In this episode, Michelle Frechette and Corey Maass engage in a lively conversation about their experiences at WordCamp US, their recent t-shirt purchases, and a collaborative project related to WordPress. They discuss the progress of their project, which involves creating a directory for plugins or products, and the challenges of designing a logo that is clear and recognizable. They also brainstorm creative ideas for the logo and share their strategies for promoting their project. The episode highlights their enthusiasm for collaboration and their commitment to making the project a success.
Top Takeaways:
- Iterative Brainstorming Process: Both Corey and Michelle value the process of “splashing around” in ideas, acknowledging that not every concept will be a winner, but it’s essential to explore and iterate to find the right solution. They emphasized the importance of keeping ideas alive and evolving them over time.
- IPAWP Rebranding: The Independent Plugin Alliance for WordPress was rebranded as the Independent Product Alliance for WordPress (IPAWP) to better reflect the broader scope of products they want to include. They’re still in the early stages of developing this alliance and are actively seeking input and collaboration from others.
- Grassroots Development: Both OMGIMG and IPAWP are in grassroots development phases, with Corey and Michelle being open to new ideas and contributions. They’re focused on building these initiatives in a collaborative, community-driven manner, emphasizing low-cost marketing strategies and mutual support among small WordPress product creators.
Mentioned In The Show:
- Ross Morsali
- Search & Filters
- IPA WP
- WP Speakers
- WP Coffee Talks
- WP Tavern
- WP Wonder Woman
- Canva
- Fiverr
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🐦 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)
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Transcript:
Michelle Frechette 00:00:02 Hey, Cory.
Corey Maass 00:00:03 Hello. Hello.
Michelle Frechette 00:00:05 How are you?
Corey Maass 00:00:06 Doing okay yourself?
Michelle Frechette 00:00:08 Yeah. Same. Same. We did not share a list of things to talk about today. So what do you want to talk about today? I mean, we’re not doing anything.
Corey Maass 00:00:21 Right. Yeah. We have nothing going on. I, I spent more of our money, because I realized that last WordCamp US. I wore the same t- shirt for five days.
Michelle Frechette 00:00:38 Oh, that’s not good.
Corey Maass 00:00:39 It’s kinda of gross. Yeah. So I ordered myself more, OMG t-shirts.
Michelle Frechette 00:00:44 Oh. Good idea.
Corey Maass 00:00:45 So that and in, like, super bright colors, so, you know, I can at least rotate.
Michelle Frechette 00:00:54 So it doesn’t look like you’re wearing the same shirt every single day.
Corey Maass 00:00:57 Right, exactly. I mean, it’s like. And the thing is, you wear it’s tough because usually you end up wearing a layer anyway. Like for years I only ever bothered with branded stuff that were outer layers because usually walking around in a conference.
Michelle Frechette: You’re chilly
Corey Maass: Right
Michelle Frechette: You need a hoodie
Corey Maass 00:01:17 Right. Yeah.
Michelle Frechette 00:01:17 Or dare I say, a windbreaker?
Corey Maass 00:01:21 Usually I’d go for the track jacket. So that style. Yeah. But they’re getting harder to. For a long time, I could, I could do you could find an American Apparel track jacket that was custom printed, and it’s getting more and more difficult because I’m not like, I don’t know, I, I’ve given up and I now wear t-shirts. I always really preferred wearing a polo. Like it just seems a little more businessy. But it also you can’t print as big or they won’t let you, which is dumb because it’s the same. It’s a t-shirt with a collar. People just let me print.
Michelle Frechette 00:01:55 Right? It doesn’t make any sense. I’m I’m. I’m getting ready to post some stuff while you’re talking, but,
Corey Maass: Excellent.
Michelle Frechette: So join us live right now.
Corey Maass 00:02:09 Do it people.
Michelle Frechette 00:02:12 Okay.
Corey Maass 00:02:13 And I will.
Michelle Frechette 00:02:16 I will get on you Twitter or join us live. So you have to make it different for Twitter so I can tag us.
Corey Maass 00:02:28 There you go.
Michelle Frechette 00:02:28 So I just have to edit all the things. Publish, publish. And I’m actually going to put this over in Slack too. So I every time I talk to people or every time I turn around, I’m telling people about w IPA WP, I still want to say a WP first. I’m sorry. I’m getting it, I’m getting it.
Corey Maass: We own both, it’s fine
Michelle Frechette: That’s true, that’s true. And one should point to the other one ideally. Right.
Corey Maass 00:02:56 It does.
Michelle Frechette 00:03:00 I know you’re on that. So I mentioned it this morning in the Post Status Professionals Meetup.
Corey Maass: Excellent.
Michelle Frechette: And we got another sign up. We got two more today. So you’re in there twice. I feel like I should delete one of them.
Corey Maass: Yes.
Michelle Frechette: Okay, I’m going to go ahead and delete one of them because it’s it’s not exactly the right number of people or products. So we are at 30.
Corey Maass 00:03:24 That’s crazy. I mean I’m not surprised, but.
Michelle Frechette 00:03:30 I mean, I am a little because it’s like, okay, the thing I’m surprised about is like, we don’t have the right logo yet.
