Marketing a WordPress Product Live: Session 14

Transcript ↓

In this podcast episode, Michelle Frechette and Corey Maass delve into their product’s development and marketing strategies. They discuss the technical challenges of image management, including resizing and the potential for automated featured and open graph image placement. The conversation also explores the idea of creating media kits and the integration of their product with platforms like WordPress. The speakers consider customer-driven feature prioritization and the importance of aligning marketing and development efforts. Additionally, they mention using an app for plant identification, highlighting the diverse applications of their product and the continuous pursuit of enhancing user experience.

Top Takeaways:

• Value of Customer Feedback: Recording all ideas, even seemingly insignificant ones, can lead to valuable insights and features that resonate with customers. Customer demand should guide product development.
• Importance of Collaboration: Collaboration between development and marketing teams is crucial for creating products that meet customer needs effectively. Both teams bring unique perspectives that contribute to product success.
• Content Repurposing: Creating comprehensive onboarding materials, such as videos, can enhance user education and promote the product. Snippets from these materials can be repurposed for social media and documentation.
• Continuous Improvement: Regular updates, planning, and communication ensure alignment between team members and facilitate ongoing product improvements. Iterative development allows for flexibility and adaptation to evolving user needs.
• Customer-Centric Approach: Prioritizing features based on user feedback and demand ensures that the product remains relevant and valuable to its target audience. Keeping the customer at the center of decision-making drives product success and growth.

Mentioned In The Show:

• Unsplash
• PictureThis app
• Divi
• Cadence
• Instagram
• WP Speakers
• Underrepresented in tech
• WP Wonder Woman
• Derek Ashauer
• Adobe Lightroom
• WP World
• Faizan

🐦 You can follow Post Status and our guests on Twitter:

• Corey Maass
• Michelle Frechette (Director of Community Relations, Post Status)
• Olivia Bisset (Intern, Post Status)

The Post Status  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

Corey Maass (00:00:01) – Hello, Hello. 

Michelle Frechette: How are you? 

Corey Maass: Good. 

Michelle Frechette: Good. 

Corey Maass: The excitement of pressing the go Live button. Seeing what happens. What could possibly go wrong?

Michelle Frechette (00:00:16) – I could possibly go wrong. I know exactly how funny. Yeah. So last week. Was it last week or the week before? It was last week, right? Yeah, we met last week. we talked about my inability to understand how to use our product. But since then, I’m a pro at it now. 

Corey Maass: Oh, excellent. 

Michelle Frechette: Yeah, like, you get the hang of it really fast. I just was not following. And you made it very clear to me last week. So my goal in the next week is to I’m terrible at like, I shouldn’t say I’m terrible at anything. Like it’s let’s just say that like, making instructional videos isn’t necessarily my forte. Right? But my goal is to make an instructional video. Doing one like, you know, from beginning to end, like you did to show me last week so that I would have that.

Michelle Frechette (00:01:13) – If anybody says, I just don’t get how do I start, how I do it. And I know that you’ve got videos out there and everything too, but I thought maybe somebody needs to hear it in my voice. So that’s one of my goals, is to make something we can use that way too people can kind of follow along with. So yeah.

Corey Maass: Yeah, great.

MIchelle Frechette: If I haven’t done it by next Tuesday, you’re welcome to reach through and slap me. But that’s that’s my goal.

Corey Maass (00:01:36) – Do the flick.

Michelle Frechette (00:01:38) – Right. Exactly, exactly. So but yeah. So you you and I have both been busy people. We had a holiday yesterday, so we don’t necessarily have a topic that we want to bring up today, but I do want to just kind of talk about some of the stuff that we have put out there, which are the WP World gave us an ad space, WP Wonder Woman, all 12 of our subscribers that saw it today. Today it’s the first issue. It has to take some time to build, but.

Corey Maass (00:02:13) – You have to start somewhere.

Michelle Frechette (00:02:15) – That’s right. So I threw that in there as well because, you know, you gotta have some advertising in there to show people why they would want to buy advertising in there. So, so I put that in there as well. So and we’ve been engaging with people because I tagged us on the WP Wonder Woman account, tagged OMGIMG, as one of the supporters. And so we’ve had a little bit of interaction on socials today, which is also very nice.

