Session 13: Site Launch Design and Deliverables

Hi there, welcome to this session of Online Notes – a project for designing and implementing an online system for storing Cryptiquest project notes. The objectives, guidelines, and one tool were established during the last session along with some preliminary ideas for how to tackle the site launch. This session, while focused on deliverables, will delve into designing the launch in order to reveal those deliverables.

(Note to self: I may have to establish different project management procedures based on the type-of-product, since this sub-project follows different steps than the other projects.)

Here are the parameters from the last session:

Goal: Use the creation of the site to find, connect with, and build an audience. 

Objective 1: The site launch campaign will garner at least 20 interactions on Facebook and 3% engagement on Twitter.
Objective 2: The site launch campaign will garner at least 8 new followers on Facebook and 2 new follower on Twitter.
Objective 3: This site launch campaign will bring at least 50 unique visitors to the Cryptiquest Projects site.
Objective 4: The site launch will correspond with the five year anniversary date of January 29, 2019. 

Tool 1: Cryptiquest Project Site Analytics

Guideline 1: Ensure the launch materials are not confusing.
Guideline 2: Ensure the launch materials don’t contain “off switches”.
Guideline 3: Ensure the launch materials protect the property of Cryptiquest, LLC. 

Okay, now I feel comfortable hitting up the methods for this project. I have THREE days to get everything prepared for launch. I should have everything setup and prepared for the 29th launch the day before – with an intention to publish things automatically (since I will be at the day-job and won’t be able to push Cryptiquest buttons).

I need to create a press release, Facebook announcement, Twitter announcement. In addition to those items, the site should have some visitor-friendly spaces: an About page and maybe a welcome message on the home page (right now it is just a listing of posts). Oh, almost forgot about the analytics. I’ll set that up now. Please stand by.

Okay, that took about 8 minutes. I will have to check tomorrow and Monday to see if it’s collecting data but it should be working but it looks like the script is on every page – should be good to go.

What should go on the About Page? I suppose it should start with explaining what this site is, then explain Cryptiquest, then explain Cryptiquest brands. Oh man, that reminds me. I should update the Road Maps on all the sites. They are currently reflecting an outdated strategy.

Let’s take a moment to look at that welcome message – the home page is currently set up to display a grid of posts – there is not option with the theme to add a message to that. I could set the home page to a “page” then probably add a plugin to display the posts in a grid.

Once people come to the site, I should a call-to-action for them to maintain them as contacts. I could have them sign up for the newsletter, but that’s like a monthly Cryptiquest thing. Oh rats. I just realized that I should probably have a social media card at the bottom of each of these posts, directing readers to the specific brand’s accounts. I may be able to automate that somehow. I’ll table the idea for now.

The call-to-action can live inside the welcome message and the About page. I should have the RSS feed available, too. Woah, for the first time, I’m sort of not hating this marketing thing.

For the press release, the focus should be on the launch of the site, not the anniversary. The social media statuses can focus on the anniversary though and they should be festive.

There should be more than one social media posts. The first one announces the anniversary and perhaps alludes to a surprise? That doesn’t seem to work because people see the posts at different times – so they may not see the teaser before the reveal. So then the multiple posts can’t be a linear-based story, then why are there multiple posts? One daily? I could post one every day for three days (Tuesday – Thursday). But what would they be? Should they be cheeky? Perhaps memes about a party? Or should they be classy? Cryptiquest tends to have posts that are “professional”. Without a mascot, it’s difficult to do anything “cute” – the best I’ve been able to come up with is that the brand accounts (Copperwealth, StoryHammer, etc) have my voice and I (as the developer) become the mascot – which is fun for me, admittedly (especially when I complain about the “suits up at corporate”).

So, what if I celebrate the anniversary in an informal way on the “brand” accounts and interact with those accounts via the “company” account? That might work. So, Cryptiquest makes a stodgy celebration announcement, the crazy developer goes rogue and punches things up, and corporate (gently) reprimands the developer? Sounds good. The developer can also lament about being trapped in a lonely workshop with no one to expound his discoveries to – could use that to explain all absence from social media.

How should the developer punch things up? What if he vandalizes the message sent out by Cryptiquest – what if it is a graphic that he hacks? Perhaps I should make the final graphic first then strip it down to basic components for the original message. What would that final image look like? The developer could come back with something like “Come on suits, this is a celebration, not one of your “bored” meetings – let’s get festive!” then he draws balloons, confetti, and a cat in a party hat on the original. Then Cryptiquest claps back with an actual photo of the office party that he wasn’t invited to – balloons, confetti, and an actual cat in a party hat. Could I pull something like that off in three days? With stock photos, yes.

Okay, so here is the list of deliverables based on all of that babbling and the estimated amount of time to complete them:

• About Page (1 hour)
  • Paragraph about the site
    • About
    • RSS Feed
  • Paragraph about Cryptiquest
    • About
    • Newsletter
    • Social Media
  • Paragraph about Brands
    • About
    • Social Media
• Welcome Message (15 minutes)
  • About
  • Call-to-action: RSS Feed?
• Social Media Cards (3 hours)
  • Need to customize the content based on category? Maybe there is a plugin for that?
• Road Maps (2 hours)
  • Cryptiquest site
  • CQ StoryHammer site
• Press Release (1 hour)
  • Announces the site
    • What the site is
    • What the site enables Cryptiquest to do
    • Contact info
• Social Media Messages (9 hours)
  
  • Three images
  • Scripted copy for conversations between corporate and developer

And here are the deliverables prioritized by need:

1. Press Release
2. Social Media Messages
3. Welcome Message
4. About Page
5. Social Media Cards
6. Road Maps

Okay. Phew! That was a lot of new stuff. OH! One more thing. I need to update the All Project Deliverables page to reflect this direction. Currently it has “Marketing Plan”, “Supplemental Materials”, and “Launch!” as its deliverables but it seems to be more like “Site Launch Plan”, “Site Launch Materials”, “Retrospective Launch Plan”, and “Retrospective Materials.” I’ll update that now and during the next session, I’ll draft the Press Release.