GitLab Weekly Inbound Marketing Recap, 4 Feb 2021

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From YouTube: Inbound Marketing Team Weekly Recap 2021-02-04

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Weekly recap of learnings, achievements, and shout outs from GitLab's Inbound Marketing team.

Learn more about our team in the GitLab handbook https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/marketing/inbound-marketing/

A

Hello, everyone today is thursday february 4th and you've got the inbound marketing team together for our weekly recap, um I'm going to start us off with a new section that I'd like to add for this quarter, um and I'm hoping people will add things here uh for this time and in the future. I'd love to have us share more about the moments of insight, we're having things we're learning where we say wow.

A

I I didn't know that, whether it's about work or leadership or management or personal stuff, um just to give us a space to talk about that, because I think I've heard a lot of really cool examples of this in one-on-ones and other places.

A

But it doesn't always happen that we share them here as a group, and I'm hoping this will just be a way for us to feel a little more connected to each other through the week, since we don't have a lot of recurring meetings, um so I'll share one as an example, and then I laura, I love that you've had one here already, so I'm looking forward to hearing about that.

A

So, as some of you know, I'm going through an executive coaching training program right now, um partly because I think it'll be amazing to become a coach, but also because, I think, a huge part of my role as I progress in my career.

B

Is coaching other.

A

People- and I really would love to just become skillful in that, so that I can help people get where they want to go in their goals and dreams, and so this quote really hit me for some reason.

A

So I'll read it to you, this is kind of referring to being mentally in a place where you can be fully checked in to a meeting with a person, uh and the quote is your presence is an intervention and for some reason it just hit for me, like wow, just actually fully showing up like eye contact with the camera.

A

You know ready to rock completely zoned in on the person that I'm talking to for that 25 minutes is an intervention like that's actually giving someone else something they need, so I'm personally taking that as a bit of a co-on like so as I go into meetings like okay. Am I really here? Am I really like here for these people- um and I don't know it just hit for me, so I wanted to share it um so laura. Do you want to share yours.

C

Sure mine is a lot less profound, but I had a meeting with tyler that was supposed to be a ruby indoctrination meeting uh but turned into me kind of mentioning like man. I can't seem to edit hamlet files, I think middleman personally hates me and he was like.

C

Oh no, that's just middlemen like just be patient like this is how the build process works um as soon as you finish, waiting wait a little bit more and then finally, you'll see your changes reflected, and that was really helpful and and just not just because I learned how to edit yaml files, but in general, having a better understanding of what's happening behind the scenes uh during our build. So also shout out to tyler for that. Thank you.

C

A

Now that everyone's seen this example, anyone else want to jump in. um I don't attempt to write, but anyone want to jump in and share anything else. They learned this week.

D

Something actually oh, go ahead. Tyler, oh.

E

Thanks um uh I started reading the um high output management book this week, just maybe a chapter in, um but uh the first insight is uh how how clearly influential that's been for git lab in terms of processes and organizational structure. um But there's this thing.

E

That's been sticking with me about, um and I haven't gotten to the details in the book yet, but about uh managing people who are doing work and motivating them the way that athletes are motivated to do their personal best um and thinking a lot about how like I've sort of implicitly felt that here in the past couple months and like seen it from the people around me and like how different that is here than it is at other places, I've worked and uh uh yeah. It's just like starting to form my head.

E

I don't have more insight about it, but like uh really like the observational power of it uh has been really cool this week.

A

That's great great book.

D

Cool, uh I just wanted to link a youtube video and it's called how to speak more confidently in meetings and some of the core tenants. I'm just going to go over really quickly is just slowing down. When you talk and being more comfortable with pauses, I tried to practice one right there where it's like. You tried to cut down your use of filler words, um so I really recommend the watch.

D

It's really interesting um and I I wasn't sure if I was going to bring that up or a joke one, but I've been sleeping with my blinds open and it's been life-changing in terms of waking up early. So that's my my fun fact. One.

A

Anybody else last call all right, michael, why don't you take it away.

F

Absolutely I love that new edition danielle. This is gonna, be so great to learn from everybody so show and tell I love seeing what everybody makes every week. So, let's um stick to the agenda here. Sharing screen makes it even more real. So if you could do that, that'd be awesome, looks like lauren. We've got you up. First,.

