Marketing at a Managed WordPress Host

So it's been, it's been really wonderful to get initiated into the WordPress community. And people at the company joked, they're like, I can't believe you're going to WordPress at like month one. And I was like, please. I was like, This is so great to be just dropped into the community and I think being Being connected with Jess Frick who's our head of product.

She's like the queen I was like, I'm like she's the queen of WordCamp like she knows everybody so she was walking around like introducing me It was such a great welcome to The WordPress community and to Pressable and being able and like being forced to sort of Stand by a booth and talk about your product on month one being like talk about the education Factor going from like zero to sixty Or normally you have some ramp up time to really like dive into your product learn what it does I didn't

have it. I was like studying For word camp, but i'm so glad that it happened that way. Sure.

and I'll just give you a second to think about that because to set the stage, I talked to a lot of marketers who come, into the space, they end up in marketing, but maybe their previous background was, I don't know, art and theater, right? how all of that stuff plays well into actual marketing roles. So have you always been in marketing and what's your key specialty?

I was looking at roles in graphic design I was looking at all different types of roles and just by chance Wix which was in Itty bitty company at the time. it was in 2010 and they had recently started their New York office I think it was still on flash just to date us back there. It wasn't yet like that's where Wix started So I was brought in And was kind of able to like define my role as the years went on And ended up in More of like a community role that was on the marketing team.

Sometimes it wasn't on the marketing team. And from there it kind of led to doing all sorts of marketing activities because I was doing a lot of events. I was promoting them and like paid app, paid social became a thing. And as people were asking questions about SEO, and I was really drawn to all of these areas. And I ended up going back to business school.

Into realize like content marketing was a place where I could be really creative and Really drive the strategy and success of an, of an organization. And so that's really what led me to marketing was this idea that I can still be creative and be analytical at the same time. and so that's, so I've always been from then on, I've mostly been in content focused roles. Always been on fairly small teams. So having.

You know one person under me on a content team and leading that and Was thankfully given the opportunity to Make really big changes and do really creative things.

I had really understanding ceos and Which is I I has not always been the case And I know that's really lucky to have a leader You Of the company that understands marketing and sees the value of content marketing specifically and then was approached middle of last year by pressable and the role just seemed like my dream role in every aspect and it is i'm so glad that it worked out and it has proven to be as An amazing of an opportunity and place to work as I ever imagined. So I'm really grateful

They can certainly learn web design. That's probably like the de facto route that a lot of folks go, or they could learn like how to be a developer, right? Unpack WordPress, learn JavaScript, learn PHP, HTML, but then there's the whole end user side of it, which is writing blogs, becoming a marketer, becoming a writer, becoming an air quotes webmaster. these are.

tools and talents and resources that are almost byproducts of WordPress and I would like, this is more of just like a grandstanding moment, not a direct question, but your thoughts, I would like to see more people teaching WordPress outside of like the web design aspect of it, right. Or that build a website, build an e commerce platform. Business for it because as a, like you, as a marketer, WordPress probably became a tool at first was like, Oh my God, how do I use this thing?

To how, where has this been all my life as a content marketer, making my life easier, might be a little struggle, a little uphill battle in the beginning to like learn all this stuff, but once you learn it and you realize how, creative you can be with it, how flexible WordPress is. It can become a real benefit to just knowing it and using word WordPress to get that next job to, to, unlock this new talent. what are your thoughts on how WordPress can, enable people to earn a living?

And it's one of those things and those skills that if something breaks, you know how to fix it, you know how to optimize it, you know how, you know, when you're, when you're Yoast plugin is telling you X, Y, and Z, you're like, hmm. Yes and no and you realize like especially, you know, thinking I'm going to bring up AI now that AI is a thing, right?

Every AI tool is giving you suggestions and you're having to to figure out, well, I'm the person and so I have the knowledge and I know how to make the right choices and I don't have to rely on this robot to tell me this is the right decision and that's the wrong decision, where if you didn't have that WordPress knowledge, you would be a little intimidated by all of these tools and suggestions.