Michelle Frechette 00:03:36 We haven’t changed it from saying plug in to product, like all of these things. Like literally we just like, was it two weeks ago? We’re like, hey, let’s do this thing. And now it’s like all over the newsletters and we got 30, including us. Right? So 29 other people are like, heck yeah, I’m in. Which just goes to show you that sometimes things are the right ideas and the right time. And I don’t think either one of us had this idea to do something quite this, quite like this, except while we were talking live about it. And I was telling people in the Meetup this morning that it’s not like we had in the background been like, why don’t we do this thing? And why don’t we talk about it online? And, you know, it was literally like in the moment we stopped broadcasting and we said, let’s really let’s see what we could do with this thing and how it started off as this, like this one week of which we aren’t even going to make it to the one week of doing things at the end of this month, because that’s like literally next week.
Michelle Frechette 00:04:37 But, but this turned out to be bigger and better than what we had anticipated, or at least better in theory, because we haven’t actually put it into practice yet. But it’s exciting to me. And for me, other people getting involved or wanting to know more is like the proof in the pudding, right? So. We could talk about it and people can be like, that’s a great idea. I love that you’re doing that. But if nobody else participates, it’s like, was it really that great of idea? Like if nobody really wanted to be part of it, but 29 other entities want to. So yeah, heck yeah, it’s a good idea.
Corey Maass 00:05:18 I have built hundreds of those things where nobody, nobody showed up, you know? Which is part of the game. Like it’s these are experiments. And if you think of them as experiments, what is it? A you know, a successful experiment can still have a negative outcome or not negative meaning bad. But you know, you you run an experiment, it doesn’t work.
Corey Maass 00:05:41 It still looks successful experiment. So that’s how I view it in this case. I mean, I think, there are two things. One, you especially have a lot of reach. I have a little bit of reach I think we both have good reputations. And so people are happy to get involved with us. And then, as I think we’re doing a good job of pitching it as there’s no risk, like, what’s the harm? you know, right now, 90 seconds to fill out a form. Great. You’re part of it. And then, so the what I did want to talk about is the next step is messaging all of these people. Well, we need to we need to figure out who we’re letting in. Probably most of most or everybody. but we need to do a little like we need to do a little research, you know, other than the folks we’re already familiar with, like, we need to go and kind of go, you know, this feels fine. This this feels too corporate, you know, whatever our criteria are.
Michelle Frechette: Yeah.
Corey Maass 00:06:45 Which might be something that we need to write down, eventually at least, and then message everybody. So I, So for me, I think the plan is, or the approach I think we should take. That’s how I want to say that is manually create the users, which only takes a minute. Copy an email address, paste it in, make them a subscriber, hit, you know, auto send their credentials. They will get an email. and then I’ve already added, I’ve set up most of a basic like dashboard. So if you sign in you can maintain your you can update your password, you can, you know, change your email address like the, the basic stuff. And then we have a form for adding a plugin or product. And I think we have our satisfied with I you’ve looked at it Mark looked at it. I’ve looked at it, I’ve sent it to a couple of other people and everybody’s like, I think that’s, you know, good enough to start with.
Corey Maass 00:07:52 Like, I’m not missing anything obvious. and so I just need to add the functionality so that people can add multiple plugins and, and edit them, but that’s pretty straightforward. So I will try to do that tomorrow I think. IPA WP plugin mgmt management. because then it’s then we’re at least the next step. Like we’re not still not showing a directory or anything, but people can sign in. People have been approved, can sign in, can update their own status or not status, update their own basic profile. And I did say, you know, you as a developer or business. So if you want to put yourself as OMGIMG, well don’t do that. But if I wanted to be OMGIMG rather than Corey. That’s fine. I don’t think we care how people represent themselves,
Michelle Frechette: I don’t.
Corey Maass: At least right now. And then at some point, maybe it’s the like, if you want a, if you want to come across as more human, that is a marketing choice, then you could do that as well.
Corey Maass 00:09:12 And then add a plugin, add multiple plugins. The form is quick, so it should be hopefully a pretty painless process. Upload a square photo and then and then we’ve got all of the data we should need to then be able to add a directory. I did talk to Ross, who has search and filter. Filter and search. Sorry, Ross.
Michelle Frechette 00:09:47 It starts with a ‘W’ I just forgot it. Sorry. Ross.
Corey Maass 00:09:52 Ross Morsali.
Michelle Frechette 00:09:54 Morsali, why did I think it had a W and I don’t know.
Corey Maass 00:09:56 Well, it’s upside down M. I mean.
Michelle Frechette 00:09:59 Perfect, yeah.That does it.
Corey Maass 00:10:00 Yeah. Search & Filter is his plugin. Yep. And it sounds like the perfect candidate for, sorting and filtering. Searching and filtering. It does what it says on the tin, as the British likes to say. Yeah. So then we just need to. He and I are going to get together. I had hoped this week. I was about to say it’s only it’s already Tuesday, but it’s only Tuesday.
Corey Maass 00:10:29 But the rest of the week already looks bananas. Like.
Michelle Frechette 00:10:32 Yeah.
Corey Maass 00:10:34 Things are just crazy. But anyway. So as soon as we can, we will then slap up a basic directory that has all of his awesome searching and filtering options. And then we’ve at least got that done. And then I think so then we’ve got a landing page that’s and again, it’s, it’s kind of the to me the everybody being listed in directory is kind of like, oh okay, here’s the party. Like we’re looking at, you know, everybody who has shown up to the pool party. And then we figure out, the first of hopefully many little marketing games. I think it’s fun to think of it that way.
MIchelle Frechette: Yeah.
Corey Maass: Experiments, campaigns, what have you, and just kind of see how, where it takes us. But then for at least for the most part, it’s taking it’s maintaining itself.
