In our journey to reclaim our position as the number one online community, we are dedicated to trying out new and different ways to achieve this. This means we have an open mindset towards change, and we want to share with you some of these upcoming changes
As part of our strategic plan for 2024 and 2025, with the focus on creating a vibrant online community where young adults feel empowered, inclusivity is celebrated, creativity thrives, and where positive connections flourish and fashion takes centre stage, we are committed to prioritising the platform's growth and development. We have found that the demand for managing some of our volunteer teams has made it increasingly challenging for us to dedicate our time and attention to improving and expanding the platform itself and we therefore need to align and prioritise our resources differently if we are to be able to grow gSm to where we want to be. This means shifting our focus on faster and more efficient work processes of creating new features and improving the overall user experience, rather than on team management.
As a result, we have made the difficult decision to disband the Focus Group and Social Media Ambassador teams at the end of this month. We deeply appreciate the dedication and contributions of these teams and their hard work will always be remembered and valued.
As part of our strategy to create more direct lines between the community and staff, we will be implementing several changes. To gather user feedback and suggestions, we will introduce regular polls, surveys, and open forums. This will allow us to directly engage with the user base and incorporate their input into our plans. This will also allow us to become more visible on the platform, as well as streamlining and prioritising ideas more effectively.
For competitions, we will be looking into more community involvement as well, giving the users ability to host competitions that are sponsored by us. Next to that, as part of our strategy, we are exploring ways to streamline the competition process by implementing automation.
Our goal is to be directly more visible towards the community, and let them participate in more frequent surveys, and open forums. As part of the changes, we will be able to allocate more time within our current resources to focus on user engagement activities and graphic design. The changes will enable us to redirect the current resources spent on managing a team directly towards serving the community.
SMAs
The SMAs were the first volunteer team after the moderators to grow on the platform. Their social media presence and other off-platform ways they expressed themselves were noticed and immediately so appreciated that the SMA team was set up and introduced. Their creativity and talents have been so amazing and inspiring to many of us.
Focus Group
The Focus Group has gone through many changes since they were introduced to the platform, from one dedicated group to three hubs, to two hubs at the start of this year. They were teams that elevated campaigns such as Back to School, Summer Party Tour 23, Halloween, and many more.
They have gone beyond what we ever expected of them. Their creativity, dedication, and aspirations have inspired many of us and will continue to inspire after this change.
With this change, more of our resources will go to working directly with the user base. Since the start of gSm, volunteers have been an enormous part of our structure and we can not thank every single one enough - this includes those who are staying, those who are being let go, and every single person who has ever held a badge. You are and have all been an integral part of this platform and its community and there have been many things not possible without you.
With our new structure comes the introduction of several new and future features.
Social media expert
As part of our new Social Media strategy, we are opening up a job opportunity for a Social Media expert to lead our efforts, who will build on the foundation the SMAs have created.
This new role will be responsible for creating a consistent and engaging Social Media presence across our platforms. We hope to have this position filled during the summer.
goStars
We decided to bring back the goStars to recognise and credit individual users who stand out and bring their passion to goSupermodel in a fun and engaging way for the rest of the community. On Friday, we will publish a news post to explain what the goStars are, how to become one, when they are coming back, who can become a goStar and much more information about this new role!
Staff presence
We are making changes in the way staff interact with the community. Rather than everyone having personal accounts. We are creating new characters that could have every staff member behind them. As these characters are not finalised yet, we are going to utilise the admin account for our staff to answer questions on. In the future, only selected staff members will have personal staff accounts.
Design system
As part of this new structure, there will also be changes to the design process. To make gSm a place where creativity can flourish we want to move on to a new way of working with designers. In 2024 we will be evolving the JD position into a new system where any user can upload items and be part of the design flow on gSm. This means that the designer will have a lot more freedom with how and when they want to work as well as which items and styles they want to add to the platform, making gSm a more vibrant place with an even wider selection of fashion.
Please find a topic attached where you can ask questions related to this change.
Love,
goSupermodel Team.
