Clarify intent and process for Release Posts

@johnjeremiah @cstasik @joshlambert @sfwgitlab met to discuss how to improve the effectiveness of release posts. Here's a summary:

  • The target reader for release posts are GitLab enthusiasts: they are likely reasonably technical, currently use the product, and include champions for GitLab within their organizations.
  • Release posts are intended to highlight each release. Note that this is different from a "Launch", which is a set of Product Marketing activities designed more to target potential buyers and higher level influencers. Product Marketing will own what messages we choose to launch, and when. The release posts will not play a role in launches, and therefore attempting to make them appealing to buyers and higher level influencers is not a goal for release posts. Release posts are our most popular blog entries (4 of the top 6 from March-July, representing 120k page views, and 20% of overall blog traffic), so we believe they are consumed and create material marketing value within our target audience.
  • Release posts have historically been created at the last minute. This leads to challenges putting together a good storyline and visuals for release post entries. Josh Lambert is working on some automation here that will make it possible for PM's and PMM's to collaborate on release post content earlier in the cycle, which should lead to higher quality work.
  • It is challenging to have a consistent "voice", with so many individual authors. It's also a huge time sink for the Release Post managers, having to unify content, voice, and messaging across 50+ contributors. We need someone to manage the release post so that individual PM's and PMM's don't have to. @clenneville this might be a good fit for the tech writing team. Thoughts on that?

So here's a summary of next steps:

  1. Target future posts at GitLab enthusiasts, which means continuing to cover the full range of product changes in an in depth manner.
  2. Invest in making them more visually interesting, especially for the most important 3-5 features in the release.
  3. Automate as much as we can of the process, and enable earlier PM/PMM collaboration on content and visuals
  4. Explore hiring or assigning full time ownership of managing the release post each month, and cease rotating release post ownership