#137 – Jamie Marsland on Heading the WordPress YouTube Channel

Transcription

[00:00:00] Nathan Wrigley: Welcome to the Jukebox podcast from WP Tavern. My name is Nathan Wrigley.

Jukebox is a podcast which is dedicated to all things WordPress. The people, the events, the plugins, the blocks, the themes, and in this case, how YouTube can promote the WordPress project.

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So on the podcast today, we have Jamie Marsland, and it says third appearance on the podcast, which is a first.

Jamie has recently embarked on an exciting new journey as the head of the WordPress YouTube channel at Automattic. This role is set to amplify the WordPress story through engaging and informative video content, capitalizing on YouTube’s reach to over 2.7 billion monthly users.

As you’ll hear, Jamie only started his role a few days prior to recording, but he’s already full of plan lists to transform the WordPress YouTube presence. Automattic created this role to ensure a more focused effort on growing the channel, which currently has around 36,000 subscribers, significantly lower than some of the other WordPress YouTube channels.

Jamie envisions targeting distinct groups. Beginners, DIYers, developers and designers, agencies and freelancers, product suppliers, and the community. Each piece of content will aim to add value whilst trying to maintain some fun.

Throughout our conversation, Jamie shares his insights into why this role is necessary, especially in light of commercial rivals like Wix and Squarespace, who possess enormous marketing budgets. He discusses the importance of bringing new users into the WordPress ecosystem, whether they’re complete beginners or migrating from other platforms.

We also explore Jamie’s broader vision for the channel, including making high quality content that genuinely adds value to the viewer, regardless of its production quality. He stresses that every video needs to answer the question of what value it brings to the audience. Fun and engagement are key themes, but quality content is paramount.

We also touch on his plans to bring in other voices, aiming to build a diverse team that reflects WordPress’ global reach.

Jamie also talks about the balance between engaging the YouTube algorithm and producing valuable content. He shares his experiences and strategies for creating content that draws listeners in, emphasizing the importance of creativity in ensuring all target groups find something of interest.

Jamie assures us that his new role won’t mean an end to his own popular YouTube channel, which has been advocating for WordPress for many years. He plans to continue creating content on this channel, whilst focusing on growing the official WordPress channel.

Towards the end, Jamie hints at the changes that might start materializing by October, post WordCamp US. He’s eager to hear from the community, so if you have innovative, fun or valuable content ideas, Jamie wants to know.

If you’re interested in the evolving landscape of WordPress on YouTube, Jamie strategic approach, or how you might contribute to this exciting venture, this episode is for you.

If you want to find out more, you can find all of the links in the show notes by heading to wptavern.com/podcast, where you’ll find all the other episodes as well.

And so without further delay, I bring you Jamie Marsland.

I am joined on the podcast, again by Jamie Marsland. How you doing, Jamie?

[00:04:35] Jamie Marsland: I am really sorry about all these appearances. I’m great, thank you, Nathan.

[00:04:38] Nathan Wrigley: Honestly, the reason that you’re appearing many times is because you have many things to say. But I believe you’re the first person to appear for a third time. And it wasn’t all that long ago that we were talking about your speed builds happening at WordCamp Europe. Well, maybe that is going to come up today. Let’s find out.

[00:04:53] Jamie Marsland: Well, it’s coming to WordCamp US in a few weeks time, so there you go, there’s a plug for that.

[00:04:57] Nathan Wrigley: Well, it’s exciting. Well, maybe we can get into that specifically a little bit later, but that’s not the main reason. The main reason is because you’ve taken on a brand new role. And rather than me butcher what that role is and what you’re doing, you just want to give us your brief potted bio?

[00:05:11] Jamie Marsland: I’m now working for Automattic as head of the wordpress.org YouTube channel, which is an incredibly exciting role to fulfill. So I started literally two days ago, and I’m now in day three, it’s Wednesday, isn’t it? Day three of my onboarding, of which I’m going to go onto the wordpress.org forums this afternoon as part of, when you join Automattic you do a support rotation, so I’ve got two weeks support rotation, and then I start in earnest on the YouTube channel.