Michelle Frechette 00:11:29 Yes. I’m pretty excited about it. I think that my I’m, I’m going to say I like my design for other logos.
Michelle Frechette 00:11:39 I have not come up with the right logo for this project yet. So however we want to pursue that, I can keep iterating or we can bring somebody else in to just knock it out quickly. So that’s up to you how you want to do that?
Corey Maass 00:12:00 What’s your thought? Are you are you also swamped. Because if if that’s the case then let’s not. I know it’s fun.
Michelle Frechette: Right.
Corey Maass: And I don’t want to take it away from you. I’m the same way. I’m like, I want to sit down and start banging. Banging out ideas and sketching and stuff. And I’m like, my time. I hate to say it, but my time is better spent not doing that.
Michelle Frechette 00:12:21 Yes that’s how feel too. And I, I don’t feel like I have a clear direction of how I want it to look, which makes it even more frustrating. Right? So like there’s not so, so like with WP Speakers, I created that logo very quickly. Love that logo. Same thing with WP Coffee Talk. I love what I created there. However, it was easy coffee talk. I had the coffee cup to work with, right? Speakers I had the microphone to work with like it was things that were easy to kind of work on. I won’t say knocked about in five minutes, but, you know, within an hour they were done. This one I don’t.
Corey Maass 00:12:58 Yeah. Usually I’m the same way.
Michelle Frechette 00:13:00 Like the idea like the beer idea is great. I like the IPA part of it, but like you said, it’s a little too on the nose to do that. And honestly, it does harken too closely to WP Tavern. And we’re not part of WP Tavern. And so, and.
Corey Maass 00:13:15 We’re also not selling beer. So the metaphor is good. Like the last version you sent me was two glasses clinking and I was like, oh, I love I love the sentiment of that. Two people getting together, being happy in each other’s company, probably. I’ve definitely cheered with people who I was not happy to be in their company, but that’s besides the point.
Corey Maass 00:13:38 But that that sentiment. But, you know, and also you had done it in a hand-drawn style and I’m like, okay, I like the DIY aspect of that because that’s part of the ethos that we’re talking about the independent part. But you know but I’m non-English speakers and people skimming quickly and all that kind of stuff are going to go, oh it’s beer, I don’t get it, you know, or it’s beer, I don’t drink beer or what have you. So yes.
Michelle Frechette 00:14:13 And I like the idea of like a high five or something, but actually, how do you put a high five in a still basically black and white or grayscale image where, I mean, and it can be in color for sure, right. Like, it doesn’t have to be, but you but you need to be able to flatten it down to a grayscale image at some point and still understand what it is without it just looking like two hands praying or like those kinds of things. And we’re not a church either, or, you know, a temple.
Michelle Frechette 00:14:43 So. Yeah. So like with some guidance, like if you have thoughts, I could probably pull something out. Other than that, if we really just want to like, create a design brief and let somebody design it, if we can put that in the budget or not, that I’m all for that too. So I could do either direction. It just is one of those things where I need more to go on Corey and I am not feeling inspired to figure out what that looks like for us.
Corey Maass 00:15:11 Right. Yeah. What I’ve so some, some things, things I’ve done in the past. So it’s like I feel like I’m, I’m happy to spend 100 bucks. Right. Right now more than that feels over like too much. And then and that is people are going to cringe and real designers are going to want to reach to the screen and strangle me. But that’s where we’re at. Like, yes, a proper logo design is worth hundreds or thousands, you know, dot, dot, dot, all of those disclaimers.
Corey Maass 00:15:41 But when you’re at this level for a project that is not going to see profit, you know, you work with what you got.
Michelle Frechette 00:15:48 Exactly.
Corey Maass 00:15:50 So at this stage in the past, I have done a couple of things. I’ve actually got a I work with a designer, and so I might hit her up and see if she’s wants to do, essentially a charity. Or a good, good karma kind of project. And we throw her the cash. otherwise, what I’ve also done in the past is get on Fiverr and hired five people for 20 bucks each.
Michelle Frechette 00:16:21 And pick the one you like the best.
Corey Maass 00:16:23 You know, and or. And what I end up usually end up doing is what I view it more as as brainstorming. Right? Like they’ll mock up a bunch of designs and once or actually for Mexican Train, which I happen to be.
Michelle Frechette: Oh, yeah.
Corey Maass: Wearing the t-shirt of I, I used it verbatim off of Fiverr I, I hate it, but I love it like I can’t. It’s so
Michelle Frechette 00:16:51 I have a love hate relationship with it. Yeah.
Corey Maass 00:16:54 Yeah. Like I, I had sort of I had committed to like just using something that somebody sent like this is good enough. But it’s so not my style. It’s so not a style that I like. And so I like how it works, and I like the messages that it conveys and all that kind of stuff. But I actually like I hate the actual logo, but sometimes, like, that doesn’t matter, you know? And, and then most of the time, what ends up happening is, I spend $100 to either have a design handed to me that I’m like, yep, that I should have. I knew that’s what it should have been. I should have just done it myself, which is fine. Or I get a bunch of ideas and I end up jumping into I. I actually used you remember Flash? Adobe Flash, before that Macromedia Flash generally for creating animations. But I still use that to design because it’s, I find it like the fastest for doing vector because it’s so much simpler than illustrator or, you know, what is it? Affinity designer.
Michelle Frechette: Okay.