I honestly think the WordPress backend and the, the platform and the user experience is not that scary. And I've used several other CMSs in my career, and at some point, I was like, can't we just use WordPress? Like, let's just call Spade a Spade and it's back, it's just back.

And he's, you know, he said to me, and it was like very early on when I was starting and he's like, no, no, we'll, we'll want to fix it. We'll fix it. Don't worry. It's not going to break. Cause it's a website and you can fix it. And it's okay, right? Like, you can't be afraid to break things to try and get them the way that you want it to be.

Under attack by, things like AI that are, you, I've been using AI to build these little ad hoc, a little bespoke, little ad hoc apps that I'm making things I could never do two years ago, right? Things I could never do, certainly not 20 years ago. And I'm looking at AI as. The page builder for software these days, just like we have Elementor, we have Gutenberg, we have beaver builder Divi. We have these tools to help us build on top of WordPress and do things within WordPress.

I'm looking at AI going, damn, it's like. AI is the elementor for any software that I can build. I'm not saying it's a good thing. I'm not saying it's the right thing. But I also, like, I look at us versus, or WordPress versus the world of AI and software development and how much WordPress is going to be impacted by that. and I'm curious, like your thoughts as a marketer. cause we won't have to talk about like building websites, but is AI part of your daily routine? How are you leveraging it?

I'm leveraging it in certain ways. are you worried at all about AI and WordPress? what's your take on this crazy, timeline that we're in?

There's just so much, but with that also, I'll say, comes an expectation to produce more faster with fewer resources. Because I have this little buddy next to me, helping me brainstorm ideas, helping me decide on word choice, and help, you know, just helping me formulate my thoughts faster and better. At the end of the day, the You know, you can't just go in and say, chat, GPT, go write me this article. It's never going to be good enough, but you can say, Hey, I want to write an article on this.

These are the keywords that I want to hit. Is there, can you help me figure out what's the right way to approach this? And, you know, help me like I use it as. Just really like an assistant. It is exactly what it was really meant to be. and just help me make those choices and help me make those decisions faster.

And that allows me to get the right, to make the right decisions and to get the right content out there faster for marketing, whether it's ads, whether it's, a drip campaign, whether it's a customer case study, whether it's an ebook, right? All of these. All of these strategic writing pieces are just enhanced. And from the WordPress perspective, and being able to like, it code for you. Like, yes, I'm sure it can. Is it as good as someone doing it by themselves? I don't know.

A smart developer working with AI is going to create amazing things.

is it the same piece of content that a thousand of us marketers are regurgitating all the time? I, I don't have the answers for that, but the point is, I see the same concepts happening. we're not the same concept of the same output. If I just vaguely ask it to write me something, it produces a vaguely written piece of content. If I vaguely ask it to code me something, it vaguely codes something for me. I think it's much more exciting to see it code something.

Cause you're like, Oh my God, I could never do that. Right. And that is the amazing part on the coding side. but on the creative side, It still needs a lot of work. And here's a question. I think we'll see a premium of human written content or human created content in the future. Do you have any insights into like maybe how automatic thinks about the human side of content that you're outputting experiences in, one on one conversations?

Like, what are your thoughts on like the value of human generated content, which is pretty amazing. Wildly crazy to even say, but like human generated content versus AI content. Do you have like this delineation point where you can see one is more valuable than the other?

Maybe as AI gets more advanced, It will have to update and become more advanced and we're just one upping each other Every single time right like I joke i'm like i've been in the marketing game so long that I remember when you could just put white text over a white background and call that seo and like every time We, humans, figure out a hack, Google's gonna figure out, Oh, this is a hack, and we're gonna try and find that content.

So, that's where I see it, is that, You're always going, the human is always going to be able to do it better, have a unique perspective that AI is not gonna have. Now, for more transactional things, does it matter? I don't know.

