BitShares Forum
Main => General Discussion => Topic started by: Thom on April 07, 2017, 04:03:33 pm
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We had a very fruitful discussion in the BitShares mumble this morning, and the idea of forming a marketing committee was put forth.
DSN from @BunkerChain Labs had a great analogy and summary of what BitShares needs in terms of marketing. To paraphrase, he likened our situation to a talented group of musicians who can play their own instruments well, but they all need a skilled conductor to produce a coordinated musical masterpiece people are emotionally moved by so they go away touched and talk about it at the water cooler the next day.
Not only are moved to just talk about it, but also are impacted enough to take action.
All are pretty much agreed that BitShares needs marketing, and so it was suggested to have a regular segment devoted to that in the BitShares mumble hangouts each week.
I also called for volunteers to work on this committee, and the following people voiced interest:
- MrWang
- VirtualGrowth
- Taconator
- Chris4210
- GChicken
- Brindleswan
- Xanoxt
- SolomonSollarsNSense
Some of you might recall a similar attempt to address marketing concerns by @Method-X called "null street marketing" back in the day, on the trailing edge of Brian Page's reign & exodus. Solomon was involved in that effort. At that time Cryptonomex was still very active in controlling the direction of the ecosystem. Anyone can chime in and correct me if I'm wrong, but from my perspective there was a lack of consensus between the community, cryptonomex and method-x on how to do marketing and how or to what level marketing should be funded.
Cryptonomex is no longer a factor, it's now up to us, the present community to decide how to approach marketing. BitShares is also a totally different beast than it was back then too.
This committee is only a starting point. We need to start somewhere, and before any decisions about HOW to fund marketing and what LEVEL of funding is required can be made we need to discuss a PLAN or APPROACH to it. Once a consensus about that is reached secondary concerns about the best ways how to achieve that approach can be focused on and decided.
I would also like to mention an idea that I think would be very useful to this committee, that being Bob Podolsky's "Octologue". In a nutshell Bob is a researcher with decades of experience and solid real world data that indicates the optimum size of an effective group is ideally 8 people composed of 4 men and 4 women. Another aspect of an Octologue is that all decisions made by the group must be unanimous. Bob has written a 200+ page book about his research and experiments named "Flourish" that describes in great detail how such groups work. There are several practical examples of successful companies built around this concept.
I would encourage anyone interested to read Flourish and become familiar with his definition and examples of what ethics are (https://www.titanians.org/the-ethics/). Can you define what an "ethic" is? I thought I knew, but now I KNOW. I encourage everyone to look into that for your own clarity as a basis for forming a solid, cooperative and unified core group to be as effective as possible. Bob's website where you can read about his work and ethics is https://www.titanians.org/ (https://www.titanians.org/). I will update this post later today to provide a link to Flourish.
With that as background, let this thread serve as the start of forming this committee. The initial meeting time has been tentatively set to sometime during the evening hours of a weekday, and 9PM CDT Wednesday was the initial suggested time to meet on mumble (CDT = Chicago time - https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/ (https://www.timeanddate.com/worldclock/)) . The focus of the initial meeting is to solidify a plan on how to proceed, including establishing:
1) A consistent meeting time
2) A place to meet (mumble, slack, Discord etc, but should provide real time conversation at a minimum)
3) Who is willing to setup and participate in a multisig account to oversee distribution of funds, and how many participants multisig should have
4) What the agenda will be for the next meeting
5) Decide a list of specific actionable items to be accomplished by the next meeting. Suggestions:
- define a mission statement that unifies and brings focus onto the group's purpose
- define (at a high level) target audience(S) for BitShares, and marketing priorities for each demographic (traders, grandma, crypto enthusiasts)
- identify key areas of BitShares features that have the greatest potential to reach people emotionally
- establish the multisig account
Comments?
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let's do this...
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Look forward to a plan and developing ideas as part of this new committee and my newer growing involvement in the bitshares community.
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I'm all for a good marketing effort, especially if it comes from the community. To be very honest I know next to nothing about marketing myself, so other than showing my support and don't know how else I can contribute.