[00:05:36] Nathan Wrigley: Is this a brand new role? My intuition says, I think it is because I’ve not heard of it before.

[00:05:41] Jamie Marsland: It is a brand new role. There is a team working diligently on the YouTube channel doing cool stuff, and they’ve grown it actually really well, but there’s no one sort of leading on the channel. Everyone in that team is doing lots of other cool stuff as well. So this is having somebody completely focused 100% on growing the channel.

[00:05:57] Nathan Wrigley: Okay, so I’m imagining that more or less everybody knows what YouTube is, and probably has gone down that alley of stepping into YouTube, and then several hours later figuring out that they’ve lost their entire day on YouTube. Why do we need this role then? So you mentioned that there’s a team. Is it just that it was felt that that effort wasn’t sort of guided correctly, that there needs to be more content? Why the role?

[00:06:19] Jamie Marsland: Can I give you some stats on YouTube, because this blows my mind? So as of 2024, YouTube has more than 2.7 billion users every month. That’s 51% of all people who use the internet. One third of everyone in the world uses YouTube monthly, a third of everyone in the world uses YouTube monthly. And over half the people who use the internet on their phones visit YouTube each month.

So YouTube is, I mean it’s just absolutely massive, and WordPress, the official channel, has as we speak, about 36,000 subscribers. And if you compare it to its, let’s say competitors, it’s lower than it needs to be. So that’s why there’s now a unrelenting focus from me on helping WordPress through that channel.

[00:07:02] Nathan Wrigley: So is there a particular kind gap that you are trying to fill here? Because obviously, you know, YouTube is just full up of content for literally everything. Is it going to be directed mainly at a particular type of YouTube content? Do you have any sort of intuitions as how that’s going to go? You know, is it going to be related to Gutenberg, or Core? Well, I’ll leave it open to you.

[00:07:22] Jamie Marsland: At the moment, and I’m obviously on day three, this is kind of how I view the world in terms of the content groups we’re going to aim content at. What I’m also asking everyone is to let me know what you think, so I’d be interested to know what you think about this, Nathan.

So these are the kind of groups we’re going to target content at. So I’ve got beginners, group one. DIYers, developers. We’ve got designers, agencies and freelancers, product suppliers. So that’s plugins, and themes, and service providers, and then we’ve got the community. So broadly, six groups of target viewers that, at the moment, that’s what I’m thinking the type of content we’re going to produce content for.

But at the top of that, we have the kind of overlying everything is, you know, every piece of content that we want to produce on that channel needs to kind of tell the WordPress story, or help tell the WordPress story, what the story is. That’s all the things that make me love WordPress. So it’s empowering, it’s free, it’s open, it’s radical, it’s fun, it’s being used by loads and loads of people. So everything needs to kind of fit under that story.

And then we’ve got those groups of people that we want to target content at. And then within that we’re going to have a number of different formats. And then flowing from those formats will be the actual content itself. That’s the way I’m viewing the world at the moment. Early days, I’m asking people to give me their feedback.

[00:08:34] Nathan Wrigley: I’m going to give you a little bit of feedback on that. So you had six categories there, and they all speak to people already using WordPress. I wonder if part of the role, given all of the talk that we’ve had recently about, you know, commercial rivals in the website building space having giant marketing budgets, is that piece of advertising to the, as yet undecided, website builder. Drawing in people who are just curious about starting a career in web development, or want their own website? And obviously WordPress has that sort of free and open credentialing to it. Trying to draw them in as well and just say, okay, here’s WordPress, you’ve never used it, this is what it could do for you.

[00:09:12] Jamie Marsland: Yeah, and that’s a massive part of my thinking. I would probably group that group of people into beginners or pre beginners. Yeah, that was one of the biggest pieces of feedback. I put out this tweet, and put a post on Facebook and LinkedIn, and got tons of feedback and fantastic ideas from people of the type of content.

That was one of the strong themes coming through is, how do we bring people on board to WordPress from either, they’re looking for the first time, or they’re using something like Wix and they don’t realise where the roadblocks they’re going to hit at some point in the future? So, one hundred percent.

