cory Miller (00:23:18) – That’s compelling. I forgot about the framework and integration. You did.

Corey Maass (00:23:23) – Yeah, we have the top six. I’ve got two more. There was a, um. I recently joined the admin bar Facebook group and have been it’s really it’s been really interesting.

Corey Maass (00:23:38) – It’s another good it’s like advanced WP Facebook group where it’s like you’re watching real people with real problems talk about them, you know, and and so I’m, I’m a lurker. I’m contributing a little bit where I can answering questions whatever. But it’s they’re they’re mostly small agencies or independent WordPress developers dealing with clients and dealing with tech issues and stuff like that. It’s great. Um, but so what what jumps out at me right now is. But, you know, in those kinds of forums you can’t like, I message the people who run those. I mean, nice coincidence that through through going to WordCamps for ten years, I know for the most part the people running these different communities and asked nicely, like, what is the policy. About. Just promoting a product and, and and no surprise, they came back and we’re like, yeah, we’d rather you didn’t, you know. So I’m not going to I mean, I don’t want to play by the rules to a degree. I mention it every chance I can, but in context anyway, all that to say.

Corey Maass (00:24:51) – Um, but I’m wondering, like what? Just what I think you just said is. And this is great. Inbound marketing is an article. We will write a guide per SEO plugin that says, this is what Yoast offers. Here’s how we make it better. This is what the SEO Framework offers. Let’s, you know, this is how we make it better and show our companionship with all of those different because then we’ll we ideally, hopefully they will promote some of that. Um, or at least they have a reason to and maybe we can pick up some of the like search traffic or overlap.

Cory Miller (00:25:35) – Yeah. You said you said this and that is like. The big, huge publishers have, I think, a big need. Their job is to get people to their sites so their advertisers get exposure. So okay, picture of a mountain doesn’t help. Something more in there does help. That’s intensive to go to Adobe. Whatever. I’m a show type person. A lot of this, like it was hard with some of the things that we had over the years backup, security.

Cory Miller (00:26:12) – But people knew they had a problem because they were hacked, they lost website or they were super conscious about not losing data. So they already had the problem. And I’m thinking we’re in that stage of maybe because, you know, when you had those conversations at WordCamp US, people were like, oh, yeah, you know, but they weren’t like. I. I just can’t stand the output.. that was in top of mind. So it seems like we got to establish the problem.

Corey Maass: (00:26:46) – Right.

Cory Miller (00:26:47) – So identify it. And that’s why I’m going back to. I like the before and after that you mentioned.

Cory Miller (00:26:55) – I’d like using the product to showcase it. 

Corey Maass: Right 

Cory Miller: A lot because that’s where I just go the end result is, oh, I can get that nice of a thing with this tool. That’s the magic. Didn’t know this was a problem, now I do. Now I’m recognizing it everywhere. That’s first stage of things where we need to do more of. I think that’s just groundwork level. It’s just identify a problem.

Cory Miller (00:27:22) – Hey everybody. There’s a problem. And then recognition. Of OG images. You’re not creating those. It’s really tough to do that bigger problem. It’s tough to do it. I want to do it. I like your SEO angle. Like we saw those little miniature thumbnails that Google did on some of the news and publication stuff. We figured out how to do that. I don’t know how to showcase that other than a video or screenshots. Um.

Corey Maass (00:27:58) – Well, yeah. And I’m like, what? So I’m taking notes as as you’re talking because it’s whatever’s sparking. I’m like. I Don’t.

Corey Maass (00:28:11) – My only debate is if video is the right answer. But. The next time I see. The tweet that says, this is a great article. And it shows a nothing image. I’m going to go. Like basically create a fake blog post with the same title. I’m going to take their image in there, and I’m going to shoot a video that says, if you had the if you had our plugin, it’s a little it’s a little snarky, but you know, if you had our plugin installed, you’d click here.

Corey Maass (00:28:50) – You you’d click on these three things and your image would have looked like this on Twitter instead of like this. Videos require, and then I and then we can and then we can post that video again. It’s a little I want to make sure that we’re not jerks about it like, but I think, you know, basically mini use cases. Or mini case studies. That’s what I want to say. Many case studies of like, had these folks done this, you know, with a with a minimum of clicks using our product, this is what they would have accomplished rather than what what they’ve got. I just don’t want to be like. Well, you know, if you’ve done it our way, you know you’d be better. 