G

Yeah I'll share my screen right here so this week um last week we hit a bug with netflix cms there's an api error that was due to us timing out during a rebase, and I submitted an issue with netlify cms on github and um they fixed it. So um this contributor came in said, oh well, we can just increase the timeout to 30 seconds and it was solved which is super cool, so we're gonna. Now I know where that code is in their code base and we can work to contribute back to netflix cms.

F

Awesome looks like you're up next tavi cool.

D

um Something I just wanted to bring up really quickly in terms of things that I've been working on. Give me one. Second, let me just share my screen.

D

Is I've been working with the engineering efforts in digital experience to try to get more clarity in terms of what are the things that are blocking us in terms of our workflow?

D

We decided with going with a workshop, which is just essentially a way of trying to get us to agree upon something really quickly. Usually, workshops lost about a couple hours I did for our team.

D

Specifically, we did it over the course of two weeks with one hour each and it's essentially like having like this crazy sigma file with all these people trying to collaborate at the same time- and I just wanted to kind of like bring up some of the uh insights that we got from that um it led us to kind of like these questions um that then got filled out into issues um for the next okr, which I think is really awesome, and it led to some really great discussion.

D

I won't go through all of it here, just because it's so much of it but kind of like the big takeaway we have is like a static site. Migration will not solve our pressing infra problems if you've never done a workshop yourself.

D

I linked some resources here, um which I think are amazing and that do a better job than I can in like a brief moment to explain the value of them. But it's it's a lot of fun and I think a lot of the engineers can vouch that that effort was well used. So yeah, that's it for me. uh Next, I have rebecca.

H

H

um Sorry, wouldn't let me share my screen until happy had stopped okay, um so yeah. I am just going to give a quick recap of the unfiltered blog from the last quarter. uh The cadence was meant to be monthly, but then the last two were over thanksgiving and christmas, so I figured I'd just bundle it all into the quarter. um There is a spreadsheet if you really want to get deep into the individual numbers, um but yeah on the whole, we published fewer unfiltered posts. um That makes sense.

H

There were a lot of holidays and these are team member-led posts. So it makes sense that that number would go down. I wanted to call out in the top five we've got some community focused ones which is great to see, because that's really what unfiltered is for it's a platform for our team members and the community to share kind of peer-to-peer style so excited to see that, um even though we published fewer posts, a number, the number of unique views was up overall. So that's encouraging too, to see that hitting on some popular topics.

H

We have published one on the main blog this. How merge trains work, which thanks will svelane for calling that out? I think it was a great one to move over to the main blog and we should see traffic pick up once it gets pushed out on our usual channels, and I also added a column in this uh here noting to myself uh ones that I've noticed, I think, would be a good fit for the main blog. So I've started opening issues for those and yeah. That's unfiltered for the last quarter.

H

I'll do um a recap of the whole blog for the last quarter in the coming weeks, but I like to give it a little bit more time for those late january posts to get some traffic uh to get a fuller picture. So I will share that. uh Probably next week, thanks um over to bree.

I

Thanks, um I just wanted to take a moment and sort of share what the content team has created for the past quarter. I listed it out here, but I'll read it quickly, so we have 15 net new web articles, three updated topics, pages one new topics, page three ebooks, five, new blogs, seven blogs that were repurposed as web articles, written about 60, probably more campaign emails, six published case studies, six more written case studies, this quarter and the creation and distribution of the brand new devops download newsletter.

I

That val had pushed for and made happen this past quarter with a great reception.

I

um Oh okay, I will shout them out in the shout out section. I have one other thing that I'll just keep moving forward. um I am the newest dri for the localization project, I'm starting to lead this moving forward. There's a lot to unpack still, so I don't really have much to share, but it just means wrapping my head around the entire scope of the project, including the priority countries, the budget, the go to market motions and the expectations slash needs of the various groups.

I

It's not just translation. It also includes getting organized and streamlined so that we can efficiently and effectively get the translations going and going well. um Becky has been super helpful, which I will add this to the shout out section too, but um I've basically gotten to pick her brain and I will probably need to pick her brain a whole lot more, but there will be more to come with this project in the next few weeks.

A

Hey bree, can you take just one second to explain dri, just because I know there's some people here who are knew where to get that. I don't know much about that. Yet.

I

So for this project in particular, there's a lot of moving parts, and I think that what needs to have happened here is there needs to be one point person who can take all of the moving parts.

I

Organize them together, make sure that all groups are represented fairly and equally and understand what the needs are between the budget between the countries between what the priority of the go-to market or the use cases for each country and and also be the point person for if there are questions, and they need answers quickly and um and sort of just establishing a process in place so that in a year from now um it won't be a messy situation. It will be streamlined.