[00:09:40] Nathan Wrigley: Just a little bit of personal story then. How did this role come your way then? So just curious as to, two sides to that really. How did the negotiations happen and, you know, how did you get into this role existing in the first place, and why the role now? I guess I’m alluding to the whole Wix thing that I mentioned a moment ago. Is it that the time is right to concern ourselves with the commercial rivals out there and the march that they’ve got into the marketplace?

[00:10:05] Jamie Marsland: So I’m going to skip some steps here, just to give you a broad brush stroke. So I did some research about, I guess it was a year and a half ago was it, maybe two years ago, looking at the YouTube channels of wordpress.com, wordpress.org, and also the competitors, so Wix, Squarespace, Shopify, and a few others. Did a blog post, and then I sent the blog post around to some people within Automattic that I’d sort of been chatting to, and saying, I can help with some of this stuff.

Now, I’m skipping a lot of steps here, Nathan. And following from that, I had lots of discussions. And then I did a series of videos with wordpress.com and the team at wordpress.com, and started chatting to some people within Automattic. So I did 24 videos for them. Obviously more conversations around the video strategy for .com and .org. And, again, I’m skipping lots of steps.

Then I met up with Matt Mullenweg in Turin for an hour, and had a fantastic chat around video, and content, and competitors, and then more conversations. And then it kind of crystallised while I was on a mountain, climbing up a mountain, when I say climbing a mountain, I was walking along a mountain in France. You know, started to formulate what the role could be, what the need was, you know, my desire to do it, which was massive. So for me it’s like the perfect, because I’ve been kind of doing this stuff on my own channel for three years. So this was like the perfect opportunity to kind of work on a bigger stage really.

[00:11:22] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, that’s great. I’m curious as to the nature of the conversation that you had with Matt. Obviously, Matt, the co-founder of WordPress, largely guides the project, if you like. We have a lot of intuitions that come from Matt, which then turn into the reality of the project. Whilst I don’t want you to reveal anything of a confidential nature, I am curious as to hear what thoughts came up in that meeting as to the importance of this job, you know, the kinds of things that he would like to have seen you doing.

[00:11:47] Jamie Marsland: I mean the first thing to say, it was a great conversation because I’d never met Matt before. So, we struck it off really well, which was fantastic, and massively intellectually curious, that was a very interesting conversation. But it was kind of centered around content, and the importance of video content, and what WordPress is doing in terms of video content at the moment, and just the massive opportunity there is for video content in the WordPress, official WordPress space.

Obviously, there’s some amazing content being produced by other creators, but on the official channel, as I say, we’ve got 36,000 subscribers. So there’s a massive opportunity to get more engagement, and sort of spread the WordPress word.

[00:12:22] Nathan Wrigley: The fact that you are doing content on YouTube, does it allow you this role to also do video content elsewhere? So one of the things that comes into mind is the Learn project, so learn.wordpress.org is making lots of educational content, much of it in the form of videos. I wondered if there was any overlap with those teams, or any opportunity to overlap. Because it sounds like a lot of the pieces that you’re going to be making are educational in nature.

[00:12:48] Jamie Marsland: Obviously it’s very early days, and they’ve got a team producing lots of Learn content, which is currently going on the YouTube channel, which is great. There’s an interesting space which says, what is the connection? Because some of the content they’re doing is very, very good if you are going step by step through videos. But I think there’s an interesting discussion that says, how can we start to tailor some of that content? So it’s kind of more suited to specific YouTube audiences.

Because when you go onto YouTube, you’re kind of in a different frame of mind than if you are going onto a learning management system. And I think they’re two quite separate pieces of content, like some of the content I produce on my channel is more edutainment than just educating people around it. It’s got to kind of grab them quite quickly, and you’ll get more engagement and more learning. So there’s some interesting, definitely some interesting overlaps there. Early thinking on that though.