Cory Miller: Yeah. 

Corey Maass: So we can try that and just see how it feels.

Cory Miller (00:29:53) – I say, why not? Like you know.

Corey Maass (00:29:56) – Well, especially if we can find one. That’s again I’m as we’re chatting, I’m scrolling, scrolling, scrolling back, trying to find whatever that tweet was.

Corey Maass (00:30:05) – It was this just this morning. So it’s got to be here somewhere. But I’m like, if it’s, you know, it was it was either on Medium or it was, you know, Entrepreneur Magazine or something. So it’s like it’s a big corporation. I’m not so concerned about pissing somebody off. I don’t, you know, it’s not somebody’s personal blog. It’s a. You know  it’s a company that that frankly, could be doing better. Don’t remember now who it was. So. I think if we find the right examples, that’s the. That’s the answer.

Cory Miller (00:30:39) – Yeah.This is what it was. This is what I could. Could have been in five minutes.

Corey Maass: (00:30:49) – Right.

Cory Miller (00:30:49) – And the SEO angle. It’s it’s competitive advantage. I do a lot of image search, and sometimes I typically click over into the content. I want to learn more. And I don’t know how to showcase that with just images. That’s got to be some kind of, you know, screenshots, video, like do the search, see this go to site..

Cory Miller (00:31:13) – And the angle there is just competitive advantage. SEO is so competitive anyway. Anything that gets me a little bit more. Traction. If it’s not a big bar to do, which was what we’re solving.

Corey Maass: (00:31:29) – Right?

Cory Miller (00:31:30) – It’s easier.

Corey Maass (00:31:32) – Yeah. And it’s it’s funny because it’s, um, I think it’s.

Corey Maass (00:31:38) – SEO and its truest form. So SEO is now, uh, the equivalent of understanding the algorithm and tricking the computer, right. Like your it humans aren’t involved. If, like, SEO optimization is about getting your results into Google, and supposedly Google is constantly tweaking their algorithms and their tools to try to emulate or even out emulate over emulate what humans are doing. Because humans often can’t describe or, you know, the real robot overlords know that. You know, it’s the humans don’t know what’s good for them kind of conversation. But what we’re talking about is like words on an image. Um, that are actually going to make humans click through. So it’s it supersedes SEO. But I think it’s, it’s sort of bundled into the same thing.

Corey Maass (00:32:43) – I did find. Yeah. So far, I’ve found one.

Corey Maass (00:32:48) – One tweet, but it’s somebody’s website, so it’s like, I don’t want to pick on that person, but it’s like I desperately want to reach out to them and be like. Here’s a copy. Buy it next week or something, but I don’t. I don’t think we’re at cold outreach yet either. I don’t want to be.

Cory Miller (00:33:08) – That’s what I’m just trying to think. So for me personally. I’ve told you way back, like I love this slide content in Instagram. I really like that and then linked in to even though I haven’t seen a ton of that on LinkedIn. But I like it because it’s like I don’t have time to go read a 1500 word posts necessarily, but if I get the gist. And I was like, okay. The experiment for me could be. Take some of my ideas. Take some of my experiences instead of me doing a blog post, do an OMG IMG image. And use it in that case and put it out on my socials, you know, made with OMG IMG.

Cory Miller (00:33:57) – And could get some basic. (00:34:02) You know, attention as showing. You know that I still think like the base content. What is.

Cory Miller (00:34:09) – We don’t have slides, you know. OMG, but you know. Problem identification. You know, bland, bland stuff. Have you seen how your stuff looks on on social? That’s called an open graph image. They all do it differently.

Cory Miller (00:34:30) – Just trying to think of that in slides. But we don’t do slides. But we could put those together like in a gallery maybe.

Corey Maass (00:34:35) – Oh for sure.

Cory Miller (00:34:36) – For Instagram and stuff. Yep.

Speaker 3 (00:34:40) – And I think that would work.

Corey Maass (00:34:43) – At the. At the core, I think what we’re talking about is creating a lot of content. And. And then putting it out on our on our own channels. And then also, you know, OMG has its has a Twitter account and has an Instagram account, but they don’t, you know, they have no juice yet. So putting out that content no harm. But it doesn’t. It doesn’t get eyes like. You and I do.

