Project Update
Here’s an update on the Helpalot project:
Project Planning
- Next week, I’m going to write down a detailed version of the concept.
- The week after that, I’ll define what needs to be in the test version.
- In May, I want to start working on the test version.
- In June, I’d like to start testing.
Tech
So I won’t be reïnventing the wheel by building the test version from scratch. I haven’t made a choice on what I will be using to build the test version. It will probably be Joomla!, Drupal or Ning.
Marketing
Reading both Free Prize Inside and All Marketers are Liars from Seth Godin, made me think about what story I’m telling with my project. Seth Godin says marketing is all about story telling. The stories need to be remarkable - worth making a remark about - so people will tell others about your story.
Story Focus
One remarkable thing is that I’m openly talking about how to market my project. As for now I’m telling a number of stories about Helpalot.
- It’s a site that’s going to save the world (, by facilitating people to save the world in a better way).
- It’s a site that’s going to be a platform for every charity in the world.
- It’s a site that makes every charities findable.
- It’s a cahrity site, owned by the community. (Decentralized)
- Saving the world should be easy, my site is going to make it easy.
- Stay in touch with your friends and communicate about what’s important to you (charities).
- It’s a site that’s firstly built for the small charities.
These stories are connected and are working on different levels. Also they are all authentic, I really believe them. But they are too different from each other, so I need to choose what will be my main story. What’s the most remarkable angle? What resonates the best with the world view of my audience?
The way I see it I have three main audiences;
- You; my blog readers. You are the most important now.
- The users of the Helpalot site
- Users that would like to be active on the website. The most important in providing and checking the content of the site.
- Users searching for a charity. The main audience, I’m making the site for them.
Story Focus - slogan
For you I’m now using the slogan Saving the world by making a website. That’s because you are probably like me; you want to make the world a better place. I’m saying it’s easy and therefor trying to catch your attention (it’s supposed to be hard, right?). Also I’m communicating what the site is about; Helpalot will make it a lot more easy to do some good.
For the main audience to start getting attention, I’m thinking of putting the focus on Let’s make every charity findable. It includes that it’s something we do together, and the focus is on the searching and finding of charities.
For the people who might get active I should probably tell the story of We are helping, to make clear that we’re working on something that’s really helping (hence the name Helpalot), and that everyone can be a part of it.
Story Focus - The main focus
For now I’m thinking that the best story to tell about the site is that it’s going to make every charity findable. Do you think that that’s the best angle? Is that something worth talking about with your friends?
Logo
Phil gave me some good tips on the part of the logo in the comments of my last post (Thanks!). There is a lot of work to do. I like the knight with the flower, because it’s original. Also, knights are known to save the day and stand for safety. Knights might also be known for their bloodshed, but this is a friendly knight as he is giving a flower and probably has a message of peace.
I don’t have time to draw a lot of different logo’s, so the concept of the knight will be the logo for now. It needs extra work as Phil suggested, but I think it will do fine. For the final version I might want to do a new logo or a redesign to see if it still fit’s with the story I’m telling.
Header
The header image with the world does not refer to Helpalot and I think it should in some way. So I’ll probably change the header in the near future.
Building & Spreading knowledge
Wikipedia
I’ve made a short Wikipedia entry for Helpalot. It’s too short for now, but I rather work on the concept then write a full article on Wikipedia. If you want to help the project, you could write something in the Wikipedia entry.
Forum
I’m thinking of putting up a forum for discussions about the project. What do you think?
Techsoup
On Techsoup there was an event about social networking and non-profits. It gave me an interesting view on how people are thinking about the subjects that are relevant to Helpalot.
That’s the update. Feel free to leave a comment.