Corey Maass (00:02:40) – Yeah.

Michelle Frechette (00:02:41) – So I just kind of wanted to mention some of that stuff because it’s, you know, we talk about some of the big things sometimes, but other little things start to add up as well. And so being able to see just how all these things come together, and I still think we should work on that homepage a little bit and make it very clear above the fold, like, you know what it is that they, they’re going to why they would want to buy OMGIMG why anybody would want to buy it and make it a little more, a little more call to action-y.

Michelle Frechette (00:03:10) – I just made that up. Call to action-y is not actually an adjective, but we’re going to just we’re going to say it as today.

Corey Maass (00:03:17) – We’re going to go with it.

Michelle Frechette (00:03:20) – Exactly.

Corey Maass (00:03:22) – Let’s see. Yeah. pertaining to that. 

Michelle Frechette: Yes. 

Corey Maass: We mentioned a while ago, a person on Twitter was very nice enough to design us a new homepage.

Michelle Frechette (00:03:38) – Oh, yes.

Corey Maass (00:03:41) – So I’m looking for that because that was sent over. And there it is. Faizan. Faizan King, if that’s their full name. And so we have a design. Oh. Where did it go? There it is. Presenting, share screen.

Corey Maass  (00:04:10) – Bum bum bum bum. There we go. So.I don’t know. Trying to zoom in a bit. There we go.

Michelle Frechette (00:04:32) – Yeah, there you go. That’s better.

Corey Maass (00:04:38) – Yeah, there’s I don’t I don’t know how pixel exact. I’ll, I’ll use it. But, between this and some other stuff that I’ll talk about in a second. I definitely think that we can, we can make some updates.

Corey Maass (00:04:56) – I like. There are certain things that I do like. Let’s see if we go to our current page. Like we talked about the there being there’s a graphical element, but it doesn’t really say anything. Whereas Phayson and I went back and forth a little bit of like, you know what. What can we do over here on the right that actually, like, says something or communicates value and stuff like that. Also I think moving the video up would definitely help. 

Michelle Frechette: Yeah.

Corey Maass (00:05:37) – And in this case like pushing it pushing it again essentially. And then emphasizing testimonials, which is something that I sort of, I had been working on, but kind of stopped working on collecting. And so I think we need to, to push again. So yeah, lots to work with here. And your comment I like about making it more call to action-y. And then also. Oh. So, had my Mastermind Group this afternoon, and I was sort of vaguely bringing up. Some of the stuff that you and I talked about last week of.

Corey Maass (00:06:32) – How do we, well, high, high level. The question was like, okay, we’re getting, I’m getting some feature requests from users. If I’m only one person, one pair of hands, focusing my time on something, it’s like, do you do you focus on customers and potential customers or do you and at the potentially at the cost of not doing other marketing actions which get you more customers, you know, or do you try to get new customers who might walk in and go, oh, this, this doesn’t have the features I need.

Michelle Frechette: Right.

Corey Maass: A bit of a catch 22. The consensus was, which I which in hindsight I think I agree with is, pleasing the customers you have, which also leads to the, the people who are reaching out and saying, if it had this, I’d buy. It’s like, well, that’s much better than somebody who hasn’t heard of us at all. And then also it helps by, by solving better, solving the problems, which I, I talked through with you and you kind of said back to me some of the same things that we covered last week or as we covered it last week of, essentially doing more automation or doing more magic where things are just just created for you without you having to click quite so many buttons.

Corey Maass (00:08:02) – And I had shared that I’m, I’m sure sort of working on. The, the obvious culmination of that which is auto generating images for as many back posts as you have. And then, one of the guys in my group said. Like, oh, what about, you know, what about integrations like you, you integrate with with all these, you know, SEO and things like that, like focusing on. But he said it. He said it in a different way. He’s like, well, if you have, something I think the example he used was Eventbrite. He’s like, if you’ve got a Eventbrite events, you know, and I needed to generate an image for each one. Like, what if it auto populated with the, you know, that it’s probably an image for an event. What if you automatically sucked in the fields knowing, you know, for the time and date, rather than having to add that or even the Eventbrite logo? Or you know what, as an example, and I’m like, oh my God, I, I hadn’t thought to take it another direction.

