The Global Content team is responsible for generating content growing GitLab's website traffic and share of voice.
Global Content is part of the Corporate Marketing department, and has three (3) teams:
#content for general inquiries#content-updates for updates and log of all new, published content#blog RSS feed of published postsYou can view the editorial calendar here. Please make sure you are logged into your GitLab G Suite account for access.
đ 5 Reasons to Use GitLab, Just CommitLegend
Global Content supports GitLab's overall revenue growth and company goals, laddering to CMO OKRs each quartner.
Embrace a media company mindset to develop a content strategy that organically attracts and retains our target audience over the use of traditional disruption tactics with the goal of increasing website traffic and preference for our content resources. Our global content strategy prioritizes the needs and preferences of our audiences over selling GitLab in order to build trust and increase audience retention. We aim to create enjoyable content experiences that people seek out.
We accomplish this through:
All content should have a distribution strategy. It's generally better to have fewer pieces of content with solid distribution plans, rather than more content with lackluster distribution plans. Before a piece of content moves into production, consider the below.
When, how, and where will this content be distributed beyond its initial home? Content DRIs are expected to build a plan for each piece of content for where it will be distributed. Potential answers to this include:
#marketing-campaigns Slack channel)Aim for a boring solution.
Create an issue in the Corporate Marketing project to request consideration from our Corporate Communications (and PR agency partners). Create this issue as soon as you aware that an asset will exist, even if it's months in advance. This provides maximum runway for our communication partners to plan and amplify your content. Even if you're unsure if an asset is pitchable, create the issue and share in the #external-comms Slack channel. It is better to be told that an asset does not fit into a communications plan than to not share.
This is an example of a PR/comms request issue (only accessible to GitLab team members). It achieves three core things.
Create an issue in the Corporate Marketing project to request consideration from our Social Marketing team. Follow the step-by-step guide in the team's handbook. This is an example of a social marketing request issue (only accessible to GitLab team members). Even if you're unsure if an asset is suitable for social media, create the issue and share in the #social_media_action Slack channel. It is better to be told that an asset does not fit into a social media plan than to not share.
Distribution inspiration can be found from this Twitter thread from Ross Simmonds of Foundation.
The Editorial team's goals are to grow our blog audience, engage readers, and covert readers into subscribers. To achieve this our strategy is guided by our existing audience's needs and wants; prioritizing useful, educational, informative, and entertaining content that has value beyond promoting GitLab.
Areas of focus:
The content market team creates, writes, and publishes awareness and consideration level content for the website. The content focuses primarily on topics pages, web articles, eBooks, infographics, case studies, and white papers. The team works closely with various groups to strategize and develop content for all integrated marketing campaigns, including creating assets and providing awareness level insights for email marketing.
Areas of focus:
The Search Marketing team focuses on helping grow revenue for GitLab by increasing traffic to GitLab public websites and improving conversion paths for visitors to become MQLs (Marketing Qualified Leads). More detail is within the Search Marketing handbook.
We use the mktg-status:: labels to work status (triage, plan, WIP, design, review, scheduled).