Like if I just need if I'm starting a new e commerce company and I just need Ai to write me the thanks for You know, thanks for buying this email and whatever comes after that those super transactional Emails that require no creativity and just you have to send it with the order number and this and that like Yeah, don't think too hard just have ai do that for you But if you're trying to actually create something of value You For other people you need a person you just do

there's, a lot of importance behind open source software, what's happening to WordPress, hosting companies, tech companies, et cetera. But there's not a lot of news coverage. I say that sort of tongue in cheek with a lot of the stuff happening, these days. yes, some bigger news outlets are covering WordPress these days. but on the boring years of WordPress, those outlets aren't here. It's just me. And, a few other people in the WordPress space who cover this stuff.

And the point that I'm getting to is for niche news or pockets of news, not just WordPress, but other important areas, whether that's like community news, you're in another industry that doesn't get covered a lot from, big media, AI is going to be that thing that just replaces people covering that sector, right? and especially for WordPress. There's so many people that have WordPress newsletters that sort of air quotes compete with the WP minute, or that maybe I compete with that.

I think what will happen is people be like, you know what, just give me my AI bot, come over here, give me my weekly update. I don't need to listen to Matt anymore. And what I'm doing is forecasting my own demise with AI, but I think that's going to, I think that's, what's going to happen is the first to fall are going to be like the headline things. Right. Give me the market report through AI. Just no other cruff, just what's the report, right?

what is the hap, what's the headline and summarize it in two sentences for me. And I think that. I already see it with AI doing that in some pockets of news. humans already do it where they're just like, I'm going to have my own newsletter and here's the 10, here's the same 10 links that we all send out to our newsletters, specifically in the WordPress space that humans are almost ruining that their own experience that way. And people are going to need to dig deeper.

and maybe that's the essence of this whole AI thing is. If you're in the creative space and you're in the marketing space, specifically if you're in the WordPress space, you're going to have to dig deeper and do and roll up your sleeves and do better work, to compete against the generalist AI bot that everyone will have. and maybe that's the lesson for all of us here, through what we said is dig deeper, roll up your sleeves and do better work as a marketer and as a creative.

Any thoughts on that?

And so from a marketing perspective, you have to speak differently and almost, you have to speak more, more human like, and you have to have a unique perspective because someone's going to go into their AI and ask for today's report on WordPress.

And if you're not saying something that is unique and relatable, Then it's not gonna pull it up because it's not gonna see it as something important because it's gonna say Oh, here's ten things saying it the same ten ways and it's gonna be like, what is this? they're gonna put one thing but if there's something unique you're gonna you're gonna come up in that and one thing from like in the marketing world, we all see AI as a media source, almost.

Like, it's just as important to think about how people are speaking to AI, how someone's, oh, okay, she's muted, how people are going to ask Alexa a question. We think about that from a marketing perspective, and if that's not gonna, if you're not answering that question in the way it's being asked, It doesn't matter. And so from AI is just the next thing that's pushing humans further to be more creative and to be, and like I said, like to dig deeper and do better.

And that's just going to be It's just the next thing that's pushing us there. Are we doing great as a human race? I don't know. But, it's always, it's definitely debatable. but from a commerce perspective and from, you know, from the internet perspective, there's so much to be done and there's so much to be said and there's so much to learn.

And I always think about like the last company I worked for was a customer education platform And I've never drank the kool aid so hard and to think that it's so important to educate your customers and In the same way, it's so important to make sure that you're hitting every single area and aspect of what your customers could possibly be thinking about. And even from the Pressable perspective, we're now, we're now, Putting together some time in the near future.

I'll let you know, when we're we are working on a really easy digestible way to be a bigger part of the wordpress conversation, but not just wordpress specifically, but wordpress is the internet. Right. And so thinking about people who are interested in wordpress or want to learn wordpress are interested in all aspects of the internet. Right. And so you can't just have this really narrow conversation. You can, but you're going to run out of things to talk about pretty quickly.

You have to think about it as the internet as a whole and how people interact with it and where that's leading in the future.

what's your thoughts on like being the startup within the startup? I don't want to say underdog, but I don't know if you feel that way, but, what's your thoughts on startup within the startup?

so we do have to prove ourselves in some way, but I will say that we're, we really focus on Quality. Pressable is a quality host. We do not accept subpar. Because then why are we even here? Because our competitors can do it better. If we're not even trying, if we're just trying to be similar to them, then what's the point of even doing all of this? We have a better product. That's why we're doing all of this. We're going to take better care of your website.

