I've been wondering if we'll see more dev companies use podcasting for marketing.
Most of the dev podcasts I've run across are by practitioners who just do it for fun or to help boost their consulting practice, so it seems like companies with bigger budgets and more access to big name devs might be really well positioned to come up with a good show.
That said, the medium isn't great for some things that devs want (code samples, seeing results, etc.)
> The most effective founders are not nearly as confident as the least effective founders are...If that’s you, remember it is likely a signal of growth, and not of inevitable failure.
This was good to know. I constantly feel that imposter syndrome, especially as we grow and I am trying to keep my leadership skills at pace with our team size.
Typically very education-forward content that might mention the client's tools when appropriate. The goal is typically to contribute to the developer community or raise awareness, especially for smaller developer tools companies.
We pay $315 to $550 per article depending on the writer's experience and the topic.
Most of our writers are engineers who do this on the side to supplement their income or learn new things. We don't do ghostwriting, so authors also get a byline, which is rare in our space.
Lots of good questions here but I'll focus on two that I have the most experience with:
> Is it better to grow it internally?...Or the best way is to recruit a skilled DevRel person or instead of a marketing person and collaborate in creating great content?
I work with ~70 developer tools companies on devrel/marketing and the biggest killer has got to be founders who think they can just throw marketing over a wall to someone else.
Initially, you as the founder need to become that skilled DevRel person.
If not you, get a co-founder level person to help you. The truth is, in the early days, nobody else will care about the project like you do, so you need to be out there:
- Writing about it
- Demo-ing it
- Talking about it (eg: conferences and meetups)
- Talking to users and contributors
Eventually, you'll need to build a playbook that another DevRel or Marketing person can execute, but you can't outsource this when you're still finding product-market fit.
I would add that you shouldn't just write about the project. That's kinda boring, to be honest. No one cares about your new feature, sorry :) . (I think this is implied in Karl's comment, but worth spelling out explicitly.)
Write/talk/communicate about:
* problems the project solves
* the broader space the project is in
* technical challenges you've encountered and overcome or sidestepped (for a tech audience)
* how your customers are using the product to make their lives better
I'll warn you it can quickly get overwhelming (at least it is for me) so a few tips:
* have criteria for conferences (audience, size, location)
* you can submit a talk without having written it. In fact, it's better if you haven't in some ways because you can tweak it. Just give yourself plenty of time if you do this.
* you'll be rejected from lots of conferences
* meetups are usually happy to have you. I wrote about this here: https://www.mooreds.com/wordpress/archives/3418 and this can be a great way to polish talks.
* think about adjacent talks, so you can re-use components. I have talked a lot about various aspects of OAuth/JWTs and shamelessly reuse portions of them
* spend some time thinking about how to sell the talk to busy conference attendees. Again, consider the larger context. No one wants to hear about 'how to implement OAuth with <my product>' but 'how to use OAuth to protect your APIs' is more exciting. 'How OAuth saved my bacon and made me a hero' is even better.
> Eventually, you'll need to build a playbook that another DevRel or Marketing person can execute, but you can't outsource this when you're still finding product-market fit.
I think this is the main point, I have many and many pages to create a playbook, but, since the project still finding product-market fit, this is a skill that have to come from the founders.
Maybe outsourcing Marketing things such as analytics and so on, but doing DevRel and evangelism on your own.
Don't look for generalist SEO people, but instead content marketers with experience in your industry.
I've seen so many of our clients get crappy keyword research because the consultant/SEO person they work with doesn't actually know their audience well.
I work with a few security pros who blog. As you suggest, you can't tell people specific problems you're facing at work but you can do some interesting things to get your knowledge out there:
1. Make educated guesses about real incidents you were not involved in. Talk about how you would have solved this problem if it were you.
2. Set up sandbox environments to demonstrate attack vectors and detection methods. Even "dumbed down" versions will help newbies out if you want to keep your more "advanced" versions secret.
3. Talk about tools and services instead of specific incidences. Most of the info about how they work is public, but you can showcase your understanding my summarizing and giving commentary.
I'm a content agency owner that works almost exclusively with SaaS companies, and yes, it works. There is plenty of demand (we went from $0 to $80k/mo in revenue in the first year).
What worked for us was:
1. Going super-niche - we only serve series A and B startups that want to use content to reach software developers. You'd think that going niche would make it harder to find customers, but the opposite is true.
2. Started with my network and referrals. Do good work and people will refer you to others.
3. Build a process that can scale beyond just you.
Most of the dev podcasts I've run across are by practitioners who just do it for fun or to help boost their consulting practice, so it seems like companies with bigger budgets and more access to big name devs might be really well positioned to come up with a good show.
That said, the medium isn't great for some things that devs want (code samples, seeing results, etc.)