Corey Maass (00:35:16) – Which mean we’re not huge, but we’ve got followers. 

Cory Miller (00:35:26) – Yes. Think less than. I have about 17,000 on Twitter and starting there. And LinkedIn, I don’t know, a couple of thousand people maybe following or something that what it is. Let me just look real quick if you.

Corey Maass (00:35:40) – Why don’t you just just send me your username and password and I’ll take over your account and start. Putting all the content out that we need.

Corey Maass (00:35:49) – That was a joke. Um, but the other the other thing that I do think we should do is like, let’s. You know this world better than I. How do we leverage? So it’s like I’m following the Post Status example of over.

Corey Maass (00:36:11) – A few times over the years, I’ve messaged you guys and said like, oh, hey, I have I, you know, I bought a plug in, I sold a plug in, I launched a plug in and was always met with the very appropriate reply, like, write it up somewhere for us and we will link to it.

Corey Maass (00:36:29) – Right. So perfect for our newsletter. And so I’m, I’m, I want to take advantage of like there’s there are a few news outlets, WordPress news outlets that will write their own copy. But I think more, more often there’s newsletters or collections of links or roundups, essentially. Which is great. I personally, I personally find those more valuable because they’re I can skim ten things in, you know, in 100 words rather than reading 100 words and learning about one thing. Um, I’m that kind of nerd. Um. But if we have more things, we can get linked by other people.

Cory Miller (00:37:16) – Yeah, you’re absolutely right. You know, email Ray from sorry can’t remember her username email Ray. Here’s here’s some basic content that she can at least take and makes your job easier to get that in there. Rob Howard and Master WP. Um. You’ve already done Matt, Bob. I think there’s more paid stuff, but, um, who are the. Absolutely. Those are table stakes. You got those things.

Cory Miller (00:37:52) – You’re right. In a blog post with material enough material they can like copy, paste, edit a little bit. Table stakes. Absolutely got to do that.

Corey Maass (00:38:02) – Yeah. So I think I mean at its base let’s. Because like I. Sorry. Go ahead.

Cory Miller (00:38:10) – David. Devender. 

Corey Maass: Oh, right. 

Cory Miller: Um, I think it’s WordPress Weekly or something. Sarah from The Tavern. That’s absolutely right. Thank you for having me there. We got to do that. That’s easy. We’ll probably get a mention. What I could do, Corey, is just say because most of those people I talk to a lot. Hey, Corey, it’s really cool. Experiment we’ve been doing is launch into public, launching a product in public. We did it. Trying to make wugly better. Here’s a blog post which is videos. All that stuff. Love. If you. I’d love to have a mention if you can. Um, so that’s table stakes. We got to do that first.

Corey Maass(00:39:01) – Yep.

Corey Maass (00:39:09) – Yeah. And that’s I guess that’s what I’m, I’m, I’m trying to summarize like I think we’re, we’re, we’re coming up with good content, good ideas for content. Um, we need to create at least a little bit of it because people don’t want to just link to our homepage, um, they can, you know, and, and that’s for some that’s going to be enough. Like Corey and Cory, you know, did finally release a product. Go to the homepage. Um, but I think if we cover some of these. Um, case studies use cases. Even if even just 1 or 2. Then that’s something compelling to click through. And again, it shows instead of tells like you’ve said. Um, and then I’m, I’m also wondering like, let’s do that first round of just. Sending out. You know, even if it’s a paragraph press, you know, press release, big air quotes of, yes, this thing’s finally out and cover our bases.

Corey Maass (00:40:16) – Get into all the newsletters once, get on all the news sites once. So then we’ve got a bunch of backlinks and we’ve got a bunch of mentions, and maybe that’ll get us another little bump. And then I’m also starting to wonder, like, if we can use that. Um.

Corey Maass (00:40:35) – To get out of the bubble too, of like, are there. And that’s sort of why I think I mentioned or not. That’s sort of why I mentioned SEO earlier or I’ve because I’ve been thinking about it. I’m like, how do we get outside of WordPress. (00:40:50) – And talk about SEO? Like if I, you know, what are the SEO newsletters? That probably most of their readers use WordPress. But it’s not, you know, it’s implied or it’s just what they use. But if we can get mentions there.