I

So there won't be questions, um it's kind of getting that process up and organized to that point, so that we can just be a streamline localization.

I

Does that? Did that clarify it at all?.

A

Yeah, that was great, I think- uh hopefully, everyone here has heard the team dri before, but if not, I did also just drop the handbook link a lot of thoughts going into that. You know evolving that role over time, so check it out.

I

um And val is next.

J

Okay, I guess I'll share my screen, although I dropped this in the document.

J

Let's see sorry, I'm never very good at the screen sharing okay, so um you see before you um the thing I am happiest about this quarter. So far um we discovered last year in trying to promote the developer survey that we had a hard time getting people to take it. But if you give people a t-shirt, they will take it.

J

So this lovely design from our very own fabulously, talented vic, bell, uses a phrase we got from the survey last year of a person who said in answer to what are your job responsibilities this person wrote in, I am devops, so we saved that idea. We've now put this on t-shirts, and this will be part of a multi-faceted giveaway to incentivize folks to take the survey this year.

J

So survey launches next week very exciting, and I put a little if you, those of you who actually are reading the agenda, may feel free to message me if you've actually read the agenda and see the last line I left in there as a little gift to all of you. If you send me your t-shirt size, I might be able to get you a t-shirt. So let me know um sorry, I lost it who's next.

F

I was wondering: are we giving credit to that individual who, who submitted that that could be such a cool moment for them to be like? Oh wow, they listen to me and they're, using a phrase that I shared. I'm funny awesome.

J

um Wouldn't that be lovely we, our survey is um due to a myriad of gdpr issues um anonymous. So we don't have the opportunity to do that. I'm hoping that this person sees this this year and hopefully will raise his or her hand, but no, I wish I could, but I can't, but I have to say it's still a great freaking slogan, so I'm yeah that's.

H

J

Okay over to niall thanks.

K

uh Thanks, alright I'll just quickly share my screen, so this is just to highlight some of the findings from uh or q4 analysis, which also had already published this in the marketing uh channel. We just wanted to highlight here as well, so it's generally a result of a lot of work.

K

That's taken part throughout the year last year, as well as in the last quarter, um across teams such as looking at site, heads and stuff, such as the the handbook, mesh error and all that kind of stuff, but we've seen really good results so, like for keyword positioning, we have uh overall from 1100 we're up 68 000 for 410 position. It's nearly two and a half thousand, and in the top three that's plus 1 131, so in terms of visibility, uh we're really kind of at an all-time high.

K

So it's just good to see, uh even though there's a lot of sprint walk that goes in for smaller projects, it's good to see the overall result at the end of the year, so I just want to share that there and I shall hand it over to becky or you can view the video as well. Sorry, there's a link there from salt. It's a 15 minute, video, uh so becky.

F

I think becky's doing cmo shadow, so I can cover for her um looks like becky's put a bunch of stuff in here about.

A

Is it michael so that the video is high quality? Please.

F

Yeah absolutely um put a bunch of stuff in here about what saul's done so completed: phase one a website, localization strategy for website and url naming structure with niles help, handing to brie um completed phase one and two, the partner website refresh, so that included strategy, url folder structure, url, naming rerex seo research and navigation bar working with me establishing baseline productivity for cross-functional requests still collecting data.

F

You know why why becky asks us to add weight to all issues and we have other another update to the handbook, soon launch, with a support of many, a new tone of voice and thorough guidelines. um This isn't my her words, but if you haven't watched the video, it's really good and ash, I really enjoyed the work you did. There completed one of the first corporate marketing campaign messaging projects, so high level person. First, with some thematic elements, iterated on the okr structure um on feedback. She has a video, that's helpful, um to understand the.

F

Why and the what she's doing um working through a lighting strategy for all our teams, not sure how successful we've been yet, but um I think we're all at least heading in the same direction and also fy 22 budget set up quarterized and aligned to business strategy, so I'll keep playing becky and we'll move into shout outs. So anyone who wants to contribute, let's express some gratitude for people that have helped us and I'm just going to keep standing on my soapbox and talking because I've got the first three here.

F

So I wanted to say thank you danielle. The group conversation on tuesday went well. um The team did so much amazing work, so I had confidence. I've been describing it as me. uh I wasn't nervous, but I wasn't not nervous um so thanks a lot for driving that conversation, that it was awesome.