[00:13:34] Nathan Wrigley: One of the things that Matt said during his address in WordCamp Europe, where obviously you had your meeting with him, one of the things that I took away from that was that he wants WordPress to feel a bit more fun. I don’t really have my finger on the pulse of what entirely he made of that, but it did strike me that your speed builds was a really, you know, it was a really credible way of doing that. It’s entertainment with learning bolted in, which is really nice. You get the fun of doing it at the same time, and if you’re paying attention, you will actually learn things, which is kind of like the perfect goal.

I did wonder that was how you were hoping to drive it, if it was supposed to be fun. If you’d got any guidelines about that, if you’ve got any thoughts on that. Because I always enjoy watching fun content more than sort of the dry stuff. But nevertheless, sometimes the dry stuff is what you need to do, so whether it’s a bit of everything, or direction is fun, over to you.

[00:14:26] Jamie Marsland: We’ll bring the fun. There will be more fun, but it’s not all going to be fun. But it all needs to be great. I think the key thing is it’s going to have massive value. If it’s going on the channel, it needs to have massive value to whoever’s watching it, and that’s probably somebody within those six groups. So there will definitely be some, I’ve got some ideas, there’ll definitely be some fun stuff, and definitely more live stuff.

We want to try and have a connection with the end users that are using WordPress. So definitely more fun. But there’s some really cool stuff going on on the wordpress.org channel, which, with a little bit of love and attention, we can elevate to the next level quite easily. Like there’s some amazing developer stuff going on with Justin Tadlock and his team, and Nick Diego, and Ryan Welcher. Just gold dust in there.

And there’s some really simple things we can do really quickly to get them more views. So there’s some easy low hanging fruit. So some of that developer stuff is absolutely fantastic, but there is a lot of stuff on there that’s, at the moment there’s this automatic feed, so there’s a lot of stuff that just, it’s like a bucket, just gets dumped on there.

So there’s a conversation to be had around how we tailor that stuff. Do we keep that process going where it’s just automated? So we have lots and lots of videos on there, which don’t necessarily all reflect what we’re trying to reflect in terms of the WordPress story. I’m not sure that’s answered your question, but there’s going to be more fun.

[00:15:36] Nathan Wrigley: Running through that, the message that you gave me at the beginning of that little section was that you want it to be of high quality. The importance is on the high quality. So if it’s fun and high quality, that’s great, if it’s serious and high quality, it’s great. But if it’s fun and low quality, no.

[00:15:50] Jamie Marsland: And I think, when I say high quality, I’m not talking about production value, I’m talking about value to the person watching it. If it’s filmed on a phone in a field and it’s absolute gold dust, then that’s okay. But it has to be, every bit of content has to ask itself the question, what value am I giving to the person watching this? Why are they going to watch this piece of content? And if we can’t answer that, then it shouldn’t be on the channel anyway.

[00:16:08] Nathan Wrigley: Yeah, it’s interesting, sort of editorial guidelines, you know, if the BBC, for example, the British Broadcasting Corporation, I imagine they have a quality guideline about how it looks and feels, not just about the quality of the content. But that’s an interesting position that you take there. If the content is good but the production quality is not that great, that gets a pass.

[00:16:26] Jamie Marsland: I think there’s probably a couple of phases of this. The first phase is, it’s got to be all about the content. And then the second phase, then we look at the production. And you can do these together, but the most important thing is the content has got to have, it’s got to have value.

One of the best lessons I ever learned in running a YouTube channel is that there’s only three reasons why somebody will ever click on a YouTube thumbnail, because you are competing against lots of other people on YouTube. And those are curiosity, number one, hope, number two, or fear. Those are the three psychological triggers that make anyone click onto a YouTube video. There’s some broad guidelines we can start to introduce.

[00:17:00] Nathan Wrigley: I think also it’s important for the creator of the video to have a white border around them, and to be pointing at something with their mouth open.

[00:17:08] Jamie Marsland: Actually, no, that’s not true anymore. There’s been some stats that show that mouth open isn’t working anymore.

[00:17:12] Nathan Wrigley: Okay. Oh gosh.

[00:17:13] Jamie Marsland: I’m serious about that.