Michelle Frechette: That direction, yeah

. 

Corey Maass (00:09:17) – Right. Which also kind of led me to I and this is an hour ago, and then I took a nap. So I’ve only been working on this a little bit, but, the thinking more about and all of this, I swear, is really related to your comment about, you know, doing more things, more being more call to action-y. and we’ve been talking more about, you know, your landing page is supposed to be benefits, not features. And then you click through to find like, oh, they actually have these neat features, but what is the business problem that they’re solving. And we’ve talked about the what steps can we remove from the process of creating images, not opening Photoshop, not going to Canva. And so if our focus, at least one of our focuses was again on, generating, kind of your image is just done. Right. And so it’s if you have these integration points, you can you can talk about the integrations, you can tag the people, the plugins, the companies that you’re integrating with, and then they love you.

Corey Maass (00:10:35) – But also you can focus on like. I guess I hadn’t thought of the business value so clearly, at least this being one of them, of it’s just done for you automatically, all that kind of stuff. So. so, yeah, being a little more call to action, like buy our damn thing, but, you know, but behind that, how do we convince them to do so and, and focusing on, more precisely on saving time. It’s magic. It just works for you.

Michelle Frechette (00:11:12) – Yeah. That’s true. I love when things happen automatically, magically, in the right direction. I have somebody visiting me this weekend. This weekend she and I went out to the Montezuma Wildlife Refuge, where I like to take pictures of all those birds. And then also, like yesterday, we went to Niagara Falls. So we were editing up the photos that she took. I took it with the Canon camera. I edited, edit, I can’t speak today edited.

Corey Maass (00:11:41) – Edited is  always a hard word to say.

Michelle Frechette (00:11:42) – It really is.

Michelle Frechette (00:11:44) – in Lightroom, right. Adobe Lightroom and then airdropped them back to her phone. So all of those processes happened. They hit her cell phone, she picks it up, and it automatically is recognizing a Red Wing Blackbird. And it’s recognizing Carpe and it’s recognizing, what was the other some of the other birds that we saw, it was recognizing plants and like, it didn’t, it just happened, right? It just happened just like that. And she was blown away. And I never paid attention to that feature. I’m like, here I am trying to learn all the birds. And like when I think that that’s a Pie Billed Grebe, you know, it’s like, oh, look, my phone told me it was a Pie Billed Grebe, you know, kind of thing. And, and some of you probably have never even heard of Pie Billed Grebe, because I only learned about them last year when I first took a picture and had to look it up because I didn’t know my phone was going to tell me.

Michelle Frechette (00:12:35) – But like those kinds of things that happened that way. And I think, you know, and with. Kind of shifting a little bit to like we talked about accessibility in the past. Right. So. Accessibility to identify and provide alt image descriptions is. Not a precise science. You know, you ask people like Alex Stein and he will tell you that it is not always accurate. So like it did, say Pie Billed Grebe or it did say, I just love saying that. I don’t know why. Like Common Grackle, there’s birds have really cool names.

Corey Maass: Oh they do.

Michelle Frechette: But it doesn’t it doesn’t describe the whole scene. Right. Like, so like, you know, a Red Wing Blackbird sitting in a tree with the pond behind it. Its mouth is open as though it’s singing like those kinds of things. Right? So there still has to be a human element to it, of course. And even when you automate things, you still want to give humans control to say, no, I don’t want it to do it that way, or I do want to do it that way, or let me edit a little bit kind of thing.

Michelle Frechette (00:13:39) – But when things happen like you say like automatically like that, it just makes you feel like you’re heading down the right path faster and getting things done more efficiently.

Corey Maass (00:13:50) – Yeah. And we’re we’re still in a Or. Now we’re gonna get weird meta, but, I just read an article that said that generations older than Gen Z. Pause when a camera aims at them. Gen Z doesn’t.

Michelle Frechette (00:14:10) – Interesting. Yeah. 

Corey Maass: Take it or leave it.  But the growing up where you’re just used to phone cameras being pointed at you all the time. So you don’t you don’t hesitate. And I’m sure this can’t be across the board.