Cory Miller (00:41:16) – You’re right. Let me. Let’s see. Start with press.

Cory Miller (00:41:26) – I’ve got Davinder from the weekly. Sarah from The Tavern. Bob WP WPmayor. Um. Who are some of the other outlets?

Corey Maass(00:41:41) – Um. Going through my promotions because I’ve.

Cory Miller (00:41:50) – Um, Ray’s newsletter, which I can’t remember. It’s called off the top of my head. I’m trying to get this list so I can start this once we get it. I’ll start doing things with you and that person. Cyber. Real quick. Can’t help myself, but I was like, you know what would be really compelling to all those outlets? The product is compelling. However, you know, it’s really compelling. We did this for am effing year. What are ten things we learned? That would give us an angle. That blog post could sit at OMGIMG, a year, 30 episodes, countless hours a year of doing a product. What did we learn that would be a compelling angle for all those outlets that would get attention to OMGIMG like go look at the product. Tell us what you think. Um.

Cory Miller (00:42:48) – Okay, so I think 1,23,4,5,6 – 6 outlets. What is his name? I met him. WP Crafter.I don’t think he would necessarily promote it.

Cory Miller (00:43:07) – However, at least ping him 

Corey Maass: WP builds. 

Cory Miller: Oh, Nathan Wrigley. 

Corey Maass (00:43:22) –  WP minute is Matt’s thing.  Remkus has his. Remkus de Vries.

Corey Maass (00:43:40) – It’s thinking we put all these in one place.

Cory Miller (00:43:44) – Like, let me work on the 5,10 things that we learned.

Corey Maass (00:43:51) – Okay.

Cory Miller (00:43:52) – Shoot it over to you. If you have comments, things you want to add because 

Corey Maass: That would be great, 

Cory Miller: That’s a great way for us to shop, show it like I mean, really compelling is we been working on this for a year.

Corey Maass: (00:44:04) – Right.

Cory Miller (00:44:05) – We got our first sell. You know, we’re to zero to first. So we’ve had this meandering not meandering, but like, you know, path to get to this point. And I think it would drum up some interest for the product to just talk about what we talk about, you know, is like we did Crop Express, then we did this because we thought this is the bigger thing. There’s case studies. People can poke holes and everything we’ve done. But like, I think that’d be compelling.

Cory Miller (00:44:33) – There’s a lot of agencies out there that want to get into products. Um, you know what we’ve learned so far? Mistakes we’ve made. Those are I’d tell people, I think people want to know more about my failures than my successes.

Corey Maass (00:44:47) – Right.

Cory Miller (00:44:48) – So let me work on that piece of content. That’s something great for Post Status. In our product section two, we can share with all those outlets. I think it’ll come up with. It’ll probably produce some interviews, podcast stuff like happy to talk about this.

Corey Maass (00:45:04) – Oh, that’s the other. The other list to make is. Get on podcasts. (00:45:12) – Like I’m.I’ve got a pretty good cadence.

Corey Maass (00:45:18) – For better or worse, have an opinion about everything so people don’t mind having me on their podcast. But there’s definitely more that I could actually reach out to either I haven’t been on in a long time, or there’s plenty I haven’t been on. I don’t mean to big myself up too much, like I’m not on all of them by any stretch, but it’s like reaching out and going, hey, like, we actually did this thing.

Corey Maass (00:45:42) – I’d love to come talk about it, promote it. But I also think your users would find it interesting to hear about this crazy journey that the Corey’s have been on.

Cory Miller (00:45:52) – There’s so many things to talk about that would help us, that would be natural that we should use. That’ll get us a promotion for the actual product. We still need to do our stuff for the product. But like, I just think, God, that’s a compelling angle.

Corey Maass (00:46:05) – Yeah. Oh for sure.

Cory Miller (00:46:07) – How we got here. Some of the even the issues we didn’t like. You know, even with two of us, we see a lot of maybe each other’s blind spots or things. We’re not. You know, we we’re doing this, but we also go. Are people problem aware? That’s a great question. Like do they have a problem that basic entrepreneurial is okay, go to forums, go to things. What are the what’s the shit people actually complain about that’s problem aware. That’s a good place to start. We’re in.

