This blog post challenge is where me and my coworkers get the opportunity to employ a scrying glass (if we have one on hand) and liberally articulate our views on how the next 12 months should be – how we as a team can make the most of our skills and shared energies.

And luckily, we’re all here together in Vancouver – one of those deep, green, grounded places on the big blue ball that is full of magics.  I am pretty delighted to have the Engagement & Communications Team workweek here, where it gets a little hippy in the good sorts of ways.

Also, now it won’t be surprising if I somehow reference Totem spirits and maybe Bowie somewhere in this thing.

 

Where do you fit in?

I’m a specialist communications operations unit, with a diverse set of skills and a ton of experience that allows me to man the ship alone, or play a strong supporting role in the team.

Essentially, I am a social media satellite, orbiting both the Mozilla Home Planet and also the lunar outpost of Webmaker (currently in the process of being colonized by the early and brave – those who don’t quite need a glossy brochure to envision the shape of the terrain they wish to inhabit). This orbit of mine however, makes for a very sore neck as I strive to keep an eye on all directions in order to capture both the galactic republic and also the shipping news on a daily basis, 24/7/365.

If I should be more concrete about it – I’d tell you this about the work I do for our Comms team. In 2013 I have:

• Published over 4014 individual posts on social media – that equals ten per day, every day
• Earned our four channels almost 179,000 new followers without any paid promotion or advertising
• Doubled our engagement numbers on all channels.
• Researched and reported on the entire Mozilla project in broad terms, as well as the Webmaker project in finite and step-by-step detail
• Supported the community at all possible times by promoting events and engagement opportunities, celebrating stellar efforts among our community, and reaching out for every conversation opportunity I can
• Established the needed solutions, like implementing the G+ Community,  building any and all types of custom content and also managing our library of photos, assets, processes and documentation.
• Reporting out metrics (which I do on a weekly basis for Social Media.)

I also have a background in Google Analytics reporting for websites – and if you accused me of self improvement by sourcing my social links and tracking them to determine efficacy, I’d have to admit that I do that on a regular basis.  The other work I’ve done at Mozilla with BSD data tracking, as well as previous experience with voter contact database integration and email campaign management in NGP VAN makes me well suited to play a support role there if ever needed – as well as someone who understands and respects the process and potential of that channel.

So, in essence, I’d have to call me the Macguyver Totem of the Communications team: I can run around and play a rogue agent and be trusted to hit my marks, but when utilized in either crunch or strategic ways, solo or in group – I can always pull something out of the air using paperclips and bravado.

What can we do better this year?

This year it is crucial to know ourselves and drive hard towards concrete goals that we can measure and evaluate.

I would say that last year we had a challenging time with self-identity. At times, our projects diverged so wildly we weren’t sure the ‘teenaged’ versions of them could all live under the same roof – and it was hard to tell whether our goals and priorities were the same as they were when we first began these growth surges in the Badges, Webmaker, Open News, Games and Ignite spaces. I feel like we likely sacrificed too many opportunities to get real clarity on exactly who and where we wanted to be, and exactly what we wished to bring to each space – and gave that energy instead to building a high level of robustness into the tools.

We also focused on throwing large scale campaigns that sometimes didn’t synch with our main objectives – to drive *our* growth in particular.

For me, fuzzy goals tend to give fuzzy results, and so this year I’d like to use more traditional techniques and tools to enhance our game – looking at market research to help provide strategic direction, heavy user testing, niche identification, community profiling, competitor evaluation, tracking user opinion, and a building a very strong and clear engagement strategy for creating true evangelists for our products.

What should we make sure not to lose?

Working openly, regularly and in group settings keeps us honest – and offers the fastest download of quality groupthink.

One of my favorite things about Mozilla is that we get together and present ideas, break ground immediately, and are always willing to throw our resources – mental and physical – into gear in a social atmosphere. Community meetings, working meetings, and collaborations of all sorts are the breathing heartbeat of our group, and I am always amazed how quickly we are able to brainstorm a solution.

I also enjoy seeing us apply ourselves to the dogfooding process – I really can’t express just how valuable it was to me to learn to use the tools we make, so that I can better understand the needs of the people who are not at all coming from an intellectual place, but a true, functional, face-value place.

I’d say much about our process is worth striving to keep – peer-to-peer contact – in both our work and in what we’re building for others.

What do you most want to get out of the work week?

Ground Control to Major Replica.

I do sometimes feel like the lonely Russian left alone up there in space station orbit – I often have no real idea what’s percolating organization wide. I’d like to tap into Mozilla.Org’s creative calendar – and it very well could be as simple as that to cure some of the ’404' feeling I often get when trying to plan ahead. The Mozilla project is a different animal than much of what we’ll be discussing this week, and has its own audience needs and requirements. I’d very much like to find time to dig into the really awesome growth I’m building in this space and see how far and fast we can push these channels into true Mozillian-grabbing conversion engines of awesomeness.

I also have a sweet spot on the projects I saw grow from tadpoles to dragons, and so I’d like to continue to dig into potential audience leads, rewarding and mutually beneficial tactics for capturing ‘mentor market share’ and working on what it takes to truly onramp, and care and feed the community.

So, let us rock along the weirding way, zipline some fear into our spirits, and hang out at Dude Chilling Park as we work out how best to accomplish it all.

Filed under: Mozilla Tagged: community, Mozilla, social media

http://bosslevel.ca/2014/01/13/work-it-2014/