mktg-inbound: Department label. Add this label to all issues and epics.mktg-content: General team label to track all issues related to the content team. Add this label to all issues and epics.New Content Request: Indicates a request for content creation, editing, or review.Stage::Awareness: Indicates content creation for the awareness stage of the buyer's journey.Stage::Consideration: Indicates content creation for the consideration stage of the buyer's journey.Stage:: Purchase: Indicates content creation for the purchase stage of the buyer's journey.Stage:: Technical User:Editorial: General label to track all issues related to the editorial team. This brings the issue in the Blog issue board for actioning.Content Marketing: Used by the Content Marketing team as a general label to track all issues related to content marketing. This brings the issue into the board for actioning.Content Pillar: Used by the Content Marketing Managers to indicate a content pillar epic. This label should only be used on pillar epics.Gated Content: Indicates content that requires MPM support. Use this label when creating a new epic for gated content (i.e. eBook, whitepaper, report).Digital Production: Used by the Content Marketing team as a general label to track all issues related to content marketing. This brings the issue into the board for actioning.Blog UX: Used to indicate a proposed change to the blog user experience.Technical Post: Indicates a blog post covering a technical engineering angle.Blog Post: General label for blog posts. Add this label to all blog post issues and merge requests.Blog Priority: Indicates a blog post that is a high priority. These pitches and posts should be followed up on immediately.Blog::Pitch: Use this label when pitching a new blog post idea. All blog post issues must start here. Blog issues do not leave this stage until they have been assigned to a content team member.Blog::Planning/In Progress: Indicates blog posts that have been triaged to a content team member to work on.Blog::Review: Indicates blog posts that are ready for a content team review.Blog::Scheduled: Indicates blog posts that have been reviewed and are scheduled for publishing by the Managing Editor.Blog::Waiting for author: Indicates blog posts that have been reviewed by content team and are waiting for the author to address feedback or approve for scheduling.CEO Interview: Blog posts suggested by the CEO and need immediate action.Error budget severity::1: Indicates a blog post that has incurred 15 error budget points for providing than 2 working days' notice for a time-sensitive post.Error budget severity::2: Indicates a blog post that has incurred 10 error budget points for failure to submit complete, formatted MR a minimum of 2 working days ahead of publish date.Error budget severity::3: Indicates a blog post that has incurred 5 error budget points for submitting an MR without all required formatting, links, and images included.Customer interview: Use for blog posts that require or include a customer interview.External outlet: Use to indicate an article will be published outside of GitLab web domain.Guest/Partner post: Indicates a blog post that is being written and submitted from someone outside of GitLab.Remote work post: Indicates a blog post on the topic of remote work.Sensitive: Indicates a blog post with the potential to have widespread customer or community impact.Unfiltered: Indicates a blog post to be published on the GitLab unfiltered blog.The homepage hero is updated frequently to promote new content, events, and announcements. To use the homepage hero for promotion, follow the guidelines below. Please submit your request as early as possible to get on the content calendar.
Need help finding relevant content to use in an email or to send to a customer? Ask for help in the #content channel.*
The content team supports many cross-functional marketing initiatives. We aim for content production to be a month ahead of planned events and campaigns so that content is readily available for use. In accordance with our values of iteration and transparency, we publish our proposed content plans at the beginning of each quarter. We don't hoard content for one big launch and instead plan sets of content to execute on each quarter and published each piece of content as it's completed.
Content production is determined and prioritized based on the following:
We align our content production to pillars and topics to ensure we're creating a cohesive set of content for our audience to consume. Pillar content is multi-purpose and can be plugged into integrated campaigns, event campaigns, and sales plays.
Content production is aligned to digital campaigns and product messaging.
Definitions
Parent Epics.Child Epics.Milestones.Users and buyers realize that they have a problem or challenge which could be solved through some sort of outside software or service. At this stage, they are trying to define the scope and the relative impact and size of the problem. They probably do not yet have a solution identified, but are in the process of learning about potential solutions to their specific business problem.
In general, messaging in collateral and content should be focused on educating them about the problems they are facing, the business impact of their problems, and the reality that others are successfully solving the same problem. This is an opportunity for them to learn that GitLab is an authority in addressing their domains.
Users and buyers understand the problem they are trying to solve and the business impact/value of addressing the problem and are now actively seeking and evaluating potential remedies to their business issue. Typically, they will be considering a range of approaches from better leveraging existing tools to investing in new technologies and vendors. In this stage they are focused on identifying options that meet their specific requirements and needs. While cost will be a consideration, they have not yet made a final decision about how to address their needs. In this stage, they will be defining their budget and overall plans for implementing a solution.
In general, collateral and content designed to reach prospects in this stage of their journey should be focused on positioning GitLab as a viable and compelling solution to their specific problem.
Users and buyers have concluded that they need to invest in solving a specific business problem and are now comparing and evaluating specific options. In this stage, they are evaluating and comparing different options in order to identify the ideal solution for their specific situation. They will consider Fit (technology, process, etc), implementation effort/cost, total cost of ownership and other factors to guide them in making a final selection.
In general, collateral and content designed to reach prospects in this stage of their journey should be focused on key information that a buyer needs to justify GitLab as their chosen solution.
Content is stored in PathFactory. To request access to PathFactory, submit an access request form.
The content library in PathFactory can be filtered by content type, funnel stage, and topic. Topics are listed and defined in the marketing operations.
Published content should be shared to the #content-updates channel and added to PathFactory with the appropriate tags.