Let's Go Spelunking in Our Product Marketing Notes!

It’s tough to stay in sync with notes, research, and Slack messages (my goodness the Slack messages!) as a product marketer in an async world.

I’m one of those decrepit, ancient, elder Millennials. You know, the old guard who still handwrites notes using gel pens and highlighters.

When I’m not filling cute notebooks full of scribbled To Do lists and hair-brained ideas, I’m capturing notes, research, and tasks in a few different ways.

Notes are a crucial part of being a good PMM. So this edition of Foundational Product Marketing will be a little bit different.

Let’s explore the vast cave that is my "Problems for Future Me” collection, learn how to mine valuable ideas, and discuss how we can better capture product marketing insights in a frenzy at 1 am.

📄 To Do Lists

I’m a To Do list fiend. I love the tactile feeling, the satisfaction of crossing something off my list with a nice ballpoint pen.

But as a PMM, my To Do list can get hilariously out of control.

That’s why I’ve switched to handwriting personal To Do lists; as a remote-first employee, I’ve found that a personal To Do list fulfills the satisfaction of accomplishing tasks, while at the same time reminding me to do important things for myself throughout the day (liking taking meds, going for a walk, or cleaning out the pantry) to prevent burnout.

What Should I Do Instead?

For PMM tasks, I now use Trello! In Trello, I can create tasks, automatically populate them in a Google Calendar with a due date, add prioritization and tags, and attach other Trello cards, media, and resources. The database is searchable, so if you’ve had one of those aforementioned hair-brained ideas, you can easily dig it up.

This method is also helpful for showing progress on tasks that live outside of the launch-o-sphere such as personal goals, department goals, and pet projects. When it comes time for your quarterly or annual review, you’ll thank yourself.

📧 Emails

Okay. This one is admittedly very dumb. But like I said, I’m ancient. I’m lucky I can even send an email, let alone use it as a filing system.

That’s right, I email things to myself. Like your mom or that weird lady in the office.

• The pros of this method are that I can email myself from anywhere, at any time.

• The cons of this method are that the emails pile up, there’s no rhyme, reason, prioritization, or even guarantee that I’ll open them ever again.

What should I do instead?

Trello is a fantastic task tracker, but Notion is an even better way to categorize research, arrange your thoughts, and start building ideas. With Notion, I can better arrange my thoughts into narratives, categories, and templates. Then I can build upon them into themes, rather than just letting them waste away in an email folder.

Even better, Notion pages can then be shared across your team, meaning what once would have been a one-off email to yourself is now a valuable resource or piece of collateral.

💬 Slack Messages

Slack (or Teams…I guess…) is where some of the most important async work happens for product marketing.

• An engineer drops a link to a competitor’s new product update in an engineering-only channel

• A Product Manager requests some details about an upcoming launch

• The CEO mentions you in a random conversation with no context 😱

You simply can’t keep track of everything. That’s why the “Remind Me” feature in Slack is handy.

That is until you’ve got dozens of messages to scroll through from stakeholders and try to reply or prioritize. 😬 

Similar to the email problem, these Slack messages can languish in the Slackbot channel until I find the time to prioritize them.

What Should I Do Instead?

Thankfully Slack addressed this particular problem recently and combined the Saved post feature with the reminder feature. Now it’s called Later, and it allows you to save Slack messages for later and prioritize them. This feature operates similarly to a Trello board; to be determined how I can combine my Slack Later and Trello board for ultimate domination.

• Never miss a time-sensitive action item from a stakeholder again.

• Better yet, never stress yourself out over missed Slack messages.

What could have taken me days to go through my handwritten notes, emails, and Slack messages now takes me an hour. Try a couple of these efficiencies for yourself and see if you can scale your PMM note-taking abilities.