Cory Miller (00:46:43) – Not aware fully. And that’s work. But that’s good work because it will lead to us defining the category. All that kind of stuff. So. I’ve heard people like, I guess people are watching these, which is great. They’ve been following along.

Corey Maass (00:47:00) – Yeah, but I’m like, it’s just one of the funny things is like, as I’m, you know, we’re over the hump. It’s out the door now. We now marketing and sales. Okay, great. And all these things that we’re talking about. Um, but like, nagging at the back of my mind. Is. You know, and this is this is long term thinking, but it’s like, how do we get out of. I’ve never viewed being in the WordPress bubble as a disadvantage. And I and I still won’t WordPress insider. Like I’ve got amazing connections to amazing minds and conversations and stuff, but there’s also. How do. You. (00:47:49) – How do you reach all the people who have who barely know what WordPress is? It’s just the thing they use to publish their website.

Cory Miller (00:47:56) – That’s why I think I keep coming back to at this stage, since we don’t have money to spend on this necessarily is like. Posting on our socials. You know, the us using the product. I don’t know how Dropbox. I think you know, Dropbox is that typical example where Drew I think he had a video or something. But you know, where people’s mind go. You know, I had the same problem. I still try to go command s command s command s nowadays that’s kind of just baked in autosave, you know, and that cloud. But at some point I need to find his original video. It was that click point. You know, I think we’re just going to have to continue to do this kind of really tough, grassroots level work of showing people the problem, showing people the solution. But something clicked where now cloud is ubiquitous mostly, and just assumed where my ass is actually worn off my keyboard. You know?

Cory Miller (00:49:07) – But did I know? Command S was a problem.

Cory Miller (00:49:12) – It was like, no, I got to command this all the time. I knew that problem. But did I know there’s a solution called just Autosave Cloud. Right. And point that transition in that. That’s that point. 

Corey Maass (00:49:28) – Yep. Yep.Yeah, there’s I mean, you know, we are. Day four.

Corey Maass (00:49:34) – It’s Wednesday, day three. Since there was a weekend. Yeah. So early days and and this is I mean, in some respects this is. Another one of the fun parts where it’s like, you just kind of try everything you throw, you throw everything at the wall, you know, you send, you send one person a message of a certain, a certain type of person, a message, and see if they bite, see how it’s received, um, you know, and eventually you get organized.

Cory Miller (00:50:09) – Well.You just had a really good point. Maybe we’ve concluded launching a WordPress product. This episode we’re on day three of launched. We’ve launched it. Now we’re like marketing. It’s out.

Cory Miller (00:50:26) – It’s it’s for sale currently today. So maybe we transition this to now marketing. Like we.

Cory Miller (00:50:34) – First step is launch. Build and launch. We’ve launched. Now second step. Problem is market get customers.

Corey Maass (00:50:43) – Cory, You know what we just did? We just concluded season one. 30 episodes. Almost a year.

Corey Maass (00:50:56) – And and we just concluded season one. Launch a WordPress product live. And now we transition to marketing and selling a live WordPress product.

Cory Miller (00:51:11) – Okay, let’s do two minutes of celebration. Holy shit. We’ve done a year of this product launch. Congratulations to you. Like thank you and congrats. We have. We’re really built two.

Corey Maass: (00:51:28) – Yeah.

Cory Miller (00:51:29) – We in a in a in 365 days a year, we have launched two products.

Corey Maass: (00:51:36) – Yeah.

Cory Miller (00:51:37) – Congrats. What a what a great. That’s the first segment of our long journey. Getting to success first is hard. Just get a product. Just build a product. Launch the effing product. We’ve done it. Congrats to us.

COrey Maass: (00:51:52) – Boom. Yeah.