[00:17:14] Nathan Wrigley: People go into it at that level. So the content that you’ve created on your own YouTube channel has been you creating content, and you’ve obviously been very successful at that, and I imagine that that is the primary reason that you’ve got into this discussion, got this job. So bravo for that firstly.

But secondly, does this new job point to an era in which you, the head of YouTube, are making all of the content, or are you hoping to bring other voices in? And into that question I’m going to throw the sort of international thing as well, you know, different languages, different parts of the world, different perspectives.

[00:17:47] Jamie Marsland: So, no, definitely won’t just be me producing videos. I mean, my plan is to make myself redundant over the next three or four years, and build a team of younger, diverse people that reflect where WordPress is heading. So that’s part of my plan. And then part of my plan is, and I’ve been reaching out to other content creators in the WordPress space, is to help them to amplify themselves, and get them on the channel as well. Because there’s some people doing some amazing stuff. And also people in the community.

Plus we’ve already got some existing amazing content that’s going on through people like Justin and his team, and the Learn team. So absolutely not, it won’t just be me. I will definitely be on the channel, but hopefully I’ll be a fraction of the overall content going forward. There was another part of your question, which I didn’t answer.

[00:18:25] Nathan Wrigley: Well, there was the international part, so the different languages all around the world. So it’s not just in English basically.

[00:18:30] Jamie Marsland: Yeah, that’s a really interesting one. So one of the challenges you face when you run a YouTube channel is that, if you produce a piece of content that doesn’t get many views, it’s a bit of a channel killer. So what will happen is their algorithm will say, they’ve just produced, you might have one piece of content that gets like 10,000 views, if you produce a piece of content that only gets like 12 views, that will affect the overall channel views.

You need to be aware of that when you’re running and trying to grow YouTube channel. I’m going to go onto the international bit. So that’s one of the things we need to confront pretty quickly. We need to make sure that the content we’re producing is always creating a high number of views, otherwise it affects the overall health of the channel.

So one of the decisions on the international stuff is, does that fit into that? How does that fit into that? Does that affect the channel because our audience is expecting one thing and they get another thing, and it might get lower views? Or do we say, we create multiple channels for multiple languages, or do we create multiple channels for multiple, like there’s thousands of word, well, not thousands, but there’s lots and lots of WordCamps that happen around the world which are currently being presented on the YouTube channel, which might not get massive amount of views, but are very important content. So the question is, do we have a separate channel for those, so it doesn’t affect the main channel in terms of the algorithm and kind of story we’re trying to tell on those? So those are some of the kind of quite difficult decisions we need to make fairly early on.

[00:19:43] Nathan Wrigley: That’s curious because you are having to worry about the algorithm of YouTube, not just the quality of the content, but whether the content is going to receive the click. So some part of your brain has to be engaged with how viral, for want of a better word, maybe that’s not quite right word. But, you know, something like, how viral will this piece of content be?

And I guess that raises concerns about, if we’re always chasing the algorithm, do we then drop the stuff which may not get the clicks or the views, but could be really important? So for example, the last piece you mentioned, I think it was number six, community, that may not get quite the number of views as, oh I don’t know, the latest, greatest new feature that’s come out in WordPress, or your speed builds, or whatever that may be. But it’s still equally important, and that’s going to be a difficult tightrope to tread, isn’t it? It’s sprinkling that stuff in that you have an intuition won’t be quite so popular, but is probably needed.

[00:20:31] Jamie Marsland: But I think there’s creative ways of making that stuff interesting to people that it will get clicks. That’s the challenge of the channel, right? So all those six groups, I’m confident we could create content that is really interesting, that would get a large amount of clicks. But it needs to speak, it needs to focus on the value it’s bringing to the people that are watching it. That’s got to be the a hundred percent focus.

I spend a huge amount of time on my thumbnails and title, and I want to instill that in the content that’s going on the channel. I do that because, and this isn’t just me making this stuff up, this is coming from like, the best YouTubers all do this as well. And if you do that, then it focuses your video on the value you are creating. You are trying to create to the person watching it. And if you can’t get a YouTube thumbnail and title sorted out, it means you haven’t got your story straight in your head, and you’re not sure on the value of this piece of content is going to bring to the people watching it. If you can’t do that, then you shouldn’t make the video. It’s a really useful discipline to go through, and it’s one I want to instill on any piece of content going forward, because it focuses the whole point of the video.