Corey Maass 00:18:14 But anyway, so the point is, is that, like with, you know, you try to hire five people who come up with more than one idea and then you go, oh, you know, the colors from this are great. The shapes of from this are great. The concept from this is great. And then I can jump into Flash and like you said, like I can then, then I can bang it out in an hour while I’m watching. Currently we’re rewatching Elementary. Highly recommend.
Michelle Frechette: Oh, yeah.
Corey Maass: If anybody hasn’t seen it.
Michelle Frechette 00:18:44 I’ve seen it. It’s a good show.
Corey Maass 00:18:45 With, Sick Boy from Trainspotting. It was really why I love it. But anyway, so that’s. So we could kind of go on either of those ways, I think. Or if we have a designer or if there’s anybody listening who would love to take a crack at it.
Michelle Frechette 00:19:02 Let us know.
Corey Maass 00:19:03 In the spirit of collaboration. Which is why I love that. Like, Ross reached out, you know, he’s like, I’d love to be part of this. I would love, obviously like, love my plug in to be the one. Like obviously there there may be other plug ins that end up in the directory that do searching and filtering, but mine’s going to be the one that like controls it, you know. And but in the in the spirit of collaboration like this is how we put our, our stuff together and so same idea. So if anybody has an idea please.
Michelle Frechette 00:19:34 Absolutely. We and I do like I like building logos in Canva. I know a lot of people are like uuummmm.
Corey Maass 00:19:42 Also. No, no I that’s my second.
Michelle Frechette 00:19:45 Okay, good. Because all I did. Let me, let me share my screen here. Hold on. I got multiple screens. So figuring out which where, where and where I am is another. Okay, so I just typed in tech logo, and of course it pulls anything of mine that it thinks might be techie, which is, you know, this is the one we have right now as a place older.
Michelle Frechette 00:20:08 And some of them are great and like, you know, could could use you could use to build from is what I’m trying to say. Like this one over here, this one with the W world. I own it like a picture of the WordPress logo in the middle of that. Right? That would be cool. That. But but we’re not that electronically, right. I mean, like, yeah, the networking cables or whatever that is, but there’s some in here.
Corey Maass 00:20:34 Oh I like that. Hold on, go. I like that norm line.
Michelle Frechette 00:20:37 This one here.
Corey Maass 00:20:38 Because it, it kind of looks like hands like going like.
Michelle Frechette 00:20:41 Oh yeah So we could like we could build off of that, right, for sure. And then stylize the writing or whatever we want underneath it. I do like that one too. Something very simplistic is better. This is obviously the one that I started with, and I just added little w word presses in there. But I think we could do something right from here if we’re willing to pick a few.
Michelle Frechette 00:21:07 And let me kind of look at them and play around with them. I think we could definitely do that. Then you get down here and you’re like, oh, there’s Coffee Talk. See how good that looks? And Speakers see how good that looks. WP Wonder Woman I mean there’s there’s I’m not terrible at it. I just need to direction I think.
Corey Maass 00:21:25 Well and that’s it. Like I’ve. Yeah I’ve, I’ve had logos that have come together and I there was a, I actually did a job board for a minute, although I did it more as a resume piece. Nope. Don’t like that. Thank you
Michelle Frechette 00:21:42 Look, it looks like two hands. That’s what I was. I was focusing on.
Corey Maass 00:21:46 Creepy alien hands there.
Michelle Frechette 00:21:49 Okay. I mean, I’ll give you that. I’m not gonna fight. It looks.
Corey Maass 00:21:52 Like ghosts. Like like swooping up.
Michelle Frechette 00:21:56 I can see that now that you say it, that’s for sure. Anyway, I.
Corey Maass 00:22:04 Whirlwind is cute. Like it, doesn’t. It doesn’t work as a.
Michelle Frechette 00:22:07 Oh, this one here? Yeah. No, that doesn’t work. But it’s not bad. Yeah, you can see this is the other one. It’s the same. Yeah.
Corey Maass 00:22:15 I mean, and that’s that’s what you run into in this kind of thing is like a bunch of the same shapes, you know, like, like, there have been logo logo generators for ages, and I’ve. I’ve long been a fan, but it’s like, you see that, you see the patterns repeat. You know, they they bought a collection of clip art and then stuck that in and then they just get re reused.
Michelle Frechette 00:22:37 This one makes me think of the Newton’s cradle. The thing that goes click click click click back and forth. Yeah.
Corey Maass: Yep.
Michelle Frechette: I’m not suggesting it. It just it just made that idea in my head.
Corey Maass 00:22:48 It’s kind of a neat I not a bad but yeah. So years ago I did a job board and the logo was one of the best logos I’ve ever done. I wonder if I have that online.
Michelle Frechette 00:23:03 And what about, I’m sorry. I don’t mean to interrupt you.
Corey Maass 00:23:06 No, but, like, I, I had people, like, complimenting me. They’re like, that’s an award winning logo. The the job board never went anywhere, but I like. And I knocked out the logo like I knew exactly what I wanted it to be, so it only took me an hour or something.
Michelle Frechette 00:23:21 What about something similar to this? But if we replace the colors with the OMGIMG colors so it still is a little bit branded towards us since we started it.
Corey Maass 00:23:32 Yeah.
Michelle Frechette 00:23:33 Yep. Right. Not terrible.
Corey Maass 00:23:37 IPA.
Michelle Frechette 00:23:39 You could put the WordPress logo in the middle and the IPA underneath.
Corey Maass 00:23:45 I’m not such a fan of the like the the obvious W okay. I just well and and yeah, I guess because this isn’t for profit, we can.
