From SMWONE to SMW+
After the conclusion of #SMWONE, a month long virtual conference we launched back in May, we've quickly transitioned into working towards launching a new product called SMW+.
The MVP version of this new platform was aimed at gathering an audience of free trial subscribers. We worked with a core group of our speakers to produce a variety of episodic content - which became an additional branding exercise in itself, as I created the look and feel for each speaker's series.
SMW+ Brand
My initial priorities included branding the new platform, as well as identifying a partner that would provide us with online software for producing and distributing the content behind a paywall.
The branding exercise went quickly, as I pulled from a variety of Social Media Week acronym designs I've done in the past, and I transitioned into evaluating and forming a relationship with our new video platform provider, BigMarker.
SMW+ reLaunched
A month after we launched, I ended up re-designing, and re-developing a much richer and creative experience for our growing content. BigMarker was still going to power our video content, but we needed a more elaborate and visually rich way of organizing our shows and alerting our subscribers to what's coming up live.
I only had a couple of weeks to develop the new interface and it's certainly still a work in progress, but users are finding it engaging and are lingering longer, connecting more often, and discovering more.