Proposed Marketing Plan - Dec 23 Update


**** Update Dec 23 ****

Please bring your attention to this thread:

If you aren’t able to post and want to contribute, please drop me a PM.
[b]

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I was talking with Sunny on here and agreed to help put together some ideas around a ppc/xpm marketing strategy. Although I’m a network engineer/vCIO by trade, I’ve had quite a bit of experience with large scale IT marketing initiatives at different companies since the 90s. I’m more than happy to offer suggestions, if you find something useful, by all means run with it.

In the crypto community, I was fortunate enough to meet up with a few members from Feathercoin and helped put together a strong grassroots type community. Feather has some amazing people that really spent time making it work, I feel honored that I was invited to the party. I put my side Cisco training business on hold to work on Feather for 4 months. As soon as someone was willing to take my spot, I was more than happy to go back to my business. ChrisJ over at Feather is doing a wonderful job expanding what we started back in April.

Now with things settling down in my business again, I’m ready to jump back in with PPC/XPM. I’m here to assist as you need me.

*** Marketing Plan ***

This forum has done such a tremendous job with ppc/xpm awareness, kudos to you all! Throughout the day I’ll update this post as time permits.

1. Surveys – Gathering Support from Ppcointalk Forum

Full explanation here:
http://www.ppcointalk.org/index.php?topic=278.msg4722#msg4722

MeBeingAwesome is assuming responsibility for this task:
http://www.ppcointalk.org/index.php?topic=278.msg4738#msg4738

Notes:

(1) Surveys from members not only identifies the areas of interests from the ppcointalk members, but also outlines the days/hours they can spend on projects.

(2) There are so many areas outside of development that would be useful to pushing PPC/XPM forward

(3) Once the survey outline is complete, let’s get the word out (other forums, email ALL existing forum members, troll/chatboxes etc…)

(4) When a good sampling of surveys are complete, as a community, we can start figuring out what people want to work on to help push the initiatives forward.

(5) See Item 2

2. Categories

Once we identify who would like to participate, it’s now time to figure out what roles everyone wants to grab. As you can see below, you don’t have to be a developer to have a major impact on the community. There’s something for everyone that wants to participate.

    [b]a. Swarm Leader[/b]

    I have to admit, this was one of my favorite items that we implemented. Ever wonder why whenever news came up about Feathercoin, there were 30 of us commenting? :)   Here's the idea of the swarm team:

    (1) Anyone that wants to participate, simply leaves their username, email, IM (if available) and availability
    (2) The swarm leader makes a google doc with all the participants
    (3) When a major action item occurs (example: We need everyone to contact x exchange to add FTC), I would send out the swarm email.
    (4) All participants would update the google doc once the task was complete

Here’s my original post on it:

"I’m sending out PMs to our most active members concerning the swarm teams. Essentially, when something major comes up, we’ll have a list of people ready to respond to it immediately.

Example: “JoeMerchant is considering adding Feathercoin. We ask our swarm to write them an email talking about the benefits of Feathercoin”

Little action items that we can coordinate fairly quickly on a moments notice. I’ve talked to Bush about the idea, he was on board. With time being limited, I want to help assist on making the most impact possible. Swarms is what got us noticed, swarms will help us hit another level.

If you receive the PM, please respond back either way. Thank you."

    [b]b. Forum/Chatbox Associates[/b]

    It's important we not only keep tabs on all the major forums/chatboxes for PPC/XPM misinformation, but also use the opportunity to pass on good news about the coins.

            i.	Bitcointalk associate
      
     This team spent time in the alt currencies section of Bitcointalk daily.  Correcting misinformation about the coin, posting positive news developments and also alerting other forum members when there was a problem. For example, if there was heavy trolling on PPC in a topic, this would be a great opportunity to issue a SWARM (2-A) request to assist.

           ii.	Altcoin Forums associate

    This team handled all the smaller altcoin forums (same idea as the Bitcointalk associate)

          iii.	BTC-e trollbox associate

     This team monitored trollbox. Wantrepenuer and Spekk do a great job keeping the PPC information flowing, it would be nice to see that team increase.

          iv.	Cryptsy/MCXNow associate

    Same as above with the smaller exchanges.