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Count me in guys! This has been needed for a long time now.
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9PM CDT Wednesday
Its a bit bad for me, since I am in Moscow time atm, and 9pm CDT is 4 am for me.
Also, to add some substance to my reply is this, from what I saw people are a bit reluctant to fund workers, because they feel that this is diluting bitshares, right?
It is possible to get two birds with one stone, if those bts are used to short bitassets exchange them for btc (or whatever) and provide liquidity to the DEX. That would keep those bts off exchanges.
What we also need is someone who would go through all the documentation and update it to reflect the current situation, because I've seen that a lot of it is out of date.
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You all know where I stand here. All in ;)
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9PM CDT Wednesday
Its a bit bad for me, since I am in Moscow time atm, and 9pm CDT is 4 am for me.
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Oh drat, if it's 4 am for Moscow it will be 2 am for me. That would be a bit late for me as well.
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I would like to pitch in however I can with this effort. I think the time is ripe to bring digital currencies and the block chain revolution to the masses. I have been working with my friend @matt-a over on steemit to strategize on how we can promote block chain applications in our local area. Steem makes this a much easier task than just a few years ago. Spewing out crypto tokens to anyone that spends some time posting and gets a little lucky. Then they're hooked!
All of you that have stuck around are building a grassroots movement and it is time for every holder to do their part. Also, my city is a prime example of a place that could use some shaking up. Very few people I encounter here have any idea what digital currency is or how it can benefit their lives.
It's impressive how much of a core group this community became with Bunker, Fuzzy, Thom, and all of the others regularly posting. I just started lurking these forums about a month ago so I suppose it's time to step out of the shadows again. I kind of fell off back there after the pitch fork and BTS 2.0.
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We've never met Robrigo as you had other commitments and could not finish the BitShares Road Tour 2 years ago now. However I am well aware of your involvement with BitShares before the birth of graphene and am very glad to hear from you.
Any contribution you can make would be appreciated by all I'm sure.
Together, with the realization of why we invested our time, energy and resources to help build a solution to the financial shackles that hold back humanity we stand a good chance to take back what has been coerced away from us over the last 100 years.
Time is running out and our tech lead in the crypto space is slipping away, so we need to get focused and devise a plan to make BitShares a household word that will be known as the first digital currency system that finally nullified the corrupt and psychopathic "elite" who prey on the populace.
Welcome back Robrigo!
Come, step back into the light and join us!!! See you Wednesday
I would like to pitch in however I can with this effort. I think the time is ripe to bring digital currencies and the block chain revolution to the masses. I have been working with my friend @matt-a over on steemit to strategize on how we can promote block chain applications in our local area. Steem makes this a much easier task than just a few years ago. Spewing out crypto tokens to anyone that spends some time posting and gets a little lucky. Then they're hooked!
All of you that have stuck around are building a grassroots movement and it is time for every holder to do their part. Also, my city is a prime example of a place that could use some shaking up. Very few people I encounter here have any idea what digital currency is or how it can benefit their lives.
It's impressive how much of a core group this community became with Bunker, Fuzzy, Thom, and all of the others regularly posting. I just started lurking these forums about a month ago so I suppose it's time to step out of the shadows again. I kind of fell off back there after the pitch fork and BTS 2.0.
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I would like to pitch in however I can with this effort. I think the time is ripe to bring digital currencies and the block chain revolution to the masses. I have been working with my friend @matt-a over on steemit to strategize on how we can promote block chain applications in our local area. Steem makes this a much easier task than just a few years ago. Spewing out crypto tokens to anyone that spends some time posting and gets a little lucky. Then they're hooked!
All of you that have stuck around are building a grassroots movement and it is time for every holder to do their part. Also, my city is a prime example of a place that could use some shaking up. Very few people I encounter here have any idea what digital currency is or how it can benefit their lives.
It's impressive how much of a core group this community became with Bunker, Fuzzy, Thom, and all of the others regularly posting. I just started lurking these forums about a month ago so I suppose it's time to step out of the shadows again. I kind of fell off back there after the pitch fork and BTS 2.0.