[00:21:28] Nathan Wrigley: But the bottom line is you are open to other voices, it’s not just going to be Jamie making video content. And a question which is related to that, but not entirely the same, the content that I’ve seen of you so far has been heavily related to a core version of WordPress. You know, you download WordPress from .org and you run with that. You’re not chucking a load of other things in, third party plugins, and themes, and what have you.

And I do wonder if that has a place in this new future. Whether or not third party plugins, themes, blocks, whatever it may be, whether there’s going to be scope for those. Maybe there’ll be an embargo on, well, it has to be in the repository. I don’t know. Again, just over to you, what are your thoughts?

[00:22:04] Jamie Marsland: Yeah, my view is a hundred percent, I want those in there. Because it’s one of the best things about WordPress, that we have 60,000 plugins and thousands of amazing themes. The challenge is how you do that without annoying the heck out of everybody that isn’t featured on that week. I want to find formats that we can showcase stuff without annoying people that aren’t on there.

But if you think about it, wordpress.org is already advertising all those 60,000 plugins, so we absolutely should be. And there’s some amazing stuff happening, some amazing innovation happening, so we definitely want to showcase that stuff on the official channel, is my view at the moment.

[00:22:34] Nathan Wrigley: I’m just curious about the cadence at which you are hoping to do this. Because at the moment, Jamie’s YouTube channel, I presume that there is importance in you getting content out on a regular basis to satisfy the algorithm. But it’s up you how often you want to do that. You know, you can take a week off here, a week off there, and go out for a walk or whatever, whenever you feel. And I’m just wondering how this is going to play. Do you have intuitions there? You know, it’s got to be several things a week, several things a day. It’s a big community after all, we could probably create that content. But, any thoughts?

[00:23:03] Jamie Marsland: Well, yeah, if you look, at the moment there’s tons of content going on it, but I think there’s too much content. I think the cadence will be, the first step is to get a content plan, which I’m going to share I think at this point, get a content plan together drawing on all those things that I’ve talked you through already.

And then I think the cadence drops out from that. Once you’ve got the content structure in terms of those groups, and then you’ve got the formats flowing from those. So like we’ve already got developer hours who have a certain cadence. And then you’ve got the content plan from that, the cadence will be dropping out from that. But my view is at least two a week.

But probably, as we start to power the engine many more. And, you know, the other thing that we want to do far more of is repurposing this content for like social media, because at the moment that’s not really happening. Once we get the source content the way we want it, that’ll be much, much easier. Because that’s been a lot of the growth of my channel, is resharing relentlessly on Twitter, and Facebook, and LinkedIn. LinkedIn especially at moment, actually.

[00:23:55] Nathan Wrigley: You’ve obviously been making content recently, and I presume you’re doing that because you enjoy it. Is there any part of you which is a little bit nervous about the fact that you are going to have this more managerial role and, you know, taking care of other people’s content, and less time in the video editor, making the content, thinking about the topics, and creating the titles and the thumbnails and all that? They’ll presumably be handled by you, but also by other people. Is there a bit of you, which is, I don’t know, a little bit sad at waving goodbye to your own endeavors?

[00:24:20] Jamie Marsland: I’m not waving goodbye to them. So my own channel is going to carry on. And actually this will probably give me, well, it will give me more freedom to be a bit more, I’m going to be quite experimental, but probably more experimental on my own channel. So that’s definitely going to continue. I’ve paused sponsorships at the moment on that channel, just to avoid some conflicts of interest.

But I have to say, I did have pre-match nerves about two weeks ago when I first got the job. Because normally I wake up and I’ve got like a hundred ideas banging around my head for videos, and for about a week I literally had nothing going on in there. It was like a vacuum of ideas, which was a bit worrying. Thankfully they’re back.