   [b]c. Art[/b]

Having an art team on hand is invaluable. Whether it’s a new graphic for a webpage, a flyer to promote the coin or helping another team member spruce up an app, the artists really help round out the positions. Crypto communities often have very talented creative types that would love to contribute but don’t know where to start since they’re not a developer.

   [b]d. Video Production[/b]

(Note: I copied #5 to add further clarification to the video production role)

This team is critical to help reaching out to the masses:

Feathercoin created a great human interest piece around the coin:

Would love to see something similar for PPC/XPM

What is Feathercoin:

I was the one responsible for coordinating the talent for that video. A few friends and I developed the script and storyboard and then we hired some outside talent (under $100) to do the animation and voice-over.

I also created a few myth buster videos (low quality, good info) at:
http://feathercoinmyths.com/

  [b] e. Music[/b]

The musicians will often work with the Art and Video production teams. When I was with Feather, I had a few fun jingles created to help spread the word.

   f. Organizers
         i.	Consensus	
         ii.	Projects

   g. Developers
         i.	Web
         ii.	Wallet
        iii.	Apps

  h. Writers

 [b]  i. Public Relations
        i.	Search Engine[/b]

   This role would spend time googling 'Bitcoin', 'Bitcoin News', 'Litecoin'. Anywhere that Bitcoin/Litecoin appears, this person also requests PPC/XPM be added as well.  If it's a news article on Bitcoin or Litecoin, this role would notify the swarm organizer and the PR department.

     [b]  ii. PR List[/b]

    I already have a massive PR listed created. This role would continue to develop the list as well as send out news items supporting PPC/XPM.

      iii.	Writer Liaison
      iv.	Articles/Interviews
       v.	Myth Busters

 [b]j. New Member Advocate[/b]

     This person was responsible for welcoming new members to the forum. They let new members know they would be available to direct them to resources if they had any questions. If a forum member didn't log on for x amount of time, the new member advocate would drop them a quick email.  If they were logging in and not posting, the new member advocate would ask they could be of any assistance.  Fantastic role.


[b]k. Research[/b]

     Every morning when I logged into the Feather forum, the research team had a summary of what was happening in the crypto world. This position basically scoured the crypto community looking for nuggets I needed to be aware of that affecting Feathercoin in some way.  Here's a few examples:
  • Whenever Feathercoin was talked about in a negative light, I had the links ready for the swarm team

  • When Litecoin was updating the client

  • New feature proposals from different coin communities
    etc…

    l. Social Media
    i. Twitter
    ii. Facebook

    m. Miner/Exchange Support

    n. Contests/Giveaways

    o. Tutorials

    p. Merchant Services

3. Website

http://www.ppcointalk.org/index.php?topic=553.msg4707#msg4707

4. Wiki


5. Video

Feathercoin created a great human interest piece around the coin:

Would love to see something similar for PPC/XPM

What is Feathercoin:

I was the one responsible for coordinating the talent for that video. A few friends and I developed the script and storyboard and then we hired some outside talent (under $100) to do the animation and voice-over. If you need those resources, let me know

PPC/XPM Video Progress:
http://www.ppcointalk.org/index.php?topic=544.0

6. AMA

  • Sunny said he would be interested, however, would need 2-3 other enthusiasts to assist

  • The forum recommended we do this after the new wiki and webpage was complete

http://www.ppcointalk.org/index.php?topic=565.0

7. Local PPC/XPM

This a project I was ** NOT ** involved with at Feather, however, it’s something we should seriously consider over here:
http://local.feathercoin.com/

Introduction and item #1 complete. Updated the #4 Wiki based on Nox’s response.

Happy to help with this.

I’ve started on item #4 at http://peercoin.net - Just thrown a wiki up for now.

[quote=“nox-, post:3, topic:421”]Happy to help with this.