F

uh Tyler um thanks for taking the time and the initiative on improving the middleman, builds like this without getting too geeky like this is one of those things where, like you fix one thing once, and it makes everything better forever. So that's it's massive like. I can't can't even understand how you did that in I think, a sunday just kind of hanging out um and then brandon and jess.

F

We had some the pricing page redesign has kind of heated up. It's there's a lot of opportunity in it, so we kind of re we pivoted and started to do a few faster iterations and a b tests that weren't necessarily in our plan. But we saw the importance and we're open to to changing plan and then lauren.

G

Hello all right there you are. um I wanted to uh give a shout out to michael for implementing our mvc2 sprint cycle for the digital experience team. It really uh enables our team to work more asynchronously while it challenging us to be efficient during our sync meetings. So if we only have 30 minutes, we've really got to work async before we meet so that we make that time efficient. So thank you.

A

All right, michael you're, just getting a lot of praise. I hope your ego doesn't get too big this week, michael great job on the preparation, delivery of the inbound marketing group conversation, the deck and the presentation. Video ahead of time enabled a much better, uh more engaged, more informed discussion and you made our team and your team just look really good. So awesome job um becky. I know you're not here, but I just want to thank becky for wrangling to get the final fy 22 budget squared away in alocadia.

A

It was pretty complicated. We were asked to spend a little less than last year and deliver a whole lot more, but I think we've got a good plan in place um and we're going into the year with the most clarity we've ever had around the budget. So while I do think things may shift around a bit at the mid-year point, especially if things are going well, we may want to deploy some more capital at least right now.

A

We have a very clear go forward plan if you don't feel that way, reach out to becky she'll, get you up to speed real quick. I'm sorry not everyone can have alocadia seats they're, I think 100 a month per user, so it just didn't make sense to give them to everyone, but um that doesn't mean you're not allowed to see the budget, so we'll figure out a way. We can continue to communicate that and then also shane rice, also not here because he's over in ceo shadowland, um we miss you but you're.

A

Clearly having a fantastic time, you make us look good. I've seen you in some meetings. I can't wait to hear about what you've learned and lastly, brie huge thanks to you for taking on the localization dear eye roll. I think that's going to be a very impactful move, not just for our team but for the company, so very happy that you're doing it and next up is val.

J

Okay, I just wanted to give um big love and gratitude to vic uh for her amazing t-shirt design. uh Thank will for being my ride-or-die on every facet of the dub survey. He's just terrific and sort of do an advanced. uh Please put up with me, as I stress out next week, teammates brie, siri and chrissy, because the uh the survey launch is usually kind of stressful okay over to tyler.

E

Awesome uh thanks to brandon I had uh an mr that was just just in draft. I hadn't pinged anyone on it and I was like really grateful uh like brandon, just like poked in and like looked around and gave me some proactive feedback on it, and I was like oh awesome and it was super helpful. I was like told me about a gotcha that I could not have known about without some institutional knowledge and uh helped me resolve it and uh yeah.

E

Just thanks to brandon for for doing that and for taking the time and being super helpful.

E

I think reasoning, yeah yeah.

I

I got it. um uh I just wanted to shout out to chrissy valenzuri for their large amount of content output that they did for the last quarter, which I shared previously and just to say that it is a lot of work and it's great, and I hope it continues for this quarter and also thanks to becky and tadara. For letting me ask a million questions about the localization project. I will have a million more so thanks in advance and um rebecca's up.

H

I just wanted to shout out: uh heather simpson wrote two of our top five unfiltered posts for q4, so congrats to her, and also to john cochlin megan manieval and rihanna farissimo. I'm sorry! If I'm saying anyone's names wrong, you wrote the rest of the top five, so good work there over to brock.

B

Yeah I just wanted to um shout out to erica flowers. um Last friday, during fiscal end, um I had to kind of basically drop work to react to a government announcement um from in canada and uh that you know left a lot on erica and I'm aware that um and I'm really grateful to work in a place where uh uh something like that can happen, and um uh it's okay for me to just go deal with it.

B

You know that means a lot to me and it means a lot to me to work for um an organization that supports that, but in particular erica I'm just really grateful, because I knew I know that wasn't easy and it means a lot. Thank you.

A

Thanks brother, we did this in time. Anybody have time left.

A

Okay! Well, I'll, see you all in the next meeting in 30 minutes. If you shared something really cool in here that you want to show off, take it over to that other agenda. Doc, see you all soon great first week of the fiscal year.

A