Michelle Frechette (00:14:27) – I stop and pose and smile. Yeah, exactly. yeah.

Corey Maass (00:14:32) – And, Yeah, you hold a pose so that the picture, you know, can be exposed. The film can be exposed long enough because, you know, we’re old. Yuck yuck yuck. but we still live in it. There will be a time when we take all this for granted that time has not yet come. We’ve been using.

Corey Maass (00:14:51) – We did a bunch of gardening over the weekend, and we use an app called Picture This, the free version, where we take pictures of plants and then it scans it and tells you all about the plants. And there’s a bunch of these different apps, but, But then Lindsay didn’t open the app, took a picture and was like, oh, this is such and such. I was like, wait, how did you know? She’s like, oh, Apple started integrating it. So same sort of thing like the Google Lens. They’ve been trying to they’ve had that for a long time. But it it’s one of those things that needed to age a while for it to actually like have value, like QR codes. But yes. do you see a Red Winged Blackbird out your window? Yeah.

Michelle Frechette (00:15:31) – No.There was a Song Sparrow that was right in there. And then the cat just literally leaped onto the desk and scared of the way. So it kind of startled me.I apologize for my distraction.

Corey Maass (00:15:42) – No fine. But, yeah, I, I, I think you’re right. Like, if we can. Focus on this feels good because this is like, you know, we’ve had a number of discussions about like, we’re not solving a problem, right? Like we are the icing on the cake. We are. And so we’ve even talked about the magic of it or like adding the sparkle. We are the filter, you know, on the photo. But like. Having taking it more to heart, to be more like pushing the value of we are magic and frankly, we are magic that nobody else can do outside of WordPress. Because we can. We can set up a template, that pulls in data from your posts, and we can even do that a thousand times over. Anybody else. You either have to copy paste or in theory, they yes, they could connect, and try to scrape the page or you know, attach to connect to RSS feed or. But anyway, the point is we can do it better, faster.

Corey Maass (00:16:50) – And so and I know that I’ve known this as a feature, but focusing more on that and calling it magic, I, I’m, I’m liking more and more, you know. And it also helps, like I said, business business directive of like how do you integrate with that in mind?

Michelle Frechette (00:17:09) – And then you integrate it somehow with the confetti plugins. So as soon as you create your featured image, confetti shoots across. I’m just kidding.

Corey Maass (00:17:18) – No. Absolutely.

Michelle Frechette (00:17:18) – And it really feels like magic.

Corey Maass (00:17:21) – In fact, talk about businesses, business partnerships. That’s, Oh, my God, I’m blanking.

Michelle Frechette (00:17:31) – Derek?

Corey Maass (00:17:32) – Derek. Thank you. Yeah. Derek and I did a, a license swap where I gave him a copy of OMG, and he gave me a copy of, He has two plugins. But the I hate to say it, but the the one at least that immediately was like, oh right, was the confetti one.

MIchelle Frechette (00:17:55) – Yeah.

Corey Maass (00:17:56) – Yeah. And then his and then his connection plug in like, I need to sit down and take some time to like figure out and and whatnot.

Corey Maass (00:18:04) – Whereas like the confetti one is one of those perfect products or it’s just like you immediately understand exactly what it does and, and it puts a smile on your face. You can’t go wrong. That kind of product.

Michelle Frechette (00:18:14) – It really does. And it’s not a need. It’s not a need at all. It’s not like my website needs security plug in or my website needs hosting, or my website needs a form plug. And it’s like, it’s just delight. And yeah, I mean, you could make an argument that we need delight in our lives too, but it’s.

Michelle Frechette (00:18:57) – I guess that’s what I’m trying. Yeah.

Michelle Frechette (00:19:03) – I’ve been having tech issues all day today. We have such, We’ve had high winds all day, so. Yeah. So I realized I may be coming in and out a little bit because my network is not stable. Sorry.

Corey Maass (00:19:17) – No, that’s right. That’s. But that’s the first time it happened, so I, I lost you.

Corey Maass (00:19:20) – But I think the, the gist being. Yeah. Like products that just add delight are okay.

Michelle Frechette (00:19:27) – Yeah. Exactly. They’re more than okay.