So yeah, I’m so excited about being able to run a channel, and there’s all these amazing people that I can now, that I’m already chatting to about the stuff they’re already doing and how we can take it to the next level. So the community aspects are like incredibly exciting.

[00:25:05] Nathan Wrigley: So just to be clear, there’s no embargo on Jamie ceasing doing what Jamie’s doing already. You’ve got free reign to keep making your own content. You know, you’re a good custodian of that. You don’t create incendiary content and drop a bomb walk away, or at least that’s not what I’ve seen anyway.

[00:25:20] Jamie Marsland: I’ve been advocating for this, for WordPress, for three years on my own channel. So it’d be a bit weird if I stopped. I’ve got over 100,000 subscribers on that channel now, so it’d be a bit weird if I didn’t keep producing video content that kind of advertise WordPress on that channel because it’s got a big audience. The same with my Twitter and LinkedIn. I’ll use all those channels to help the wordpress.org channel as well.

[00:25:41] Nathan Wrigley: Do you know if that puts you in a unique position at Automattic? Because I don’t know, I genuinely don’t know the answer to this, but I have some thoughts that when people join Automattic, there may be contractual things that they can and cannot do. And obviously in this case, you know, that probably doesn’t matter quite so much because it’s not like you’re doing two jobs. Your YouTube channel is presumably going to be in your evenings and weekends. It returns to being more of a hobby. There’s just a thought around that, whether people have, you know, mentioned that to you.

[00:26:06] Jamie Marsland: They have mentioned that to me. And it is a unique position, I’m not sure there’s any perfect scenario for it because if I hadn’t grown the channel, then I probably wouldn’t be good for the YouTube job, because I’ve got experience of running a YouTube channel. So it would be quite hard to run this. And then people would say, well, why are you running the YouTube channel if you’ve never run a YouTube channel before? That’s kind of a difficult one.

And also it is unique because, if you think about it, Automatticians obviously tweet and make videos on their own channels, you wouldn’t expect them not to do that because they’re tweeting. To answer you, it is a unique thing. I’m not sure there’s any easy answer to it, apart from I’m hopefully helping WordPress in everything I’m doing. That’s been the sole point of my own channels, is to advocate strongly for WordPress over the last three years. So I’ve kind of been doing this job for free until recently, when I started taking sponsorships for a while. It feels like a continuation that, but just on the official channel actually.

[00:27:00] Nathan Wrigley: When do you anticipate we’re going to see the beginnings of your endeavors here? So we’re recording this very early in September, 2024. You’re obviously doing the support role at Automattic, answering support tickets, just like every other Automattician did. And once that fortnight, two weeks is expired, presumably you’ll have your head turned onto this role. How long do you think we need to wait before we start seeing the ball rolling?

[00:27:23] Jamie Marsland: I’ve got two weeks rotation, and then we’ve got WordCamp US, which is very exciting. Come and check out the speed build on the 19th with Brian Coords and Amber Hinds, which is going to be an exciting one. I think we’re in the main room as well, so that could be huge if we are, that could be a big one.

So I suspect we’ll start seeing some changes around October. It’s important to do some groundwork first before just breaking everything. Although we could just break everything, and see how it goes. See how many people I can annoy within a shortest space of time. But I’m very impatient to get on and start improving things. But also incredibly excited because there’s so much cool stuff happening.

So if anyone’s got, you know, I’ve been asking people, if you’ve got anything exciting going on that you want to share with the world around WordPress, whether it’s innovative, fun, crazy, enterprise, beginner. I really want to hear your stories, so just send them to me.

[00:28:09] Nathan Wrigley: When you say send them to you, what’s the best way to do that?

[00:28:12] Jamie Marsland: Good question. So I’ve got an Automattic email, now this is very strange. Still don’t know what it is, I think it’s jamie.marsland@automattic.com, or just tweet me on Twitter at pootlepress. But yeah, just get in touch. Send me your ideas, I want as many ideas as possible.

[00:28:26] Nathan Wrigley: And if you’re listening to this in the year 2025, I presume you’re going to be heading to youtube.com/wordpress.

[00:28:32] Jamie Marsland: Yes, exactly. Yeah.