I’ve started on item #4 at http://peercoin.net - Just thrown a wiki up for now.[/quote]

Thank you Nox. Updated 4 - 7.

[quote=“nox-, post:3, topic:421”]Happy to help with this.

I’ve started on item #4 at http://peercoin.net - Just thrown a wiki up for now.[/quote]

Nice!

Great to see an organized strategy in development.

Looking forward to devoting all efforts to PPC + XPM.

wantrepreneur
info@coinCanada.net

Alright, finished as much as I could this afternoon between meetings and lunch. I’ll tackle a little more tonight or tomorrow afternoon.

i would suggest hanging out on #ppcoin-dev to all people wanting to develop ppcoin , right now there are just a few idlers, but i think IRC is really useful if people actually start using it, and it seems there is going be some interesting small projects, and the bigger ones (like peershare)
so, all the skilled motivated people, join #ppcoin-dev (on freenode) !

Beauty. Just to confirm, I’m beginning work on a survey. I will also be looking into proposing a hypothetical volunteer org design to help streamline our efforts at getting everyone engaged as part of the survey process.

Request to sticky. With all the feedback that’s bound to come in, I figure this will be a central document to hash out marketing plans.

thread is now sticky… really nice work :slight_smile:

FuzzyBear

If you haven’t filled out the volunteer survey (noted as item 1 in the marketing plan), please do so here:

http://www.ppcointalk.org/index.php?topic=572.0

I believe that 2D and 5 are replicas.

Good spot! #5 was a requested action while #2D was a role. I copied the #5 to help clarify the position… I’ll fix it right now.

May I suggest to persuade a pizza shop or a chinese takeaway to accept PPC? Please correct me if I’m wrong, but I think if you can spend a currency that could greatly improve its notoriety and acceptance :). I know this is very earth-bound but maybe it worth to give a try :).

Sorry but I think that we should first try to avoid confusion ! Can you spell H-A-R-M-O-N-I-Z-A-T-I-O-N ?

Shouldn’t we agree on the correct naming of the coin ? and enforce it ?
Unfortunately I continue to find different names for our coin… I’m a bit tired of reading: X “also known as” Y or Z …

Is it :

  1. Peercoin ? or maybe :
  2. PeerCoin ?
  3. PPCoin ?
  4. PPcoin ?
  5. ppcoin ?
  6. Peer-to-Peer Coin ?
    Etc…

I don’t see the same confusion for Bitcoin or Litecoin (!!) or any other of the cryptocoins for that matter…

People, the first rule in marketing is branding… you need 1 brand name, and stick to it, not several names !

Don’t make it so hard for the average Joe ! :o

Yes indeed, PPCoin and KKCoin aren’t exactly good names for a cryptocurrency :stuck_out_tongue:

PS: I’m not confused myself, I just don’t want the average Joe to be confused… we have Bitcoin, Litecoin and Peercoin :wink:

Keep in mind, it’s simply a numbers issue. Agreed about the consistent name for branding, however, with a handful of people going a mile a minute, some things are going to slip. If someone would like to lead the charge on the branding and basically own that area, let us know, the help would be greatly appreciated.

hi, i’m new to here and new to peercoin but i though it might be worth putting in some thoughts, as maybe an outsider perspective might be useful… these have been my first thoughts on marketing/peercoin:

[ul][li]more should be made of making money just by holding it[/li]
[li]get rid of crypto sex toys advert on main forum - i think that it cheapens the whole peercoin brand to have any advertising, but especially advertising for Crypto Sex Toys[/li]
[li]change all references of ppcoin to peercoin, ie change website address[/li]
[li]make contact details more accessible… is there an official peercoin twitter - that should be on the main landing page…[/li]
[li]the logo and website landing page look very good[/li]
[li]education is the way forward… a lot of great projects flounder due to lack of good and clear documentation… digitalocean (server services), for example, has been successful as it rewards people for making tutorials and writing articles. these then come up in search requests and increase visibility[/li][/ul]

that’s it for now… all the best

Fantastic ideas, now we need the man-power to actually do it. Who wants to lead this project?