(https://i.gyazo.com/400495de2d2074d669e61584c6b922be.png)
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Since this is the thread to bring marketing PR things, here is how Dash went about it, and some of those things we can do as well, once we decide what needs to be done. (This is from a month ago, but I didn't see this article discussed, so it is possible it was missed).
https://cointelegraph.com/news/pr-decentralized-how-dash-succeeded-in-dao-powered-public-outreach
Thing is, with our reserve fund we also have a way to work on this, and if that brings the token price up, that means that shorters of bitUSD are going to be happy. :-)
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I'm in.
My skillset is in direct response marketing mostly.
See you wednesday.
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I'm in.
My skillset is in direct response marketing mostly.
See you wednesday.
HIGHFIVE!
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I'm in.
My skillset is in direct response marketing mostly.
See you wednesday.
HIGHFIVE!
FISTBUMP!
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I can't reach the Beyond bitcoin mumble server that I have configured. Is there another meeting place?
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149.210.187.155:64738
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I missed the mumble marketing hangout yesterday but I am also interested in better co-ordinating the marketing for bitshares.
Me @fav @BunkerChain Labs and @Chris4210 are doing a good job so far with the social media but I can add others to hootsuite so more people can post from the @bitshares twitter and fb.com/bitshares accounts.
Hootsuite charges each extra access to the account at $10 a month so it's only worth it if you have lot of good posting ideas.
It might be worth running some facebook ads again. Last time I did this it was paid for by upvotes on a steem post but this time it might make more sense to as a worker proposal.
I believe the priority for marketing efforts now should be a new website. @Chris4210 was working on a new one with etherdesign but the cost to produce it would be $4000 which I'm sure can be funded with a worker proposal. I don't really know what the delay on this is.
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@Thom , is this where you plan on posting updates from meetings?
It was a good chat last night. Thanks. One observation that was made several times and discussed was the need to get the foundational info built. Rick and I discuss this often, because it seems so obvious and yet when groups start brainstorming the broader vision tends to take over in the excitement.
I shared this observation with another group recently too. They're asking for community interaction, but they haven't successfully told the community what they're doing yet. It would be like Jobs asking folks what they thought of the iPod without anyone ever seeing one, without explaining what it can do or even why they might want one. He built a perceived need largely by making folks realize how awesome what he was building was, so that they couldn't resist it, even though they'd never seen it before. How many awesome projects are just sitting out there because an amazing team could build it wonderfully, but couldn't convey what it was in their effort to market it?
Here's what I shared with another group recently:
Hey Team,
You've asked for some interaction with a couple of good questions. I tend to think that the lack of response is likely due to a lack of understanding. While you guys brainstorm and work your tails off, you're integrated into understanding where [you're] headed. Most folks on this list do not know. Heck, I don't know and I have spent a decent amount of time with you. I've gotten some general ideas, but the vision is still quite blurry for me.
I'm seeing this with several projects at the moment. There is a gap between what's being done and why and the target audience's understanding of what's being done and why. It's as if the excitement of building it jumps past the need to communicate it clearly.
What is [your project]?
Why should folks care?
Assume folks here don't know anything about [your project] (because some [if not most] probably don't!). Lay out the foundational questions and then, as you answer them, you'll get folks here to a point where they can intelligently interact and brainstorm with you.
My two bucks. :money_with_wings:
Doing any less is like building walls without a foundation. It might look great, but what's going to support it?
I'm really bummed I'll miss next Wed. I guess there are a couple of us that can't make all Wednesdays. Please consider whether it can be moved to any other day. For me (and I think Rick), Thursdays would be great!
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Speaking of finding a spokesperson. @fuzzy whatever happen with Alicia?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Eet2Mxl5nQM
Are first spokesperson Max Wright @bitmarket (Host of BitShares.TV and Author of BitShares 101), stopped his work after Bitshares2.0 came out. His reason being that Bitshares2.0 had no whitepaper (at that time) or a Wikipedia for him to go off of. So he moved on.
