Post Status Podcasts

What's it like to enter this WordPress community media space, especially as the editor of a publication with many voices, personalities, and perspectives?
My friend and dialogue partner, Nyasha Green, is six months into her role as Editorial Director at MasterWP, so today we're talking about what that's been like for Ny, what she's learned, and how we look at the WordPress media space we both work in.
Unsurprisingly we talk about conflict, communication, personality, and the importance of in-person events. That brings up WCUS — a first for both of us — where we'll meet each other and a lot of people we've only known remotely. It also sounds like I might get roped into a karaoke duet. (Not if I can help it!)

👋 Your Hosts

• Dan Knauss, Editor for Post Status (Twitter)
• Nyasha Green, Editorial Director at MasterWP (Twitter)
• Olivia Bisset, Web Producer intern for Post Status (Twitter)

🙏 Sponsor: Elementor

Elementor enables web creators to build professional, pixel-perfect websites with an intuitive visual builder. Quickly create amazing websites for your clients or your business with complete control over every piece, without writing a single line of code. Join a vast community of web creators from all around the world who deliver exceptional websites using Elementor.

Every week Post Status Excerpt will bring you a conversation about important news and issues in the WordPress community and business ecosystem. 🎙️
You can listen to past episodes of The Excerpt, browse all our podcasts, and don’t forget to subscribe on Spotify, Amazon Music, Google Podcasts, iTunes, Castro, YouTube, Stitcher, Player.fm, Pocket Casts, Simplecast, or by RSS. 🎧

Laura is the Marketing Manager at MailPoet — a popular email marketing plugin for WordPress. She’s been working in the WordPress space for the past eight years, with experience in both agency and in-house marketing teams.

🙏 Sponsor: Gravity Forms

Gravity Forms is a powerful form builder for WordPress and the #1 choice for businesses and web professionals across the globe. Its vast array of features, intuitive drag-and-drop form editor, and extensive ecosystem of add-ons, ensure customers can design beautiful, intelligent, and accessible forms for any project requirement.

🔗 Mentioned in the show:

• Cory Miller (Twitter)
• Laura Nelson (Twitter)
• Post Status (Twitter)

The Post Status Draft podcast is geared toward WordPress professionals, with interviews, news, and deep analysis. 📝
Browse our archives, and don’t forget to subscribe via iTunes, Google Podcasts, YouTube, Stitcher, Simplecast, or RSS. 🎧

In this episode, Corey Maass and Cory Miller discuss the origin of the WordPress product they are creating. Together they explore the benefits of partnership, the challenges of being a creator, and what it takes to build viable solutions. This is only the beginning of their process and partnership, but it’s loaded with experience and insight from the journeys they have had within WordPress that brought them to this moment, as well as takeaways they’ve discovered with their new undertaking.

Top Takeaways:

• The Power of Partnering: Many entrepreneurs aren’t interested in partnership. But they create an opportunity to own and contribute the things you do well alongside someone who has other skill sets, strengths, and experiences. Partnerships offer space to practice open dialogue while showing respect and gaining perspective. They are a great solution for all the things you can’t do, don’t want to do, or shouldn’t do.
• Build for a Need: Sometimes we create things believing we have brilliant ideas that will attract an audience. But where problems exist, so do the needs for solutions. You can trust if you have a problem, other people likely have the same problem and need a solution.
• Look to Make Things Easier: When you have to go out of your workflow to do a task, things feel frustrating and clunky. Finding ways to integrate tools within our natural workflow adds tremendous value to the user experience.
• Products Require Passion and Capacity: Yes, you may have the ability to create really cool, helpful things. But if you lack a sincere passion for the products you build or truly don’t have the time they require, they tend to fall flat somewhere along the way. You tap out at the end of your skillset or energy, and even though there may be real potential, the passion and time to carry things forward are missing.