Corey Maass (00:51:53) – I. I keep talking about, like. Um. Sorry emotional moment like Matt Medeiros is an amazing, amazing person, right? Like, people who follow WordPress are involved in the community. Know what that man does. The he’s been here the whole freaking time. He’s contributed so much value to the community. I will never stop singing his praises. Um, and and I’m grateful personally to to ways that he has helped me. Um, and and then again now like so he casually said like, oh, hey, send me, you know, send me a copy of the plugin. I’ll, I’ll, I’ll do I’ll do a video about it or I’ll, you know, I’ll do something. And I was like, sure, here. Um, because it’s again trusted news source and WordPress influencer, if such a thing exists and all that stuff. But I didn’t. I didn’t think. Hard about it. I mean, guess because there was no hesitation. And then and he produced this gorgeous video.

Corey Maass (00:53:11) – I’m annoyed because it’s probably better than the official product demo that I did. Um, but. The reason I bring it up now is I had that the talking about celebrating is like obviously I have been. You know, cheek to the metal, building this thing and to see somebody else. So, you know, he’s also obviously a power user of WordPress. He had the plug in for like a day. And he created a video that so beautifully, elegantly, eloquently showed the problem and the value and even picked up on some of the nuances of like, you know, places where I tried to make it convenient to use the tool and, and things like that. And it. It was the first time that I’d seen somebody without me looking over their shoulder. Use the product, use it successfully, get value out of it. And I was so freaking proud. So we launched Friday. I woke up at 4 a.m. and I put the thing live probably around 9 a.m. and in those five hours, I made sweeping changes, um, you know, and and you’re always a little hesitant to do that.

Corey Maass (00:54:33) – But I was like, if people are actually going to see this thing, like, there’s UI changes that I’ve been putting off that I just need to do, you know, adding tabs or reorganizing the pages or tweaking the copy or whatever. And, and so to see all of that, you know, just a few days later and see, like a handsome product, a powerful product, a product that did not look like a beta, you know, shining back at me with just felt so good. And and it, it made it feel worth it because like there’s been you know, we we pivoted not only did we change course in the, in the product that we wanted to build, but, you know, at least 2 or 3 times as we’ve talked about. I was like, I need to stop and rebuild this, or we need to change the approach that we’re taking to solve this problem, what have you. And it was like all of a sudden it felt it all felt worth it, or I felt confident that it was all worth it.

Cory Miller (00:55:40) – And don’t stop and celebrate the wins. Oftentimes I’m like just focused on the the mountain. And I really appreciate that moment. You had were like, I think I need to pause for a second because it’s emotional, because you have put in way more work than me and done this tirelessly and worked on it and worked on and worked on it to get it where it is twice. And thank you for that. But like, um, it was a great hearing that, you know, this, this job or whatever we call this business, there’s not a lot of ‘that a boys’ for the entrepreneur in it. And I think it was fun. It’s like. We still have a product for sale, which is great, but like, okay, we did, we did that leg of the journey and there’s always new problems to solve.

Corey Maass (00:56:34) – Well it’s. Yeah. So I, I keep I kept talking about Halt and Catch Fire. I’ve finished that. And so I’m like the other the other go to is the social network which is a very different.

Corey Maass (00:56:48) – Atmosphere altogether, but it still has that. There’s there’s still something in it that’s like, this is a person driving towards a thing, but somebody says at one point is like, okay, so you know, so Facebook is done, you know, he’s sitting in his dorm room and it’s ready to launch. And they’re like, okay, so it’s done. And he’s like, well, it’s never going to be done. And that’s exactly right. Like this is, you know, us getting the product out the door is, is if you step back far enough is literally the first step. But you know, but that doesn’t mean when you zoom in far enough that it hasn’t been already a million steps and is is a huge milestone and a and a and a big accomplishment.

Corey Maass (00:57:35) – Yeah. Freaking fun.

Cory Miller (00:57:39) – We’ve been watching Below Deck. It’s a reality TV show that was. Oh, yes. And it’s like 15 seasons and it’s morphed into different things. And I was like, it’s a perfect case study for leadership and management.

Cory Miller (00:57:52) – You know, you’re on a boat you have customers on the boat. You have team that’s getting stuff done. And they show the behind the scenes and it goes perfect. So that’s for like leadership management. I’ve been wanting to do like a group case study discussion about it because it’s so good. I’ll pause it and be like, Lindsey, look, okay, so Halt and Catch Fire. So good for business.

Corey Maass: (00:58:18) – Yeah.

Cory Miller (00:58:18) – Like how the case study is how to deal with an ending. Frustration, failure. You know.