Corey Maass: Yeah.

Michelle Frechette (00:19:31) – They’re awesome. Yes, I think it’s okay.

Corey Maass (00:19:37) – So we are going to add his plugged into the website.

Michelle Frechette (00:19:39) – I think we should. I think we should. I have it on WP Speakers. So every time you join as a speaker you get celebrated.

Corey Maass (00:19:48) – Love it. 

Michelle Frechette (00:19:51) – Yeah. That’s pretty fun. But yeah I think. And going through the process. So I installed OMGIMG on UnderrepresentedInTech.com. Just about every week when we’re not on vacation or something. Just about every week we do a podcast there on some topic on around DEIB work and. I thought, well, I’m always finding great images like on Unsplash or whatever to use that really describe things. So it’s every image really is compelling for the topic. So for example, this morning we this morning we recorded and we talked about, that Harrison Kerr speech where he was completely anti-feminist, anti-woman, anti LGBTQ, anti everything.

Michelle Frechette (00:20:41) – And we also talked about this trend on TikTok and other social media about, you know, asking a woman if she was alone in the woods, would you rather come across a man you don’t know or a bear. And women are saying, I choose the bear, right? And so I kind of bug on my desk. So we talked about that a lot. And so my featured image for us, I mean, we just recorded today so it won’t be out until Friday. But the featured image I found is a bear. Right. And the topic is we choose the bear. So like getting OMGIMG stuff on that. So so that the, the text or the title of the post will be across the middle of that. It’ll be branded in the lower right hand corner with the, the logo and then the site title. That’s to me, wonderful, because now then when we share it out on socials, it’s not just a picture of a bear, it’s a picture of a bear that’s branded with text and the border and the things that make it look snazzy.

Corey Maass: Right. Context.

Michelle Frechette (00:21:37) – Yeah. And so, like, do I need that? I could actually argue that. Yeah. Because if it’s more compelling people are going to click through. 

Corey Maass: That’s true. 

Michelle Frechette: Now do I need it to make my website work? No. But could I argue that I need it to make my website traffic grow and to make people more curious about clicking through? And for that I would say yes. So I’m excited. I did give myself a discount, 100% discount to use our own product, I know, yeah. I love when you texted me last week or DM on Slack and we were like, we made a sale. Oh no, it was just you. But but I was like, I need to play with it. So. But it’s to me, it is exciting. So like, I want I think we have almost well gosh, we have over 150 probably episodes. I want to go back and retrofit all of those. With, you know, with OMG. So as soon as you have that bulk upload or finish, well, we’re gonna play with it on that website.

Corey Maass: We’re going to test it. Perfect. 

Michelle Frechette (00:22:34) – We are, we are. So but I also did discover something, and I shared this with you, that that site is built in Divi, and the featured image size cuts off. And I didn’t realize that because it’s borders and things like that. But when I put that square border around or rectangular border around it, cut off on Divi as well. So because I hadn’t noticed like, yeah, margin of error, like, oh, that’s the image I picked. Yeah. But as soon as you like put a border and stuff, you can see when it gets cut off. So I’m like, maybe I’ll won’t use the border since Divi’s not playing nice. My goal eventually, as it is, I want to I want to move it to Cadence, but it’s a behemoth of a project and I’m. Let’s just face it, I’m not going to have any time to do that anytime soon. So.

Corey Maass (00:23:22) – And it’s well and it’s working right. It’s delivering content. And so yeah, as we are often reminded as developers especially, people don’t care.

Corey Maass (00:23:32) – People don’t care that it’s on WordPress. People don’t care what plugins you’re using, what page builders you’re using, as long as it works. The feature that I will call out to you is, and this is interesting because it’s, another thread that I’ve been I keep examining inside the plugin is you are generating an open graph image which is 1200 by 630, but your site. As determined by Divi wants, say, a 1000 by 630. And so you can actually create a template for open graph, but you can also create a template using a custom size and then save one as the open graph image and save the other as a featured image. So Divi then won’t have to crop it. And and that leads me to I think we’ve talked about this like I know we did. The Instagram one square. Right. 

Michelle Frechette (00:24:36) – Yep.