🙏 Sponsor: GoDaddy Pro

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🔗 Mentioned in the show:

• Crop.Express
• WordCamp
• Ninja Forms
• Kanban for Wp
• Photoshop
• WooCommerce
• ITM Security
• Trello
• Pippin Williamson
• Dustin Bolton
• Chris Jean
• iThemes
• Slack
• Convert Kit
• Nathan Barry
• WordPress.org
• Yoast

🐦 You can follow Post Status and our guests on Twitter:

• Corey Maass
• Cory Miller (CEO, Post Status)

The Post Status Draft podcast is geared toward WordPress professionals, with interviews, news, and deep analysis. 📝
Browse our archives, and don’t forget to subscribe via iTunes, Google Podcasts, YouTube, Stitcher, Simplecast, or RSS. 🎧

I talked with Kira Leigh, a full-stack creative entrepreneur and consultant. Skeptic may be too strong of a word, but she makes it clear that she thinks WordPress is too often used when it’s not necessary.

Kira handles every part of her projects, which typically stem with marketing and copywriting, but she takes on design, development, and whatever is required to get the job done. She is the type of person who WordPress should be able to serve quite ably. But more than not, she would rather steer clear.

In this episode of the Draft Podcast, I talk to her about her work, why she is pained by WordPress, and try to come to some conclusions from it all. I am not sure if I accomplish much, but I do feel like I am better able to see where she’s coming from.

This conversation stemmed from a friend linking me to a post Kira wrote that was (to my mind) a bit aggressive toward WordPress — and while perhaps not 100% accurate, it is 100% her perception of the reality that is working with WordPress.

Links from the show

• There Is No Design — Kira’s business
• Kira on LinkedIn
• Assembly — a pretty neat page builder I’ve never seen before

Sponsor: Pagely

Pagely offers best in class managed WordPress hosting, powered by the Amazon Cloud, the Internet’s most reliable infrastructure. Pagely helps big brand scale WordPress. Their new brand Northstack is a completely serverless solution for managed application hosting. Thank you to Pagely for being a Post Status partner.

In this podcast episode, Michelle Frechette and Corey Maass delve into their product's development and marketing strategies. They discuss the technical challenges of image management, including resizing and the potential for automated featured and open graph image placement. The conversation also explores the idea of creating media kits and the integration of their product with platforms like WordPress. The speakers consider customer-driven feature prioritization and the importance of aligning marketing and development efforts. Additionally, they mention using an app for plant identification, highlighting the diverse applications of their product and the continuous pursuit of enhancing user experience.

Top Takeaways:

• Value of Customer Feedback: Recording all ideas, even seemingly insignificant ones, can lead to valuable insights and features that resonate with customers. Customer demand should guide product development.
• Importance of Collaboration: Collaboration between development and marketing teams is crucial for creating products that meet customer needs effectively. Both teams bring unique perspectives that contribute to product success.
• Content Repurposing: Creating comprehensive onboarding materials, such as videos, can enhance user education and promote the product. Snippets from these materials can be repurposed for social media and documentation.
• Continuous Improvement: Regular updates, planning, and communication ensure alignment between team members and facilitate ongoing product improvements. Iterative development allows for flexibility and adaptation to evolving user needs.
• Customer-Centric Approach:Prioritizing features based on user feedback and demand ensures that the product remains relevant and valuable to its target audience. Keeping the customer at the center of decision-making drives product success and growth.

Mentioned In The Show:

• Unsplash
• PictureThis app
• Divi
• Cadence
• Instagram
• WP Speakers
• Underrepresented in tech
• WP Wonder Woman
• Derek Ashauer
• Adobe Lightroom
• WP World
• Faizan

🙏 Sponsor: WordPress.com

Build and manage professional sites with secure managed hosting on WordPress.com. Beautiful themes, built-in SEO, and payment tools, and access to over 50,000 plugins. Everything you need for your business, plus 24/7 support from WordPress experts.

🐦 You can follow Post Status and our guests on Twitter:

• Corey Maass
• Michelle Frechette (Director of Community Relations, Post Status)
• Olivia Bisset (Intern, Post Status)

The Post Status podcast is geared toward WordPress professionals, with interviews, news, and deep analysis. 📝

Browse our archives, and don’t forget to subscribe via iTunes, Google Podcasts, YouTube, Stitcher, Simplecast, or RSS. 🎧