Corey Maass (00:58:28) – Like difficult personalities. I don’t I don’t know how you’ve put up with me for a year. You know, I get off of every call with you and, like, scream and shout and jump up and down because, you know, you’re just you’re just inherently a difficult person. You’re contrarian. Obviously, all of this is facetious. But. Yeah. It’s. Yeah. It’s fun. I don’t know why we do it. You’re right. We’re insane. But. It’s fun and it’s nice.

Corey Maass (00:59:01) – It is nice to take a minute and be like, you know, mean, look at what we did, right? We we jumped on a call we spent an hour talking about like, okay, the things launched now we got to market.

Corey Maass (00:59:12) – And it’s like we didn’t stop. We did our our five minute video last last week of being like, okay folks, it’s out. You know, here we are. We’re we’re happy. Thank you for coming on this journey with us. Um. But yeah, we’re already onto the next thing. How do we market it? How do we sell it? What content can we produce?

Cory Miller (00:59:36) – Roughing out my lessons we’ve learned from here and like right now, is this moment of because I don’t, I don’t do this, take this moment to look back and I don’t know, count some of the wins, honor the work and progress we’ve made so far. Um, so that’s one celebrate the honor of the work. Even if it isn’t. Feel like a win and celebrate those those wins like it.

Cory Miller (01:00:10) – I would not have looked up, Corey. I would just kept going until we eventually gave up. And I wouldn’t have segmented it and going like 30 episodes a year later, celebrate that. I think that’s such a good takeaway for most entrepreneurs, because if they’re like, if you’re like me, you’re just next thing, next thing, next thing. I can tell iLindsey in her startup that I’m helping her with is she got an eight week. Tranche of money to do something with My Marketing Assistant and for for them and her team. I said, we need to celebrate our wins weekly, and we need to know that we’ve accomplished something, even if it isn’t the big scoreboard win.

Corey Maass: (01:00:55) – Right.

Cory Miller (01:00:56) – I recognize that for her team, but not myself. Until this moment when I was hearing you go, don’t do this. So it’s honoring the moment to let you make sure you got that moment. Wow. But I still don’t do that for myself. So that’s number one. Number two actually is number one. Don’t go alone like you created a lot of products by yourself.

Cory Miller (01:01:19) – I hope at least if anything I’ve given is somebody do not have to do it alone with, like, just walking through things because we get into these unending like corners and it’s frustrating as. You know, and and I think it’s helped we balance each other out sometimes. Like, okay, maybe it’s not as bad as we’ve seen or there’s another way or just simply like, don’t we just wait, wait a week, you know, in that one. So don’t go alone. Um.

Corey Maass (01:01:52) – Yeah, I desperately miss when I was in New York City working at a We Work and every day. At least once a day. I had some conversation with somebody talking through their problems or mine. You know and it it just having people to turn to and say, hey let me talk discuss this makes all the difference, you know, big and small.

Cory Miller (01:02:24) – Yeah, that’s what I missed. And this is why it’s been so much fun. It’s just. You know. Thankfully, I don’t think both of us were down in the same week.

Corey Maass:(01:02:36) – Right.

Cory Miller (01:02:37) – You know, um, I mean, that’s my marriage for 13 years is like, okay, well, we’re both down. Suck.

Corey Maass: (01:02:45) – You’re right.

Cory Miller (01:02:46) – Most weeks one’s up, one’s down. So, like. That’s helpful. Um.

Corey Maass (01:02:55) – Same with like, worrying, like, you know, usually usually one person worries and the other person is like either reassuring or is the like, okay, you do the worrying for both of us, like, I can, I can help drag us forward.

Cory Miller: (01:03:11) – Yeah. Yeah. Dealing with the frustrations of business and the stuff the swamps like you hit. Invariably helping make decisions like. Refactoring the code, putting it on react like. It was a better path for having at least discussed it. So okay, I’m going to put I’m going to keep thinking of my. Things for that post that we can do top of that.

Corey Maass (01:03:48) – Yeah. I’ll have to think about my my lessons over the last year. Not going it alone pretty much for the first time.

