On Tue, Sep 19, 2017 at 02:06:38PM -0400, Máirín Duffy wrote:
> Our current top-level marketing strategy is based primarily on
the
> three Fedora editions and their target audiences.
We talked about this, but right now it's actually product-centric, not
audience-centric (and should probably be the latter.)
Well, the marketing strategy is intended to be audience-centric, but
structured around the editions as a way of organizing the project.
That's somewhat different from whether the website is audience or
edition-centric.
> We have a secondary
> marketing strategy around more focused solutions: for example, the
> Python Classroom Lab has the simple target of teachers and instructors.
> Or the various desktop spins, which target enthusiasts of the
> particular desktop technologies.
Do we really actively market these though?
Secondarily. :)
> I'd love for each Edition WG and Spin/Lab SIG to come up with search
> terms that reflect these goals — for example, ranking high for "desktop for
> developers" might be a goal for Workstation.
If I search for "developer desktop" the top non-ad hit is
That would be an excellent one for us to improve. Right now, Google
webmaster console puts getfedora at 100 for that, although it's
possible that
https://developer.fedoraproject.org/ (which I don't
currently have visibility into) scores higher.
Search engine position is an easy number to get and compare over
time,
but is there convincing evidence that it's meaningful? Is it meaningful
in either of these senses?:
1 - Good position in rankings will help make $THING more popular
2 - Good position in rankings reflects popularity of $THING
I think #2 is _probably_ true. And #1 is probably true if advertising
works at all, which it seems to.
We can also get numbers on click-through %. Just being the top result
and never having any resulting traffic is less useful.
Two of our 3 editions are focused on developer workflows, but we do
not
go to conferences that are primarily developer-centric, we do not talk
about or mention topics that are of interest to developers (many
referenced in that survey) on/in any of our external-facing materials
such as our brochure site or any of our marketing materials, save for
Fedora Magazine and the
getfedora.org site (the latter could be much better)
I definitely agree.
I think at this point in time, without a coherent narrative about
what
we have to offer, SEO is not actually useful - we won't target the right
terms. We need a tighter and richer feedback loop with our target
audience to understand what we have to offer and where we need to
improve and we need to work on improving in a visible way towards those
unmet needs. Build the narrative on that. Without a narrative, if we
promote the right thing but we're deficient, it's not going to help it
will hurt; if we promote the wrong thing, it won't help either.
Hmmmm. I definitely agree on the importance of getting the narrative
right — and on backing it up with real tech. But I think there's also
low-hanging fruit we can handle to increase visibility.
--
Matthew Miller
<mattdm(a)fedoraproject.org>
Fedora Project Leader