We're going to take better care of your customers. And from the, you know, from the community aspect, being a startup is just almost makes things easier. I don't have to ask 10 people and get the approval of 10 people to make every decision I need to make. I've worked in larger organizations. There's a lot of red tape sometimes. You just, the freedom and the fluidity that the entire Pressable team has to own what they're doing. And make that decision.

You can inform some people, but for the most part, our team is built of really intelligent, hardworking, motivated people who know what they're doing, because we don't have the luxury of having somebody on our team doesn't cut it. And so when you're, even when you're like one of the things Pressful is so proud of is our level of support, because we don't have the luxury of having someone on our support team that can't. Figure it out themselves.

And as the company grows, we're not lowering that bar. We're not all of a sudden going to hire somebody who's like, not as good keeping that bar where it is. And so what's going to happen over the years is just the people at Pressful are just going to be getting better and better. And the product can only go up from here. And every bit of feedback we take with care and consideration and Figure out how to improve the experience.

And because we have that agility, we can say we like our product roadmap is our product roadmap. But if someone says, this is why I'm, I'm not happy with whatever's going on, or I think you could do this better. Even for example, I, when I joined the company, I was moving my one of my husband's company's websites over to pressable because well, why not have the best? and I was like, analyzing the experience as I was going through it and made notes and I was like, this is where I got stuck.

This is what could be better. And I'm clearly like the not techie person. So from the pressable family, like a lot of people that we deal with are very technical, but there's tons of people like me who aren't all that technical that moving a website from host to nerve wracking and can affect business. And To be able to fix those, even those tiny little gaps to make it a better experience is something that our team is like profoundly aware of and able to make those adjustments quickly.

let alone like, Want to have in a control panel, but they, I require like some of like the reporting, the analytics, God, one of my favorite things is I could just change the admin password, right there, in the dashboard, which is like a no brainer, for, that a lot of hosting companies are still lacking in, agency is still the best fit or has that grown a little bit, over the last, I don't know, year or so.

And because of all of those things that you said, we think about what somebody who's managing multiple sites, not just requires. But what makes the experience better and what makes it just easier for them to get through the day to day Whether it's, you know scheduling plug in updates with a click of a button like you just have to be like, yes, I want that and you can customize your schedule Right.

It's so easy, especially like okay, so i'm thinking about oh, I have one website I can just go in and do it whenever it makes sense for me. But if you're managing 10, 20, 50, 100, 2000 websites. You need something that's thinking for you and taking a lot of that pressure off. You can, everything that you need to do is customizable and makes it easy to have that experience.

But, they're, you know, that's I think the thing that I'm most excited about is because that's one area where like we don't have a ton of video going on because we, we have an amazing knowledge base. We have an incredibly deep blog. And that's just the next place to go.

And especially with video being so important for SEO with video, just being how people are interacting with the world these days, like I'm just going to get up on a camera and go like this and say, you know, say what I was going to say instead of typing it in into a post, it just makes it.

More relatable and when I started out in video, I remember being like, Oh, this has to look super polished and realizing like, I think as Tick Tock and, you know, maybe rest in peace, who knows, the You know, and all of the other platforms and reels are just becoming, like, a little overwhelming. The, the quality doesn't have to be there of the video itself. I think the audio has to be spot on, and I think that the content has to be spot on.

And you cannot, going back to AI, you cannot just ask ChatGBT to write your script for you. Because you have to have a unique perspective. Because if you don't have that, there's 45 other people saying the same thing on the same day. What, why are they going to watch your video or read your blog? And so there's so much that's going to happen and this year we're growing the marketing team. We've got a ton of things on the horizon from a product perspective that I dare not speak about. Jassims.

I will not. but, there, I'm really excited about everything that Pressbowl is doing this year.