[Marketing] Re: Marketing Digest, Vol 15, Issue 5

[daniele.ocu ocu]

I am completely in favor of Professor Ari's ideas and opinions related to
the fact that OSGeo should* focus more on improving its web presence*. Thank
you professor for your detailed and excellent thoughts.

Not only it is the* best way to* *measure* efforts and investments in
Marketing through User logs, it can also be more effective than a number of
offline efforts.

I liked the example of OpenGeo not only because it is a *beautiful
website*but also because it is very
*user-friendly*. I also agree that using a language that is focused to
specific groups and targets such as sponsors is an excellent way to transmit
an understandable message that is *converted to more sponsors, contributors,
etc*.

It is important nevertheless to be aware that not only these features are
important for a significant online presence. If you have a look at Alexa.com
and compare OSGeo and OpenGeo (as expected because OSGeo has a larger
community) OSGeo outperforms in terms of User traffic. What I want to say
here is that tools such as Alexa can be nice ways to measure our position in
relation to our stakeholders in the websphere.

So I suggest that whoever is interested to* do comparisons* and *share them
here in the lis*t. It would be interesting to know who are the stakeholders
according to the marketing committee.

Quite some time ago I had prepared a small presentation on a simple
structure for improving online presence. I did not update it unfortunately
but the ideas are still relevant i guess. *

Have a look and ad your comments.*

I created a link<http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/OSGeo_Marketing_Discussions#Online_Presence>to
it on the wiki:

http://wiki.osgeo.org/wiki/OSGeo_Marketing_Discussions#Online_Presence

Kind Regards,

Daniele.




On Mon, Dec 8, 2008 at 2:00 AM, <marketing-request at lists.osgeo.org> wrote:

> Send Marketing mailing list submissions to
>        marketing at lists.osgeo.org
>
> To subscribe or unsubscribe via the World Wide Web, visit
>        http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing
> or, via email, send a message with subject or body 'help' to
>        marketing-request at lists.osgeo.org
>
> You can reach the person managing the list at
>        marketing-owner at lists.osgeo.org
>
> When replying, please edit your Subject line so it is more specific
> than "Re: Contents of Marketing digest..."
>
>
> Today's Topics:
>
>   1. Re: [Board] Marketing Costs/Budget in 2009 (Ari Jolma)
>
>
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Message: 1
> Date: Sun, 07 Dec 2008 18:38:12 +0200
> From: Ari Jolma <ari.jolma at tkk.fi>
> Subject: [Marketing] Re: [Board] Marketing Costs/Budget in 2009
> To: Christopher Schmidt <crschmidt at metacarta.com>
> Cc: OSGeo Marketing <marketing at lists.osgeo.org>, board at lists.osgeo.org
> Message-ID: <493BFBF4.5030106 at tkk.fi>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
>
> Chris,
>
> Very good observations. This should be brought to the attention of the
> marketing committee, from which we are eagerly waiting for a marketing
> plan with associated costs (i.e., how to spend the money we're expecting
> to have). (I just did that by cc'ing to the marketing list)
>
> Tyler wrote somewhere that some say "Your Open Source Compass" is lame.
> "We support the software that supports your geospatial operations"
> sounds very good although it's a bit long for the logo.
>
> Regards,
>
> Ari
>
> Christopher Schmidt kirjoitti:
> > To Whom it May Concern,
> >
> > Recently, I was reviewing the Board's budget discussions for the Budget
> > in 2009 in the mailing list archives, especially as they relate to
> > possible expenditures for Marketing in 2009.
> >
> > I'll admit that I feel slightly confused as to what the goal of the
> > marketing budget is. From what I'm reading, there is an expectation that
> > marketing funding would be a significant portion of the spending from
> > the foundation as a whole, and I'd like to understand how that money is
> > or might be spent.
> >
> > Currently, I see evidence that some significant portion of the marketing
> > budget in previous years was used for "Event support" -- buying booth
> > space, primarily, or other similar events. Although I see the
> > importance, in some cases, of attending events, I wonder if there might
> > not be a more efficient way of marketing OSGeo with funds that may or
> > may not be available. To me, it's not clear that event support really
> > has the highest return on investment for OSGeo, even within the
> > marketing world.
> >
> > Specifically, I think that one of the areas that OSGeo is doing poorest
> > in marketing is in simply presenting a unified view targeted towards
> > potential sponsors. OSGeo -- as a community -- has grown organically in
> > a way that is both healthy and encouraging. However, OSGeo as a movement
> > towards a well-known name is not doing particularly well. The key
> > message/purpose of OSGeo -- "We support the software that supports your
> > geospatial operations" -- is one that we have not put nearly enought
> > effort into selling, in my opinion.
> >
> > One example of an organization which has taken the lead -- especially
> > recently -- in rebranding itself, is the OpenGeo group (the Geospatial
> > division of the Open Planning Project). The web presence of OpenGeo --
> > http://opengeo.org/ -- is in a style that corporations feel immediatley
> > at home with, and has much more 'gut appeal' to the types of
> > organizations that OSGeo seems to be seeking as sponsors than the
> > current OSGeo website does.
> >
> > This wasn't accomplished by creating a lot of booth materials --
> > OpenGeo's total booth materials cost for FOSS4G must have been very
> > minimal compared to even OSGeo's this year.
> >
> > The current OSGeo website is not a completely inadequate community site.
> > It has some success in that regard. But OSGeo -- as an entity seeking
> > sponsorship -- can't only be about building the community. It really
> > needs to be seen as an organization which is supporting these Open
> > Source projects to be truly successful.
> >
> > With that in mind, I would like to propose for your consideration the
> > following:
> >
> >   In order to accomplish its goals of supporting the Open Source
> >   projects that make up OSGeo, OSGeo should take on the task of
> >   improving their brand by creating a strong web presence targeted
> >   towards potential sponsors. Specifically, this web presence should be
> >   seeking to identify other organizations with similar potential
> >   targets, and mimic the successes of those organizations in
> >   presentation of materials.
> >
> >   The materials being presented should include:
> >     * A high level overview of OSGeo and what it is
> >     * A high level overview of the projects that are currently supported
> >       by OSGeo, targeted towards executive -- rather than
> >       developer-oriented -- summary
> >     * A high level overview of how OSGeo achieves its goals in
> >       supporting these projects
> >     * How organizations can help support OSGeo in the above task.
> >
> >   This web presence should exist in *addition* to the resources which
> >   are currently used by the community.
> >
> > It's not clear to me if this effort should be pursued within the
> > existing marketing community in OSGeo, or pursued by some other group
> > already existing within OSGeo. It is clear to me that there has not been
> > a lot of thought put into the current website from the perspective of
> > someone with experience in marketing. This isn't a bad thing,
> > neccesarily, but I think in order for OSGeo to continue to grow, this is
> > going to become more and more of a problem.
> >
> > Clearly, this is not the sole marketing task for OSGeo: materials to be
> > used at conferences should continue to be pursued. However, I think to
> > some extent, OSGeo needs to help projects which help themselves beyond a
> > certain point. OSgeo's job is to act as the starting point for people to
> > get *to* the information they need about a project -- not a place to
> > provide that information. Right now, probably due in part to the level
> > of participation by the projects themselves in the OSGeo community,
> > there is a blurry line here, and I think that's one of the things that
> > should be changed.
> >
> > It's not entirely clear to me whether the OSGeo drupal website that
> > currently exists is important to the community. It's possible it is, and
> > that it could continue to exist in some form. However, I think that it
> > is not sufficient as an executive overview of what OSGeo is, what it
> > does, and what each of its proejcts does from the marketing perspective.
> > It is clear to me that some projects are better at internal marketing
> > that others -- OSGeo should take the first step for each of these
> > projects within its own realm, and encourage projects to do their own
> > work outside of that.
> >
> > We've built a great community. The explosion of local chapters is
> > evidence of that. The desire to become an OSGeo project from projects
> > currently not in incubation is also evidence of that. In order to
> > continue to grow and succeed in supporting our projects, I think it's
> > really time to seriously look at how to market OSGeo as an organization
> > to executives with checkbooks, and I think an improved web presence is a
> > key part of that task.
> >
> > Thank you for your consideration.
> >
> > Best Regards,
> >
>
>
> --
> Prof. Ari Jolma
> Environmental Management Information Technology
> Teknillinen Korkeakoulu / Helsinki University of Technology
> tel: +358 9 4511 address: POBox 5300, 02015 TKK, Finland
> Email: ari.jolma at tkk.fi URL: http://geoinformatics.tkk.fi
>
>
>
>
> ------------------------------
>
> _______________________________________________
> Marketing mailing list
> Marketing at lists.osgeo.org
> http://lists.osgeo.org/mailman/listinfo/marketing
>
>
> End of Marketing Digest, Vol 15, Issue 5
> ****************************************
>



-- 
Researcher @ Osaka City University
Graduate School for Creative Cities
http://gisws.media.osaka-cu.ac.jp/gistrends
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.osgeo.org/pipermail/marketing/attachments/20081208/cc06d48a/attachment-0001.html