[Marketing] Reflections on advertising

[Sean DALY]

In fact it is indeed marketing Mel... the target group is "potential
contributors"... and this is commonly referred to as "corporate"
marketing, or making a company/organization attractive to potential
collaborators. Companies trawl college campuses every spring, all we
need to do is make it very easy to find us, learn about us, and join
us!

Our contributors page in the static site
(http://www.sugarlabs.org/index.php?template=page&page=contributors)
is a bit sparse and is not connected to the wiki page
(http://wiki.sugarlabs.org/go/Sugar_Labs/GettingInvolved) which I find
very well done... another item on the list for merging/integration :-)


Support will be a real challenge for us because SoaS and
virtualization users - e.g., most teachers and schools in the near
future - won't care about any distro, they will only have us to
contact. We will need a means to triage & funnel support questions. I
have worked on this problem for brand websites and the scenario is
usually:

* validate location (country), support options including languages
available will be different at national level, some countries will
have for-profit support partners for example

* encourage users to read the FAQ and documentation (these being
really easy to find of course, but they have to be localized too and
will likely not be identical)

* IRC #sugar 24/7 with link for IRC newbies

* offer webform e-mail with contact info including country, type of
computer, type of installation, friendly no-reply acknowledgement, and
closed subject titles on topics such as:
- preparing a bootable SoaS
- installation
- configuration including OS type and version, and distro if GNU/Linux
- unexpected behavior
- backing up or restoring Journal data
- multiple users of Sugar on one machine
- Activity-specific
- general feedback / suggestion box
- other

* sort & forward that e-mail, as automatically as possible, but with
some kind of followup provision to determine if no help ever received
or contact made

* Monitor what the most reported problems are (= blockers or frustration limit)

Collecting and listening to feedback is absolutely vital to meet the
needs of our users.

Sean


On Wed, Mar 25, 2009 at 2:07 PM, David Farning <dfarning at sugarlabs.org> wrote:
> On Tue, Mar 24, 2009 at 11:11 PM, Mel Chua <mel at melchua.com> wrote:
>>>> Our goal as marketers could be resumed as the following answer, when
>>>> asked of teachers:
>>>> 4. "Sugar runs on all of them".
>>
>> Oh... my gosh. I think my brain just exploded. Thank you for the braindump,
>> Sean - you're making my world expand dramatically.
>>
>> Another brand awareness thing I'd personally love to push is "...and you can
>> help." This isn't something to consume, it's something to help create. How
>> to get that message across in marketing I'm not sure. We can have Newbie
>> Welcome Days on IRC and/or in person (like "plan your own Firefox release
>> party / Software Freedom Day festivities") after each release, but that's...
>> not marketing, is it? (says clueless Mel.)
>>
>>> 2.  Support - How do we provide the support necessary to make the
>>> users experience positive.  Again we turn to the existing distros and
>>> OEM to funnel issue report to the bug squad.
>>
>> Ooh, *this* would be a fun problem! Do we want to be able to market Sugar
>> support services (volunteer, professional, ongoing, event-based, whatever)?
>> Right now I think our support = "ask the developers," which... scales only
>> up to a point. (This may be verging on offtopic - if you can think of a
>> better list for it, please move it!)
>>
>
> I have never heard of support referred to as a fun problem:)
>
> Support one of the most interesting areas in the Sugar ecosystem for
> four reasons:
> 1. Support doesn't scale.
> 2. Support is a great on ramp for community participants.
> 3. Support is one of the most like sources of revenue for ecosystem partners.
> 4. Effective support is chance to receive feedback on the weakness and
> strengths of Sugar.
>
> david
>