Michelle Frechette 00:24:03 Yeah. All right. I can play around with it one more time. See what I can come up with for you. And then if that fails, I give up and we hire somebody.
Corey Maass 00:24:13 Yeah, that sounds good. Well, and and I, you know, do do the hired document. If document any of the higher level thinking that you end up doing while you’re doing it where you’re like, oh, you know, oh, this, this shape as a metaphor, like I keep like what keeps popping into my head is so you would you had done, you know, two glasses so that the front edge of the glasses come together and little lines. And so it’s like even if that was abstracted out. So you had like, you know, just squares that.
Michelle Frechette 00:24:49 So yeah.
Corey Maass 00:24:50 Like that, that just looks like weird glasses with hair, but like, you know, the idea being.
Michelle Frechette 00:24:57 I get the idea. Yeah.
Corey Maass 00:24:58 You know, like abstract out the, the concepts of, you know, going clink with two glasses.
Michelle Frechette 00:25:09 Right.
Corey Maass 00:25:11 Because it would also be like if those were solid boxes, then it’s like, here are two entities. And if you can and put a put a star between them so it looks like a spark, you’re like, okay, well the spark of collaboration, like, you know, the metaphor still works. And if you step way back and you think to yourself, IPA means beer, then you could be like, oh, there, maybe it’s two beer steins or something, you know, that kind of.
Michelle Frechette 00:25:37 Yeah. I always like things that show like multiple hands, like this one. I’m not suggesting children’s hands, but something that shows that there’s lots of people involved in it. But it also kind of comes across looking a little bit like, it’s a preschool logo.
Corey Maass 00:25:53 Yeah.
Michelle Frechette 00:25:54 Anyway, so all right, let me let me noodle around on it as some people say.
Corey Maass 00:26:03 Yeah, well and or don’t I mean, if you, if you have, if you have the time if you’re.
Michelle Frechette 00:26:10 I’m gonna take half an hour. And if I can’t come up with a good solid idea in half an hour, then that’s it.
Corey Maass 00:26:18 Yeah. Okay. Then we’ll yeah, we’ll we’ll jot down some notes. Like we, we seem to both do well throwing text back and forth in Slack.
Michelle Frechette 00:26:27 Yeah.
Corey Maass 00:26:27 So we could do that. Come up with some concepts. You know, call it a brief and then slap it on Fiverr and see what we get.
Michelle Frechette 00:26:35 Exactly.
Corey Maass 00:26:36 And that works And then pick something.
Michelle Frechette 00:26:42 Absolutely. Cool. You got the ad copy submitted for. I can’t remember the name of the.
Corey Maass 00:26:51 Dense Discovery.
Michelle Frechette: Thank you.
Corey Maass: So that you could come out. There it came. It arrived today. So seven days from now our ad will be in there. And once again I looked through the classifieds and was like, yep, these are all boring. I think ours is going to be cute. So.
Michelle Frechette 00:27:07 So we didn’t finalize what we were going to do. So do you want to share that out in this stream? You can share your screen if you want. You can just read it out. But I think it’d be great to capture that in this week’s episode.
Michelle Frechette 00:27:21 Yeah. And for those of I know we’ve got a couple of people watching right now for people who are listening later, we have, was it 180 characters? 100 and something like that? Very limited. Yeah. 182, it was 182 characters, for ad placement in Dense Discovery, which is an online magazine that’s actually kind of it gives it has that indie vibe. It’s really kind of e-zine kind of thing, which I love, really fits what we do here. We were. So we took out an ad. We’ve got three months, three different ad placements that we could do, and we wanted something that just wasn’t boring. And so we went back and forth. How long? A couple hours, maybe back and forth. Not solid, but back and forth, shooting ideas back to each other. I don’t want to say back and forth 5 million times, shooting ideas for each other until we finally came up with this.
Corey Maass 00:28:14 Hold on.
Michelle Frechette 00:28:15 Yep. I’m holding.
Corey Maass 00:28:17 It’s trying to make it,nicely presentable.
Michelle Frechette 00:28:21 Gotcha. Okay.
Corey Maass 00:28:25 Do do do do. So let’s see where to go. Share your screen. Share your screen. A specific window that looks good. There you go.
Michelle Frechette 00:28:36 Okay, so this is what we came up with. And it’s I see it’s underneath the logo there.
Corey Maass 00:28:45 Oh, okay. Enter, enter. There you go.
Michelle Frechette 00:28:49 I took it out too. So. Okay. You post your grandma’s cookie recipe on your food blog. You share it on socials, but your stale social image gets you crumbs and a sad Nana use OMGIMG. Never play image roulette again. I love it!
Corey Maass 00:29:07 I’m so glad we have you saying that because we’re now going to put out radio ads and.
Michelle Frechette 00:29:14 Oh, I’ll do a better job recording it if that’s the case.
Corey Maass 00:29:18 Your room is a little boomy, if I’m honest. You know, it’s not, radio studio, studio quality.
Michelle Frechette 00:29:25 No.
Corey Maass 00:29:26 But I could, but I could add reverb and, like echo.OMG, omg,omg.
Michelle Frechette 00:29:30 I can put a blanket over me and the microphone and get a little more.
