[quote author=hodl link=topic=60.msg1135#msg1135 date=1394278060]
afaik matt is working now fulltime for the project without taking money, but he understands his job more like a public relations than marketing?
do you plan to hire a second person for marketing?
[/quote]
Matt has indeed decided not take to take any pay, and, while I cannot speak for him, I believe he does understand his job more to be something more in the vein of public relations than marketing.
We are not planning on hiring a second person for marketing, but if there was anything you wanted to discuss please feel free to PM me.
There seems to be a pretty big disconnect between what alt-coin devs think is important about their project, and what the general public thinks is important, not just with CounterParty but with almost all of the coins I have been researching. It makes sense of course, since all of these coins and apps are being built by devs, the project website comes across looking very “devy” for lack of a better term. Instead, what it should look like is something a lot more user friendly and simple - a lot more “Facebooky”.
As a marketing guy, with no programming skills, but decent overall computer skills, I have been pretty amazed at how difficult it is to learn about any particular alt-coin. Most of the coins do a horrible job (in my opinion) of presenting user friendly information to help greet new users. For example, when I send reference links about new coins to my Dad, a guy who is pretty bright and generally computer literate, he is unable to figure out
A) How To Buy This Coin
B) Why He Would Want to Buy This Coin
C) What He Can Do With This Coin
And if the answers to the above questions are on the coin website somewhere, they are either written in very techy language, they are buried 200 threads deep in a forum, and/or there are no video tutorials explaining what to do. If answers to the above three questions cannot be found in 10 seconds and learned in under two minutes, you have lost 90% of everyone.
In some cases, it has taken me literally hours to thumb through forums to figure out what any particular coin is all about, how to acquire those coins, and even then I am never sure if my wallet could be hacked or if I am doing everything right. Most people will never spend that much time figuring something out. Forums might be a great tool for circulating ideas, but it is not a useful tool for educating the general public about a specific coin.
A much better approach would be a one page intro for newbies that lists the features and benefits of CounterParty followed by a step by step or video tutorial showing them how to get it and use it. Look at any well done commercial website and most of them provide a quick intro video and easy to understand bullet points about why a user should spend time or money on that business.
Especially when it comes to money, people don’t put money into things they don’t understand and most of the coin websites do a very poor job of explaining things that a five year old, or a grandmother could understand. Even if the eventual users are going to be fairly computer saavy, you should never assume this, and no matter who you are, getting a quick and easy intro to something new is extremely helpful. This is not a criticism of the CounterParty team, it is just an observation I see over and over again. I realize the devs are doing what they do best, developing, so this is why marketing and user-friendly info is somewhat of a chronic issue across the cryto marketspace. Let me know if I can be of any help in this regard.
+1000
the same holds true for branding: all coins including bitcoin excluding doge suffer branding. ask 100 bitcoiners what bitcoin is and what is bitcoin for and what the advantages are and you get 90 answers - do the same with doge…(doge is probably a special case due to its meme culture)
in my opinion branding and marketing needs to be professionalized - in the logo thread were some guys who seemed to understand what they are talking about. there should be a focus after the web wallet is released.
I’m no branding or marketing guy and therefore do not understand the business properly - but it is evident that it is lacking in general.
this crique holds true for several altcoins not only counterparty.
matt started a kind of public relations, which is aiming in the right direction as well as halfcabs instructions and hopefully his forthcoiming videos - but we neeeeeeed professionalized branding and marketing, which should be super simple with a protocol which has on a theoretical level regarding distribution, functionality and innovation almost no leaks
I hope to join the Marketing initiative by maintaining a YouTube channel for which I and others may be responsible for video marketing and high-quality tutorials and explanations. I would very much like to one day be involved with the talks which take place at various Bitcoin expos where you see the likes of David Johnston (Mastercoin) Vtalik Buterin (Ethereum) Invictus , NXT and other (2.0 style) initiatives!