As I see it, @MrWang is already in. But there is no reason we can't have 2. That is a female spokesperson. Maybe the 2 could team up from time to time and do special videos together. Like at events.
That's just some of my thoughts.
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Speaking of videos, I'd be open to putting forward another worker proposal to produce more professional instructional videos, if we got enough support for it. There are certainly opportunities to cover some of the more advanced trading features (shorting, margin calls, etc.) that haven't been covered in a Chronos Crypto video yet, and with the price of BTS at this higher level, a worker would require less dilution than ever.
Here are the videos that we've produced so far -- feel free to use them in your marketing efforts! Bitshares Playlist (https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL4QVf9YbYcnjmeDEiyyrhMLwGBa5K23tN)
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here's how I would do it:
1. update website
2. update marketing material (landing pages tailored for specific topics like bitUSD, trading etc - make it ?ref friendly & catch emails)
3. discuss a marketing campaign (what social networks? bloggers? influencers? ad networks?)
4. define budget
5. run campaign
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- hire a "face"
get the foundation ready first and in order.
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here's how I would do it:
1. update website
2. update marketing material (landing pages tailored for specific topics like bitUSD, trading etc - make it ?ref friendly & catch emails)
3. discuss a marketing campaign (what social networks? bloggers? influencers? ad networks?)
4. define budget
5. run campaign
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- hire a "face"
get the foundation ready first and in order.
I would add 6. Make a Bitshares Wikipedia.
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here's how I would do it:
1. update website
2. update marketing material (landing pages tailored for specific topics like bitUSD, trading etc - make it ?ref friendly & catch emails)
3. discuss a marketing campaign (what social networks? bloggers? influencers? ad networks?)
4. define budget
5. run campaign
.
.
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- hire a "face"
get the foundation ready first and in order.
I would add 6. Make a Bitshares Wikipedia.
+5% +5% +5% I agree
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here's how I would do it:
1. update website
2. update marketing material (landing pages tailored for specific topics like bitUSD, trading etc - make it ?ref friendly & catch emails)
3. discuss a marketing campaign (what social networks? bloggers? influencers? ad networks?)
4. define budget
5. run campaign
.
.
.
- hire a "face"
get the foundation ready first and in order.
@fav, I consider this one of the most constructive suggestions I've heard that provide realistic short term goals with its focus on marketing.
I would disagree with you about when the "face" is hired however. IMO the marketing campaign needs to have that face. I would put hiring the face after step 3 & before step 4 to define the budget. Good faces don't usually work for free.
Other worthwhile activities related to these would be work on documentation (@xeroc already has a great start on that), forum migration to a modern forum like discourse, and a barrage of short 10 - 60 seconds in length videos that focus on one specific feature at a very high level, not detailed, but to say what the feature is and hype its value.
Why wait for the foundation to be setup when we can do these things now. It's taking way too long for all the pieces to come together for the foundation, and I see more effort to define it, it's role, and providing some type of coherent statement about it to shareholders will be necessary. Perhaps some of that is ongoing, but there are no timeframes for its completion that I'm aware of.
In the mean time marketing opportunities like the decline of Tether are slipping away.
This is type of short term plan I want to see happen, let say in the next 90 days. We are at step 3 right now, but steps 1 & 2 have yet to be scheduled.
I am calling for everybody to describe in the same fashion fav did what your plan for the next 90 days would be if you were king. You should NOT include in your plan anything big that can't realistically be accomplished in the next 90 days, so forget adding new features or restructuring fees to pay interest. Stay away from the shortcomings and issues that need to be dealt with that require full time backend / frontend devs to do. Focus on a 90 day plan, the low hanging fruit you see and clearly separate longer term things you feel are important to be included in another plan for later.
Whatever your suggestions are, their effectiveness must be measurable. It would be helpful if you mentioned the metrics you would use to see how well your plan is working. Without that how will you know if your plan should be funded?