[00:28:35] Nathan Wrigley: I’m not entirely sure whether that’s the right URL, but I’ll make sure to find out, and link it into the show notes. So hopefully this episode will reach the airwaves prior to WordCamp US. And you are doing a speed build, and as you said, it’s Brian Coords. If you’re not familiar with Brian, I think it’s fair to classify him as developer. And you’ve also got Amber Hinds, and I think it’s fair to classify Amber as accessibility advocate.

I thought that was a really curious combination. And I wondered if that was very intentional in terms of two different outputs. If you’re following Brian, I’m presuming we’re going to see a focused on the front end, focused on the design, making it look accurate to whatever it is that you serve up. Whereas I was curious, you know, are we going to see Amber focusing on just getting the menu exactly right? Which may take the full half an hour with all the aria labels and things. Are you hoping for that?

[00:29:22] Jamie Marsland: I am hoping for that. I think it could be really interesting. But in the heat of panic, who knows what might happen. I think Brian’s been practicing as well. He’s done a live practice on YouTube, which I think shocked Amber a little bit. But yeah, I think it’ll be a really interesting combination to see the two different approaches. And I still haven’t chosen the website, so if anyone’s got any ideas for that.

[00:29:41] Nathan Wrigley: It’s Ling’s Cars, let’s be honest. It’s not going to be Ling’s Cars. Okay, well, that genuinely is everything that I’ve got to ask you today. So, Jamie Marsland, all the best. First of all, massive congratulations. Your endeavors have not gone unrecognised by just about everybody in the community. The quality of what you’ve been doing has been second to none, and utterly deserved position. And I hope it proves to be everything that you wish it to be. Well done.

[00:30:03] Jamie Marsland: Thank you so much, Nathan. Good to talk.

On the podcast today we have Jamie Marsland, and it’s his third appearance on the podcast, which is a first.

Jamie has recently embarked on an exciting new journey as the Head of the WordPress YouTube channel at Automattic. This role is set to amplify the WordPress story through engaging and informative video content, capitalising on YouTube’s reach to over 2.7 billion monthly users.

As you’ll hear, Jamie only started his role a few days prior to recording, but he’s already full of plans to transform the WordPress YouTube presence. Automattic created this role to ensure a more focused effort on growing the channel, which currently has around 36,000 subscribers, significantly lower than some of the other WordPress YouTube channels.

Jamie envisions targeting distinct groups: beginners, DIYers, developers and designers, agencies and freelancers, product suppliers, and the community. Each piece of content will aim to add value, whilst trying to maintain some fun.

Throughout our conversation, Jamie shares his insights into why this role is necessary, especially in light of commercial rivals like Wix and Squarespace, who possess enormous marketing budgets. He discusses the importance of bringing new users into the WordPress ecosystem, whether they’re complete beginners or migrating from other platforms.

We also explore Jamie’s broader vision for the channel, including making high-quality content that genuinely adds value to the viewer, regardless of its production quality. He stresses that every video needs to answer the question of what value it brings to the audience. Fun and engagement are key themes, but quality content is paramount.

We also touch on his plans to bring in other voices, aiming to build a diverse team that reflects WordPress’ global reach.

Jamie also talks about the balance between engaging the YouTube algorithm and producing valuable content. He shares his experiences and strategies for creating content that draw viewers in, emphasising the importance of creativity in ensuring all target groups find something of interest.

Jamie assures us that his new role won’t mean an end to his own popular YouTube channel, which has been advocating for WordPress for many years. He plans to continue creating content on this channel, whilst focusing on growing the official WordPress channel.

Towards the end, Jamie hints at the changes that might start materialising by October, post WordCamp US. He’s eager to hear from the community, so if you have innovative, fun, or valuable content ideas, Jamie wants to know.

If you’re interested in the evolving landscape of WordPress on YouTube, Jamie’s strategic approach, or how you might contribute to this exciting venture, this episode is for you.

Useful links

Jamie’s Speed Build session at WordCamp US 2024

WordPress YouTube channel

Learn WordPress

Developer Blog

Jamie on X