Corey Maass (00:24:37) – And where we’ve got potentially a featured image like, my client sites uses 16 x 9 nine featured image. Obviously 1200 by 630 open graph image. So already we’ve got two image sizes but built into the site.

Corey Maass (00:24:53) – Right. And so I’ve got the option as OMG has the option of placing and saving the featured image and placing and saving the open graph image programmatically. Instagram. They don’t. There is no pushing to Instagram. I mean, there is with buffer or third party tools, but, for the most part, you’re from within WordPress until we integrate with these plugins and only if you have one of these plugins installed, you’ve actually got to generate the image downloaded and then re-upload it to Instagram. and so I keep playing with the idea of again, talk about magic. See, all of this is coming together like I like these days where an idea and then a couple of conversations and it starts to grow bigger. Is, what was I going to call it? The media kit. And so for for each blog post or product or Eventbrite event, whatever it is, clicking a button or as we’re now talking about, auto generating, you there’s a media kit generated. So you’ve got. Essentially whatever assets you predetermined to be in there.

Corey Maass (00:26:05) – Including a square image, an open graph image, you know, any number of things, assets. because if I, I, I, I got in the habit a long time ago. And I recommend this to everybody. Michelle. For all websites, for all of my websites, if you go to slash assets, I don’t know where I got assets. It could be called media kit, could be called anything but, logo in a couple of different sizes or a couple of different formats. I always have the color palette, usually happy talk, you know, what’s the one sentence, the one paragraph, you know, description da da da. So you can go and just copy things. But it’s also good for like when I’m, I’m interviewed on a podcast and they go, hey, where’s the logo? I can just say slash assets and then they can go grab it. So essentially creating that kind of media kit, but for each blog post, so you can have different sized versions and such and potentially like one click zip download.

Corey Maass (00:27:12) – And so you’ve got all of them and then you could even back them up, whatever you want to do with them. But but that’s I’ve got that in the back of my mind down the road. It’s, it’s funny because. It’s another instance where I’m finding that a lot of people, we’re going to still have to do a lot of training because as we did that work on defining personas a few weeks ago.

Michelle Frechette (00:27:36) – Yeah.

Corey Maass (00:27:37) – You’ve got marketing agencies and marketing people. Thinking this way, thinking what is the mini campaign that I have to do for each blog post to get the most juice out of each blog post? But I think your your average content creator solo blogger doesn’t think that way.

MIchelle Frechette (00:28:04) – Yeah.

Corey Maass (00:28:05) – A blog post gets published. We make sure that the boxes are checked, meaning there is a featured image, there is an open graph image. It then gets published once to socials and then we go, well that’s what I have time to do. I’ve rung out what I think I can do and I move on versus it should.

Corey Maass (00:28:24) – Then it should be reposted the next day, and then three days later, and then a week later, and then two weeks later and then randomly, you know, and and in a perfect world, each one is tagged. And if it’s Throwback Thursday, then six months from now, it’ll be auto selected. Random. I mean, you can get crazy with it.

MIchelle Frechette: You really can. 

Corey Maass: But in a perfect world, that’s what you’re doing, you know? And ideally automating most of it. and I’ve seen some plugins that try a little bit. They scratch at the surface, but, but it really does take a person to plan this whole thing. So.

Michelle Frechette (00:29:00) – Yeah, sure.

Corey Maass (00:29:00) – Does working, working towards solving some of those problems.

Michelle Frechette (00:29:04) – So as you were talking, because, you know, things pop in my head when you talk to, I was thinking about, like you were saying how the graph, the open graph image can be different in the face. I mean, they are different from the, I always said Facebook image.

Michelle Frechette (00:29:18) – What is the word I want? Featured image I featured image, yeah. So and I was thinking about in WordPress and Gutenberg we have like duo tones, we have overlays and things like that. Does OMGIMG do that at this point?

Corey Maass: No.

Michelle Frechette: Or could it be built in to do that kind of a dual tone?

Corey Maass(00:29:38) – Yes.

Michelle Frechette (00:29:39) –  That might be fun too. Right. So like especially let’s say a website is using duotone a lot, but then to be able to apply that to the open graph and featured image would be kind of cool too. 

Corey Maass: Yeah. 

