devrel's relationship with marketing and sales - dont try to sell
at a conference - connect to the content of other speakers' talks
dont be too clubby with other speakers
https://helenmin.com/blog/marketing-to-developers
Author worked at Plaid, Quora, Dropbox, FB
TL;DR: How do I build a strong developer brand like [Stripe]? Be a great developer. Hire great developers. Engage 24/7 with developers using your product.
B2B marketing fails with developers
A developer isn’t going to sign up for your company’s webinar, give their email to download your whitepaper, or click on your link-bait. They detest spam and any attempt to sell products to them. They don’t want to hear that your product is the best; they want to get their hands on it quickly and decide for themselves, so remove any lead-capture techniques that feel like barriers.
The mortal sins in selling to developers are 1. Sharing inaccurate information, and 2. Slowing them down.
Hiring devrel
Early stage - just founding team does the work
First hires: Hire from within the community, e.g. Patrick McKenzie
Later: Hire for technical chops/passion for helping devs
Measuring ROI
Tracking things like developer satisfaction, engagement, and retention can give you a sense of how you are doing. Companies can eventually track upsells or conversions to a paid version of the product down the line.
The main thing to understand is that building a developer community happens tweet by tweet, event by event, with little reward in the beginning. This requires immense amounts of patience. Many brands abandon their efforts too early, or continuously delay their start (most common).
Engaging Developers
Rule 1: Show, don’t tell - Break down barriers to getting their hands on the product as quickly as possible so they can determine whether or not your product is right for them.
Rule 2: Features not benefits - Be straightforward about specs and feature comparisons against other product lines or competitors. Don’t bury the lede.
Rule 3: Be genuinely helpful - Invest in comprehensive, high-quality resources (e.g. great API documentation, a well-maintained help center, how-to videos, sample use cases) and make it easy to contact you directly if they need some extra help. (Chances are, they won’t)
Rule 4: Be direct - get to know a developer and then imagine you are writing to that individual person each time. This quickly eliminates anything sales-y and helps produce genuinely useful content.
Rule 5: Think beyond the 9-to-5 - Many developers are developers in and out of work, with side projects on a wide range of topics (from hacking their dishwasher to building a marketplace or a game).
defining developer relations
list of activities https://leggetter.github.io/devrelometer/
the 3 functions of devrel - Awareness (dev advocacy), Enablement (dev experience), Engagement (community mgmt) https://www.marythengvall.com/blog/2021/3/9/the-devrel-path-to-success-awareness-enablement-engagement
https://cdoyle.me/posts/getting-better-at-devrel from head of devrel at Slack
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jv5W4jXk4P4 devrel in data science
https://www.lastweekinaws.com/podcast/screaming-in-the-cloud/splitballing-on-devrel-with-talia-nassi/ giving talks, teaching, making people feel better
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9h4chtNOuuc Building an army of advocates without a big budget -- Paige Paquette