Corey Maass 00:29:34 Perfect. Dry dry. But yeah, I, I yeah, we went back and forth. I mean, I think it was. Yeah, we probably spent an hour going back and I mean, once we got the concept right. and what was fun was like, I think you were just hanging out, and I had my laptop at the bar that I work at, bartending, which is a golf course. And so I’m not, like, slinging beer nonstop, especially when everybody shows up after work and then goes out golfing. And then I’m, like, twiddling my thumbs until they all come back in. So we could just like I, I would. I posted a version, you copied it elsewhere, edited it, edited-ed-ed it, did it, paste it in Slack. I’m like we we a few comments back and forth. I did the same thing and like it was the best collaboration. It worked out.
Michelle Frechette 00:30:29 It was it was fun actually. And I love that it’s not like, ew no, like both of us were like, let’s build on this.
Michelle Frechette 00:30:37 Let’s it’s it’s a yes and kind of situation where and I, I came up with a line and I was really proud of myself. The chat room or the image roulette. Right. Because that’s the problem with WordPress. It oftentimes will pick up a featured image, but not necessarily. Socials will sometimes pick up the first image or for some unknown reason, the third image on a page or whatever. and unless you determine exactly which image should be shown to different places, you’re basically playing roulette with your images. And so once I said that, you’re like, oh, we gotta use that. Let’s figure out how to like back into that. And of course the OMGIMG is the link through to the website. Oh, and did you finish the the page that they would like to. Can you show that?
Corey Maass: Yes.
Michelle Frechette: Because I love the way you did that at least. Mostly done right?
Corey Maass 00:31:37 Done enough. And then. So. Yeah. There you go. Present, share screen.
Michelle Frechette 00:31:55 So when you, it’s obviously a, a specified specified URL that we put with that.
Michelle Frechette 00:32:05 So the link doesn’t just go to OMGIMG.co, it goes to grandma’s cookie recipe. And you’ve put beautifully so welcome Dense Discovery fans. We know you only came here for the cookie recipe smiley emoji. This one is from our teammate Michelle Frechette’s own grandmother. Without further ado, shortbread cookies by Katherine Locke. And there’s in her own handwriting. And at the bottom, when you do need better social images for your WordPress post pages, recipes or whatever. Take a look at OMGIMG and I’m assuming that goes to our pricing page because I didn’t click it through.
Corey Maass: Home page and yeah.
Michelle Frechette: Okay, cool. All right. Yeah, pricing page would probably be better. And then, I and you said for me to go and take a look at it, I proofed it. Everything looked good. But we didn’t have good alt text on the image. So I added, yep. So I added alt text on the image. So that if anybody is blind or visually impaired when they get to or low vision when they get to this page, if they want the recipe itself, their screen reader will read off the recipe card for that.
Corey Maass: 00:33:10 That’s fantastic. Well done.
Michelle Frechette 00:33:13 Yeah. Thanks. So, and so you’re, whoever’s listening is going to hear the truth of this is this is actually my aunt’s cookie recipe.
Corey Maass: Gasp!
Michelle Frechette: My grandmother’s recipes on there for things like pickled eggs and and circus peanut jello. So I’m like, we’ll just use Aunt Kathy. She’s she’s someone. She is a grandmother. She’s just not my grandmother. But anyway, it is a good grandma’s cookie recipe. And they’re delicious. By the way, she’s my relative. Yeah. And they’re delicious. So if you ever really want a good shortbread cookie, these are the ones to go with. But, And it’s nice that I have that. She’s she’s she passed away. Oh, I was in the sixth grade. I was 12, I’m 54. Almost 56, 54, 55, almost 56 now. So she passed away a really long time ago. so to have this in her handwriting and have it saved on the web is a really cool thing. So.
Corey Maass: Love it.
Michelle Frechette 00:34:10 And I love that there’s an Easter egg there. Right? So like they click through and the first thing they’re getting served is grandma’s cookie recipe instead of like sell, sell, sell, sell, sell. Like you clicked on this. We want to sell you this thing. It’s like we want to delight them.
Corey Maass: Exactly.
Michelle Frechette: We want to delight the people that come to your website. You want the A and this plugin. And what we do with it has a spirit of whimsy to it, right? And so to have that recipe in there, I mean, for I, I’m, I think about, Phoebe Buffay on Friends when she talks about her grandmother’s cookie recipe. Her grandmother Toulouse. Yeah.
Corey Maass 00:34:50 Toulouse.
Michelle Frechette 00:34:51 Toulouse. Yeah. Turns out it was just the Nestlé Toll House cookie recipe. Right. But now this is actually from my aunt. I don’t know where she got it, but it’s a good one. And that it’s handwritten and all that, I think really just goes along with what we do. So, yeah, I think it’s cool.
Corey Maass 00:35:08 Yep. Yeah. And we linked in the text of the ad. We linked grandma’s cookie recipe rather than OMGIMG. And so which is counterintuitive, but I my hope is the way because I’m trying to follow my own. If nothing else, you follow your own behavior if you can, if you can view it somewhat objectively. And so like when we so like I said, Dense Discovery arrived in my inbox today in the three minutes before we started our call. I skimmed down through it, especially the classifieds, because I just kind of wanted to test myself and in skimming through it, what jumps out at you is whatever is linked, it’s underlined, it’s blue instead of black, whatever. And so my hope is instead of people, I mean, I love our name. OMGIMG is weird and compelling and all caps, which is a little bit of a cheat. but the fact that we’ve linked grandma’s cookie recipe, my hope is somebody skims it and they’re like, what? Like what? What are they talking about? You know, what’s the brand in here? And then, yeah, to be honest
Michelle Frechette: It’s the unexpected.
Corey Maass 00:36:22 Right. And since we linked that, my hope is people go, no, they didn’t they didn’t really link to grandma’s cookie recipe. And then and then they come here. So.
