Session 01: Project Kick-Off

Hey there! Welcome to this inaugural session to kick things off with the Cryptiquest Guide to Marketing where I will assemble a how-to-manual for when to interact with the public and how.

History

This project has its roots in the origination of this website as it was designed to serve as a way to interact with followers in a more timely manner. This was further defined later in the project (session 11) as:

…What it comes down to is a need to find and connect to an audience. And while that sounds like a typical business need, it’s more than that. What I need is to connect to an audience. Having an audience makes all of this stuff worth while. Without an audience, I might as well just keep this all of these projects in my head.

So, that’s the need: find, connect with, (let’s throw build in there, too) an audience. So if that is the need, what is the problem? The problem is that due to the size of my projects and the small amount of time I have to work on them – content publication is too infrequent. The majority of work is done through notes, one session at a time. The solution, then, is to increase the frequency of publications by utilizing the work I’m doing anyway -the notes, the project planning.

-from Online Notes, Session 11: Launch Plan Goal

But this has evolved from a “I, Luke Reynolds, need to connect with an audience” to something more like Cryptiquest needs to connect with an audience in order to fulfill its vision: to responsibly unlock and inspire creators of any and every identity. If I cannot reach out to an audience, then I cannot connect with them, thus also meaning I won’t be able to unlock or inspire them. Reaching an audience, therefore, is imperative to the vision.

I think I have all I need to make the Need and Goal:

Need: To find, connect with, and build an audience.

And here is the proposed Goal:

Goal: To create a strategy for finding, connecting with, and building an audience.

Ah. But is this the entirety? Other needs I have are branding, newsletters vs. social media posts vs. forum posts vs. articles, etc. I suppose all of those are covered in the goal.

Who is the intended audience for this guide? This seems more of an internal strategy guide rather than something to help unlock or inspire creators (from Cryptiquest’s vision statement). That doesn’t mean others couldn’t benefit from it but I don’t see this as being part of the project management documentation (or is it?).

I think I should consider this to be more internal but abstracted for others to use and I can rebrand it in the future if it seems appropriate to do so. However, this document should still follow the “Tool” values of the Mission Statement: Obtainable, Refinable, and Useful:

Here is an attempt at concocting the objectives:

Objective 1: The document must explain when and how to use communication methods.
Objective 2: The document must outline ways to find, build, and maintain audiences.
Objective 3: The document must be abstracted so it can apply to any creator.
Objective 4: The document must be freely available for any would-be creators.
Objective 5: The document must be open to refinement based on feedback from users in order to increase tool effectiveness.
Objective 6: The document must be engineered for ease of use by the novice creator.

Some of these seem to have subjective measures so I want suss out how they can be objectively measured:

For objective 1 (The document must explain when and how to use communication methods) there will need to be a list of each type of communication method so as to ensure the list has been explained for when and how to use.

For objective 2 (The document must outline ways to find, build, and maintain audiences ) this will be a three-way check box to test to see if the document covers the three actions: find, build, maintain.

For objective 3 (The document must be abstracted so it can apply to any creator) this is a Boolean check as it either the document meets this condition or it does not.

For objective 4 (The document must be freely available for any would-be creators), this is a simple Boolean check since it will be either available online or it won’t.

For objective 5 (The document must be open to refinement based on feedback from users in order to increase tool effectiveness) the measurement is a simple Boolean check since it will either be versioned or not.

Objective 6 (The document must be engineered for ease of use by the novice creator) is a doozy. I’m not sure how to measure this without using a survey and/or having a test group. This is also an objective that may shift by region, age group, etc. which is important to to note as the vision statement clearly says “any and every identity” (lofty goal, but one worth working toward).

I may need to identify realistic targets regarding audience reach vs. logistical limitations. Once I determine these thresholds I can better measure this objective.

Actually, I probably need to create definitions, target goals, and limitation lists for each aspect of the value, mission, and vision statements.

I think that’s a good start. Looks like I have some other projects to tackle before I can do this one though.

Action Items

1. Need to create a list of communication methods (can be a deliverable of this project since the need / goal / objectives are straight forward).
2. Need to create a new project to define each aspect of the value, mission, and vision statements (including audience reach vs. logistical limitations matrix).
3. Add deliverables session for this project to All Projects Deliverables table.

It looks like there is one other big project to do before I can tackle this one. So I will work on the statement definitions and logistic limitations then come back to this project.