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This short little video (https://youtu.be/9GcczG0-fI8) @fav did is a good example which focused on a very specific topic (short selling BitUSD [to improve liquidity]), is simple and easy for its target audience (traders) to understand and is clear and concise. The Asian voice is good to appeal to eastern cultures too.
We need lots of similar, tho professional (without the cartoon chars) videos that highlight important features of the DEX that exist NOW: Transfer by name | you keep private keys (Mt Gox safety) | login anywhere any device | multisig made easy | Business friendly - whitelisting / blacklisting | Create your own Token | The genius of BitShares' governance - you be in control | voting ....
That list needs to grow. The idea is to get as many of these little short videos put together with a nice voice, pretty face in a short timeframe to hit the wild around the same time to coincide with printed materials, ads on Coin Marketcap, Steemit and other social media. The idea is to create a marketing mini-blitz to reach the crypto crowd. We need to make our presense known while the frenzy at the altcoin feeding trough is high and money is flowing.
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As I see it, @MrWang is already in. But there is no reason we can't have 2. That is a female spokesperson. Maybe the 2 could team up from time to time and do special videos together. Like at events.
Continuing with MrWang and introduing another to be seprate and/or together sounds good.
Speaking of videos, I'd be open to putting forward another worker proposal to produce more professional instructional videos, if we got enough support for it. There are certainly opportunities to cover some of the more advanced trading features (shorting, margin calls, etc.) that haven't been covered in a Chronos Crypto video yet, and with the price of BTS at this higher level, a worker would require less dilution than ever.
More professional instructional videos sounds like a good priority as educating people and showing how they may use Bitshares has great value.
1. update website
2. update marketing material (landing pages tailored for specific topics like bitUSD, trading etc - make it ?ref friendly & catch emails)
3. discuss a marketing campaign (what social networks? bloggers? influencers? ad networks?)
4. define budget
5. run campaign
- hire a "face" (3.5? per Thom)
get the foundation ready <d>first and in order</d>.
Steps sound good. So let's make a top five priority list to initially address the first most important matters and then continue to change priorities moving forward and upward.
6. Make a Bitshares Wikipedia. (add per konelectric)
Possible metrics: (new) users, market volumes, asset/coin holdings
Two long term and two short term numbers for smart and critical numbers may help to better guide our efforts, keep us on track, and provide measurable results and changes.
Thank you for everyone's (continuous) input. Please provide top priority and goal ideas so we may fine tune our greatest areas of value to address.
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This short little video (https://youtu.be/9GcczG0-fI8) @fav did is a good example which focused on a very specific topic (short selling BitUSD [to improve liquidity]), is simple and easy for its target audience (traders) to understand and is clear and concise. The Asian voice is good to appeal to eastern cultures too.
We need lots of similar, tho professional (without the cartoon chars) videos that highlight important features of the DEX that exist NOW: Transfer by name | you keep private keys (Mt Gox safety) | login anywhere any device | multisig made easy | Business friendly - whitelisting / blacklisting | Create your own Token | The genius of BitShares' governance - you be in control | voting ....
That list needs to grow. The idea is to get as many of these little short videos put together with a nice voice, pretty face in a short timeframe to hit the wild around the same time to coincide with printed materials, ads on Coin Marketcap, Steemit and other social media. The idea is to create a marketing mini-blitz to reach the crypto crowd. We need to make our presense known while the frenzy at the altcoin feeding trough is high and money is flowing.
if you need her voice, give me a pm. I work with her on other projects outside of crypto too, and get a good price
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if you need her voice, give me a pm. I work with her on other projects outside of crypto too, and get a good price
Ok, I'll keep her in mind and let folks know who help with videos and marketing.
Thanx
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if you need her voice, give me a pm. I work with her on other projects outside of crypto too, and get a good price
Ok, I'll keep her in mind and let folks know who help with videos and marketing.
Thanx
i also know a girl that can do Japanese voice overs.
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刚涨起来一点，你们又迫不及待的要开始搞“营销”了
(http://wx1.sinaimg.cn/mw690/d15bdcc8gy1ff59jxta0fj209q03ywek.jpg)
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so... what happened?