Corey Maass (01:03:58) – Definitely huge benefits. Not being afraid to pivot. Be like no loyalty to ideas. I mean, that’s something that I. A muscle that I’ve been developing over a long time. Mean I’ve always loved the phrase strong opinions, loosely held, but it’s the same with. With ideas, my own ideas, and I’ve always been a like to many of my products have been. Me getting an idea. Because the the little bit of art and design background that I have has definitely like hurt me in some cases where I’m like, I want to design a beautiful product. But what was the thing in Mad Men? They bought him a Jaguar and it was like a notoriously fickle car. But it looked gorgeous and it was like, you know, function or form over function and and so too too many things that I’ve built have been like, I have a clever idea. I have no idea whether anybody wants to use this. I don’t even know if I want to use this. Whereas like, you and I are organically coming, coming to a problem and yeah, like we could have done more customer discovery or you know.

Corey Maass (01:05:24) – Customer interviews and make sure that that, you know, our people talking about this problem. And and so now we do have some challenges of, you know, do people. No they it’s not to me it’s not do they do they have this problem. They do I can see it. They don’t know that they have it. And I don’t yet know how to explain it to them that they have this problem, let alone sell them the solution. But we’ll get there. It’s day three. Um. I loved in in Matt Matt’s video. He’s like, so over here where the image is. I don’t know what to call this section on the on this page. I’m sure Corey has words, you know, to better describe. And I was like, no, I don’t yet like I know what I’m calling it in my head or like in code. Obviously I had to give it a name. Um, you know, but the, the words that I’m actually showing the users isn’t necessarily what I named the thing on the back end.

Corey Maass (01:06:24) – And broadly speaking. Oh, a total digression, but probably the most viral tweet I’ve ever sent out over the weekend. So usually I don’t even tweet on the weekend. Um, but I took a picture of the in WordPress admin when you click on all posts. What do you call that screen? The all posts. Screen the post list, screen the right and all I all. I took a picture of it and for better or worse, I took a picture of a fresh WordPress install so it still had hello world like the first post, but I just posted like, you know, hello WordPress friends! Like what do you call this? And got like 50 replies, 6000 views and and an amazing array of responses because there is no name for it. Just sort of fascinating because it’s probably, you know, don’t know the third most viewed page in the WordPress admin. Um. But anyway, little digression. I thought that was interesting.

Cory Miller (01:07:37) – We don’t have names for those things. Which is crazy.

Corey Maass:(01:07:40) – Right.

Cory Miller (01:07:44) – Well. Think it’d be interesting for you to do your list and me to do my list and then compare, but I think it’s really put another perspective on this is like as developer. You marketer.

Cory Miller (01:08:01) – Business or business person here. Not a developer not being able to do code and those two would be really good. Think yours would actually be more popular because so many people in developers trying to do some business stuff, wrestling with the unique, you know, like the decision of refactoring the code or redoing things and how that product journey goes from the developer side and the frustrations, which is more and more time has been in marketing is like, that’s the big it’s mostly always the big problem how to find.

Cory Miller (01:08:38) – You have to educate customers into it to know about it, how to reach them. Just. It’s a big ball of wax, but I guess that’s why we get paid to do marketing.

Cory Miller:  (01:08:51) – All right, man. 

Corey Maass (01:08:54) – Yeah. Let’s jump off. Happy season one. I don’t know what the what the cliffhanger is for uou know. To make people compelled to to tune in for season two. But. Actually like I really like that conceptually because this has been an arc. 

Cory Miller: Yeah.

Corey Maass (01:09:12) – And now we are kind of moving on to the launching the product is the logical conclusion for Corey and Cory. Launch a product and then. Season two. How the hell they sell it?

Cory Miller (01:09:29) – A good season one. 30 episodes long. Trudging through the swamp, making pivots. Doing cool stuff. And I had fun.

Corey Maass (01:09:41) – Me too. And season episode one of season two is going to be all about swag.

Cory Miller (01:09:47) – All about swag. More swag.

Corey Maass (01:09:51) – We need hats, we need scarves, we need buttons. We need stickers. We need. All right, man.

Cory Miller (01:10:01) – Thanks. My friend.

Corey Maass (01:10:02) – Yeah. Congrats. 

Cory Miller: We’ll talk soon.

This article, Launching a WordPress Product in Public: Session 30, was published at Post Status — the community for WordPress professionals.