Michelle Frechette: Add it to the list Corey!

Corey Maass (00:29:52) – Oh it’s on the list. The very very long list. Yeah there’s there’s we are. It’s kind of amazing. It’s an amazing time to be alive. We are. There are so many libraries available to do so many things that used to require a server. That we can offer a lot of those things. I just have to find the time. Because there’s also, right now, I would argue that there are.

Corey Maass (00:30:29) – Too many controls that are floated to the top inside the builder, and so I’ve been hesitant to add too many more features. Which is the wrong answer, right? But for the layout to make it manageable, you you saw me last week. Click through it and and even go, wait, where was that thing again? And so that immediately tells everybody red flag this needs this could be revisited. This could be done better. And so looking at that. Kind of before. And this is as probably one of the most common themes that you’ll every anybody watching these has heard me talk about is this endless stream of cart before horse, before cart or, or chicken and egg, kind of, you know, what are the features that should be built first, that add the most value, but take the least amount of time versus, you know, all of the nice, nice to haves or the just want to’s or all those kinds of things.

Michelle Frechette (00:31:32) – Yeah. There’s so many possibilities. And there’s only one Corey, so I’ll try to keep my suggestions slow rolling as opposed to fast rolling towards you.

Corey Maass (00:31:41) – Well, they are. And I mean, and this is why, like, you know, years ago we got in the habit. We, the development community, the product community got in the habit of, we have the so the frequently called backlog, you know, and you any any feature requests. People send me features for any of my products. I legitimately put them on a list. And some of them, I add, I have, vote counts going. 

Michelle Frechette: Oh, yeah. 

Corey Maass: And so I can say like ten people have suggested this. Great. Let’s actually add it. I’ll take the time to add it because I know enough people want it versus.

Michelle Frechette (00:32:17) – Yeah, makes sense.

Corey Maass (00:32:18) – Just random ideas that pop into, people to anybody’s head. I discovered this a long time ago, myself included, of like you, you get somebody going down a rabbit hole and and they’ll they’ll think of features all day. Okay. Do you actually want this? I don’t care, but it’s a neat idea.

Corey Maass (00:32:36) – Everybody. Not everybody. But most people love the sound of their own ideas.

MIchelle Frechette (00:32:42) – Oh, yeah. For sure.

Corey Maass (00:32:44) – So.

Michelle Frechette (00:32:45) – I mean, I love my ideas, I love my advice, I love my, you know, I wouldn’t say it if I didn’t kind of thing. So. Yeah, I totally get it. Yeah. And and I think a lot of it comes out of a desire to be helpful more than their own personal need to like, oh, you know, somebody might have a use case for XYZ. Well, do the majority have a use case forXYZ? If not, it’s probably a little lower on the list to of of future features. Makes sense. Totally makes sense.

Corey Maass (00:33:14) – I think thankfully, I learned a long time ago that I actually think best by speaking out loud. And so I’ve started trying to use AI to have conversations. I also, like I’ve said, I have Mastermind Groups, I have things like this. and but I it also means that I love the phrase strong opinions loosely held. 

Michelle Frechette: Yes. 

Corey Maass: Same idea of yeah, almost every idea that comes out of my mouth. I’m I’m at least intrigued by. Otherwise I wouldn’t say it, but I, I long ago, I think mostly I’ve, I’ve stopped being so in love with my ideas because I’m like, just because it comes out of my mouth. That means that I’m thinking it through. Not that it’s necessarily a good idea. I don’t have that.

MIchelle Frechette (00:34:02) – Right.

Corey Maass (00:34:03) – Filter.

MIchelle Frechette (00:34:04) – Right.

Michelle Frechette (00:34:06) – Well, it’s like in brainstorming, there is nothing wrong to put on the board when you’re brainstorming. 

Corey Maass: Very good. Yeah. 

Michelle Frechette: It’s that you don’t necessarily want to give everything equal weight.

Corey Maass (00:34:20) – Yeah, very well put. So yeah, it all goes. It all goes on the board.

Michelle Frechette (00:34:27) – What’s that?

Speaker 3 (00:34:28) – Well I.

Michelle Frechette (00:34:29) – It all goes on the board. Yes.

