About Me

Jeff Matson is an obscure dude who thinks far too much of himself and sometimes writes his bios in third person. 😉

Let’s be real - ain’t nobody got time to read boring copy. You’re probably just skimming this anyways. I’m surprised you’re even reading this bit. Let’s make everything else after this easily scannable.

IRL

The best way that I can think to describe myself is as a “technological tinkerer”. Dating as far back as I can remember, I’ve had a lust for knowledge and experimentation. It’s an unquenchable thirst for deeper understanding of how things work.

For some reason, I tend to think about everything in the world as a compiled set of components, just begging to be dissected. Maybe it’s the ADHD. Maybe it’s the OCD. Whatever it is, it creates an endless list of hobbies.

A few of my favorite hobbies are:

Contributing to open source software wherever possible.
Experimenting with different server configurations within my homelab rack.
Restoring classic arcade machines - the perfect blend of woodworking, CRT repair, and PCB repair.
Watching horror movies.
Video game collecting and preservation.

My Work

Pagely/GoDaddy (January 2019 - February 2023)

I joined Pagely in January of 2019 to take over two aspects of the company - Pagely’s technical writing and to bring Northstack, a revolutionary new serverless product, to market. Over time, the role evolved into the go-to person to solve seemingly impossible problems; shaping Pagely into the award winning brand that it is today.

If you’ve seen Pulp Fiction, think of me as the Mr. Wolf of Pagely.

In November of 2021, Pagely was acquired by GoDaddy. Because of my unique role and reputation of creating rapid yet sustainable growth, I immediately began working alongside the greater GoDaddy organization to bring greater value to all facets of the company, with a focus on the SMB and enterprise WordPress.

Product Manager V

When GoDaddy acquired Pagely, as with any acquision of a small startup into a large organization, it got a little weird. What generic corporate title do you give to a “Minister of Propaganda” who’s job description is basically “help everybody out with everything and be the glue that holds it all together”?

Much of my job as a Product Manager V at GoDaddy is the same as it was when it was just Pagely, but with additional involvement with the rest of GoDaddy’s WordPress efforts. In a sense, I was taking on a second job — Product Manager at GoDaddy and Minister of Propaganda at Pagely.

Some of my additional areas include:

Leading change throughout GoDaddy’s WordPress offerings.
Designing and building over 300 documentation articles for GoDaddy’s Managed WooCommerce Stores.
Writing and delivering marketing copy and landing pages that aligned with GoDaddy’s Managed WooCommerce Stores go-to-market strategy.
Managing and coaching documentation staff assigned to Pagely and Managed WooCommerce Stores.
Providing insight to senior GoDaddy leadership regarding WordPress initiatives.

Minister of Propaganda

I get this one a lot — what is a “Minister of Propaganda”? To put it simply, it’s just a creative title to attach to my role at Pagely. It’s a lot easier to remember and write than “writer-editor-dev-marketing-product-sysadmin”.

Here’s the gist:

Owner of all things content at Pagely, both internal and public facing, from documentation to marketing copywriting.
Product lead and developer for all of Pagely’s front-of-site assets.
Marketing technical lead and key decision maker.
Product guidance and sanity checks across.
Community and developer evangelism (DevRel).

My standout accomplishments include:

Technical lead, developer, and key decision maker for a full company rebrand, deployed in October of 2021.
Design, development, and release of multiple open source projects, including Really Rich Results.
Creation of multiple technical content pieces that have reached high social visibility, such as #1 on Hacker News, trending in Google News, referenced/cited on CSS Tricks, etc.
Implemented drastic improvements to organic trafficand lead generation through technical content.

Rocketgenius/Gravity Forms (March 2015 - January 2019)

Rocketgenius is the company behind the popular Gravity Forms plugin for WordPress.

Gravity Forms is a unique product within the WordPress ecosystem. Remaining a premium-only product as the WordPress plugin ecosystem has moved to a freemium content model, the product heavily relies on highlighting not only the features built into the product, but also the rich developer ecosystem that surrounds it.

Head of Marketing + Community Evangelist

Prior to this point, marketing efforts were handled almost entirely by word of mouth. As more competition entered the market, other lower cost and freemium solutions were beginning to gain market share. That’s when I took Gravity Forms to a whole new level.

Immediately after taking control over all of the Gravity Forms marketing efforts, I began implementing new changes that resulted in record breaking growth for the company.

Implemented tracking across the the entire front-of-site to indentify common patterns that result in new sales (Google Analytics, Google Tag Manager, HubSpot).
Designed paid advertising campaigns to generate new leads, as well as utilize existing website tracking data to convert site visitors into sales.
Working with Impact Radius, I created an affiliate program to incentivize agencies and partners to promote Gravity Forms.
Optimized and developed content, particularly across the blog and documentation, for maximum organic (SEO) traffic.
Conceptualized, created, and implemented a product demo platform that allows customers to try the product, while also inserting them into the marketing funnel.
Optimized the product checkout process to identify key behaviors that lead to abandoned carts.
Managed all social media and implemented solutions for support teams to interact with mentions.

In addition, my skills were utilized for various other projects, such as:

Leading the marketing and content efforts through a major product rebrand.
Key technical lead on migrating internal WordPress sites to a new hosting platform.
Performance and SEO improvements across the entire front-of-site.

Head of Documentation

Complete overhaul and continued maintenance of the Gravity Forms documentation, including redesign of the content structure and development of a new documentation platform.

My documentation work there has not only proven extremely effective for existing users of the product, but also generates new sales via marketing funnels.

InMotion Hosting (August 2012 - March 2015)

I’m a firm believer that it’s important to be proud of your roots. That said, my time at InMotion Hosting is a large part of who I am and the career path that I’ve taken.

Customer Community (Documentation Writer and Community Evangelist)

My time on the InMotion Hosting Customer Community team is where my WordPress community involvement really took off. In addition to producing high-quality, high-traffic content that is still heavily utilized to this day, my efforts placed InMotion Hosting as a strong contender within the WordPress community.

A few of my responsibilities and accomplishment include:

Conceptualizing and developing various public-facing documentation, specifically related to WordPress.
Producing various video tutorials to educate customers and the overall community on various WordPress-related topics.
Attending and speaking at WordPress events.
Providing product guidance to special WordPress products, specifically what is now known as BoldGrid.

Technical Support Agent

Much of my current path began as a technical support agent at InMotion Hosting. Some of my accomplishments there include:

Consistently the top performer in contacts per hour.
Leader in CSAT/NPS survey responses.
Mentor and trainer for other employees who have gone on to within the company.
Escalation point for considerably difficult customers, offering solutions to complex problems.
Expert point of contact for WordPress-related solutions.