Michelle Frechette 00:36:33 And because it’s its own, it it is its own URL. We can track, how many hits we get on this particular page. Correct?
Corey Maass 00:36:42 Exactly, exactly.
Michelle Frechette: Love it.
Corey Maass 00:36:44 And we. Yeah. And UTM tags. And, so I’m doing a little more typography.
Michelle Frechette 00:36:52 And we didn’t put it. We didn’t even put we didn’t even put in a coupon. So it’s not even offering them a deal. It’s just saying come buy this thing.
Corey Maass 00:37:00 Oh should we?
Michelle Frechette 00:37:02 No, we don’t have enough credit. We don’t have enough characters to do that.
Corey Maass 00:37:07 No no no. Sorry. Not yeah. Not within that. But on this page we should.
Michelle Frechette 00:37:11 You know, I don’t know our our cost is under $100. So I think it’s priced right already I do. And if people really want it and they want to ask for discount, they can or they can assume that, Black Friday will have a discount, which I’m sure we will. And, that then that gives them other opportunities. But I think just driving people to the site is a good way to do it. And grandma’s cookie recipes the best way.
Corey Maass 00:37:39 Yep.
Michelle Frechette 00:37:40 I love it. As a matter of fact, we should probably take that very text and put it in, put it out on socials and see what happens.
Corey Maass 00:37:50 Well, and and that’s what I’m thinking is like taking, image roulette now is going to so the other thing that we’re due. I’m, I’m frantically trying to get a major update out the door before next week before this goes out. If only because it’s a self-inflated, deadline, self self-inflicted? Self-created deadline.
Michelle Frechette 00:38:18 inflicted.
Corey Maass 00:38:19 Self-inflicted. There you go. and I’m. And I tweeted about today. I’m struggling with this stupid thing. And so I need to let. I need to. I need to just code it the wrong way. Like it’s I’m trying to code it the right way, but there’s gremlins and it’s really frustrating and it’s like I’m using.
Corey Maass 00:38:37 So with a batch, batch processing generate lots of images. I introduce background processing. And so this should be essentially batch background processing of just one image. So it should it all should just work the same. But for some reason it’s fighting me. So I need to go back to it. Just generally just saving the image on save kind of thing just to get the damn thing out the door. And then and then I can revisit the batch processing, the background processing stuff later. But but anyway, that all in a, in addition to that, like what I think we should start doing. Oh I know, so that update is the next big step towards the shift in the product with an emphasis on auto generation or, you know, quick, you create one template and then in many places you use that template to generate the image rather than jumping into the editor, which is the pattern right now. Because that’s the feedback that I’ve received from everybody who’s been using the plugin and looked at the plugin, they’re like, does it, you know, does it just do it for me? Because that’s all I want.
Corey Maass 00:39:52 I thought people would want to be more artistic about it. They don’t. And that’s totally fine. So I, I think next Tuesday maybe like we go and finally start working on a new home page that starts working towards changing the wording to push that new direction.
Michelle Frechette 00:40:15 Yeah. I like that, I think that’s really good. And and definitely, you know, we’ve talked a lot about having things above the fold in a more, appealing way. I mean, salesy kind of comes across like I wanted to sell more, but I don’t want it to be salesy. But it definitely needs to be more intriguing and it needs to be more engaging. And we’ve talked about that a lot. So I think that that’s it’s the good next step for sure.
Corey Maass 00:40:39 RIght. Yeah. And I think I mean and and I love like all all of this stuff at the moment feels a little like it’s coming together organically in that. Like you came up with the phrase image roulette. We came up with the concept of, posting and, and, and having to worry about and sharing on socials and then having to worry about what it looks like.
Corey Maass 00:41:03 And, and that’s well captured by the phrase image roulette. So I, I honestly see doing a next version where we push all that above the fold because I think it’s a unto itself. Those words are captivating. And.
Michelle Frechette 00:41:20 what do you mean by image roulette? Yeah.
Corey Maass00:41:23 Right.
Michelle Frechette 00:41:23 Yeah, exactly.
Corey Maass 00:41:26 So, so maybe next week we we jump on that record. I mean, regardless of whether the plugin is ready or not, but like, that’s something we something again, given that we’ve proven that we go back and forth well. Like let’s do that.
Michelle Frechette 00:41:41 Yeah. No I agree I think that’s a good a good way to direct our energies next week. 100% for sure.I’m even like still noodling on the, I don’t know why I said noodling. I had a boss that used to say that all the time, and suddenly it’s in my brain still thinking about. So whatever, bring on, the logo and and the fact that, like, OMGIMG is just text.
Michelle Frechette 00:42:08 It’s not just text, it’s more than text, but it’s text. It’s a text tool. The WP Wonder Woman is text. And there’s something intriguing about really good text logo too. So I’m still thinking.
Corey Maass 00:42:24 Glad to hear it.
Michelle Frechette 00:42:26 Sorry I got myself distracted.
Corey Maass 00:42:31 No, I know, like I do the same thing. It’s like. It’s because it’s. I love wiggling around in an idea I also love. Years ago, I worked at a startup, and we we were at the level where, like, we knew overall the problem we were trying to solve. But solutions were, you know, I mean, it was, they were.
Speaker 3 00:43:01 They were escaping us.
Corey Maass 00:43:02 So well and could be anything and could look like anything, you know?
Michelle Frechette 00:43:07 Yeah. For sure.