Corey Maass (00:34:30) – Yeah. I also, I tend to put even silly ideas or ideas I know that I’ll never implement on those lists one, because I’m not always right. And so I can have customers. I’ve had ten people come to me and say, build this feature.

Corey Maass (00:34:45) – That I thought was a silly idea, but if they all want it, then I’ll build it. Sure. You know, because I’m not my only customer. In a perfect world, I’m not my only customer.

Michelle Frechette (00:34:55) – I am now too, though, so there’s at least two of us.

Corey Maass (00:35:00) – Yes. But it also, what I have found is. It kind of what I alluded to earlier. Not that this was a silly idea, but somebody will say something and I’ll not have thought it completely through or I won’t implement exactly that. But it leads me to go, oh, that opens a different door. And so then I’ll go explore those things.

Michelle Frechette (00:35:25) – Absolutely. Very cool.

Corey Maass: None of the work on marketing.

Michelle Frechette (00:35:28) –  Well, I mean, it’s all. It’s all. I mean, it’s not. It’s there. It’s a Venn Diagram. Everything overlays with something else. Not necessarily a circle with multiple colors just stacked one on top of each other. Right. But it’s all interconnected, like.

Michelle Frechette (00:35:48) – And those companies that think development and marketing have like, no interface with one another are not listening to their customers because the marketing team knows what the customers are asking for, and they’re the ones talking and the ones seeing, and then one’s watching, and the developers are the ones who can provide that and also have ideas in ways. So there’s got to be some overlap, right? Otherwise you’re missing out on on things that could really work well.

Corey Maass: Yeah.

Michelle Frechette: I mean, that’s how I’ll say it anyway. Yeah. So my goal this week is to create to create and like a I onboarding video? Like whatever you call it. Right. That will be obsolete eventually because we’re going to just keep morphing in and making things better as we go. And I’m okay with that.

Corey Maass (00:36:30) – Yeah, I think it would be neat. Like what immediately pops into my head is if if you end up creating a video that’s A to Z, taking snippets of that and repurposing them for, social or for documentation or what have you.

Michelle Frechette: Yeah.

Corey Maass (00:36:49) – But but, you know, sentences or just concepts because we haven’t explored that and I think that would be. Neat, different. 

Michelle Frechette (00:36:56) – Yeah. Absolutely.

Corey Maass (00:36:59) – The more we can see your smiling face, the better the world is.

Michelle Frechette (00:37:02) – Oh, I was just gonna have a be a screenshot, a screen share and put my face on there at all. But you’ll have to listen to my voice. That is true.

Corey Maass (00:37:09) – There you go.

Michelle Frechette (00:37:11) – So I don’t have a whole lot more for you this week. I don’t know if you have other things you want to discuss. 

Corey Maass (00:37:16) – No, I was gonna say. Let’s call it early, because in six minutes, the elementary school, literally half a block down the street, starts their bake sale.

Michelle Frechette: NIce. 

Corey Maass: And then after that, yeah, I have I have to family commitments to run to with an armful of brownies and things that I’m going to distribute.

Michelle Frechette (00:37:37) – Cupcakes and pies and everything else. I was just gonna say, Corey needs a cupcake. He’s going to the bake sale. 

Corey Maass: Corey needs a lot of cupcakes. 

Michelle Frechette: But there’s more to it than that. I’m going out for. I’m going out for Mediterranean food. I’m meeting some friends out tonight.

Corey Maass (00:37:49) – Nice.

Michelle Frechette (00:37:51) – Nyasha goes home tomorrow. Tonight we’re meeting some local WordPressers and we’re going to have dinner. So we will stop it a little early today and, hopefully I’ll have something to show you next week and we’ll have more to discuss.

Corey Maass (00:38:03) – Totally. Thank you for watching and listening. And thank you as ever, Michelle, for your time and.

Michelle Frechette: Always.

Corey Maass: Deep, deep thoughts and insightful rhetoric of.

Michelle Frechette (00:38:15) – Exactly. 

Corey Maass: Good talking to you. 

Michelle Frechette: All right, we’ll see everybody later. Yep. Thanks.

Corey Maass (00:38:18) – Bye bye.