Corey Maass 00:43:07 And and that proved to be our downfall. But, in the meantime, it was fun. So we went into we had a room, we had, what do they call it? Anyway, it’s like, basically we we hung up whiteboards, almost floor to ceiling everywhere.
Corey Maass 00:43:24 the, the here’s, here’s a pro tip or life tip for people. At places like Home Depot they sell shower board that works just fine as dry erase board. It’s a little more stubborn to, like, erase it. but it’s like 16 bucks for a four by eight sheet. But if you try to go buy a dryer by a dry erase board, they’re going to charge you.
Michelle Frechette 00:43:55 Way more. Yeah
Corey Maass 00:43:56 300 dollars. Yeah. So there’s there’s a little pro tip for anybody who who likes whiteboards. But anyway, my point.
Michelle Frechette 00:44:03 I have no wall space.
Corey Maass 00:44:06 And I’ve been missing mine, although I, I got us a little one that usually lives on the the refrigerator downstairs. That’s like a what projects are being worked on. But once in a while I grab it and and draw pictures up here. but, when we were in that room. We quickly came up with a hand gesture. I don’t like a wavy type touch head or something kind of hand gesture to indicate not this, but something like this.
Corey Maass 00:44:35 Because we found like somebody would say, you know, oh well, we’re, you know, we’re trying to figure out how to get across a bridge. And somebody else would be like, you know, mayonnaise in a jar. And it’s like everybody immediately is like, well, here’s why that won’t work. And and they went, well, not that, but something like that, you know, and so to save the, you know, that and kind of in that spirit of, as you said earlier, the yes and kind of spirit. So it’s it’s acknowledging this is a bad idea, but but maybe there’s something there.
Michelle Frechette 00:45:07 But, but but dig a little deeper into my idea, and maybe you’ll be able to pull the kernel out for me kind of thing.
Corey Maass 00:45:12 Exactly. You know, and and I, I my favorite one of my favorite phrases that I think I invented is splashing around In. So, like splashing around in a concept, you know, because you’re kind of just I don’t, I don’t know yet, but it’s I’m trying to keep it alive kind of thing.
Michelle Frechette 00:45:31 Yeah, yeah. Okay.
Corey Maass 00:45:32 So.
Michelle Frechette 00:45:34 I do like that. I do the same.
Corey Maass 00:45:34 But I can, I can relate to your like there’s something here. This isn’t this isn’t it yet. But there’s something here
Michelle Frechette 00:45:41 Yeah. I was just thinking also like I just had to double check. I’m like, did I imagine a conversation about our 404 page, or did we actually implement text on it? And we did implement text on it on our 404page. So yeah, we could, we could put we could play around with grandma’s cookie recipe and internet cookies and we could put something about like a fake cookie statement on the 404 page about grandma’s cookie statement. I don’t know, just ideas. Maybe something to think about it. Go back to the homepage. Or maybe you want to make some cookies if you do. We got you covered there. I am literally just spitballing now, so.
Corey Maass 00:46:29 Just saying words. But again, some not this, but something like this, you know.
Michelle Frechette 00:46:33 Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Very cool. If anybody I know we’ve got some people watching. So we have also oops, I’m clicking the wrong one. We also have been talking about IPAWP. So if you’re joining us a little bit late IPA WP is the Independent. Can we actually change it to product. Do you think we should change it?
Corey Maass00:46:52 Let’s do it.
Michelle Frechette 00:46:53 Yeah, let’s do it because it’s early enough on. So it’s going to be the Independent Product Alliance for WordPress products and IPAWP if you have, if you if, if you’re a bootstrap and scrappy kind of little plugin or product like we are, you’re our people and we would love to have you in that. We have 30 applications that we’re going to be weeding through as we get ready to actually launch this thing. And the whole idea is not to spend money, but to spend a little time that just marketing your product, but other products that are in the same spaces as we are the WordPress space.
Michelle Frechette 00:47:28 And doing that cooperatively in a way that will help us all grow without having to hit our pocketbooks or wallets or whatever the right word is that it is. So if you’re interested, if you’ve got a product, if you’re, thinking that sounds like a really cool idea, go to ipawp.com. There’s an interest form on there right now, I think unless you’re very at the very moment changing it, it might still say Independent Plugin Alliance.
Corey Maass: Refresh.
Michelle Frechette: We are going to refresh. It’s the Independent Product Alliance for WordPress now. So so you can go to ipawp.com for that. And again if you’re interested in OMGIMG it’s OMGIMG.co. and we would love to have your thoughts and inputs on all of the above. And if you’re looking for a way to never play image roulette again, OMGIMG is your product So shall we call it a few minutes early this week, or did you have anything else you wanted to add?
Corey Maass 00:48:26 No, that’s just fine. I yeah, I’m updating the site and I’m adding a temporary, text only logo.
Michelle Frechette 00:48:34 Okay, perfect.
Corey Maass 00:48:35 For now and then, yeah. If anybody has any ideas on for a logo because again, like, or, or anything. Like. IPA.
Michelle Frechette 00:48:46 This thing is still in its a grassroots form here. We haven’t really done much with it yet. It’s all we’ve iterated, a lot of it. We know what we’d like to do with it, but we are so open for ideas. It’s not even funny. So yeah. Sounds good. All right, we’ll see everybody next week when we’re going to work on the homepage and hopefully make it a little more intriguing and engaging.
Corey Maass: There we go.
Michelle Frechette: So we’ll see everybody then. Bye.
Corey Maass 00:49:14 Bye.
