🍐#128 Learnings from agency running Reddit ads and how to give a good talk?

Hey,

Just got back from Italy so figured I’d share one of my favorite pizzas: gorgonzola, pear🍐, arugula, honey. Hard to beat. Ok, tomato sauce, nduja, burrata, red onion is probably still a GOAT.

This week on the agenda:

• Learnings from agency running Reddit ads

• How to give a good talk? HN thread

• + a few bonus links at the end

Total pearusing time: 5min

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Developer marketing insights

1. Learnings from agency running Reddit ads

Nice real-life learnings on the formats that are working from Ali who is running Reddit ads for their customers:

• Memes → yep, also talked about it a bunch of times, for example in the issue #120

• “Is this an ad?” text posts → yep, also shared this amazing example from Latitude

• Incentive-first copy → have to say, this one I never tried. Basically a “free credits”, “early access” type of thing. Clear offer.

Wanted to share this because Ali also added a link to his Reddit ads inspiration library (which is awesome, and I didn’t know you can share inspiration libarries on Reddit 😉 ). My favorite ads from his are (also, you may want to check out my Reddit examples gallery):

2. How to give a good talk? HN thread

Saw this the other day and figured I’d share just in case you were working on a talk for a conference.

Paraphrased takeaways from the article and discussions:

1) Lead with the win, fast. Pitch the value prop in the first 60 seconds. Map some flavor of “efficiency, correctness, expressivity” to your product’s speed, reliability, and DX.

2) Title = promise. Your talk title should read like the audience’s desired outcome (“Ship preview envs in 7 minutes”), not a table of contents.

3). Bio is important but should be quick. One slide, less than 1 minute. You’re not the keynote (most of the time) your problem/solution/story is.

4)Teach one portable thing. Give attendees a snippet/checklist they can use tomorrow (CLI one-liner, GitHub Action, example repo).

5) Slides aren’t the talk. Don’t go for walls of text unless you want to communicate “overwhelm”. Use one diagram or a few words. Then link to the deep-dive as a blog/whitepaper at the end.

6) Rehearse where it’s cheap. Record yourself, iterate, and practice at meetups/Toastmasters — not on a $1k-ticket stage.

7) Entertain, but ship content first. Humor/story beats work; don’t let them replace the takeaway. If you want a north star for “serious fun,” study James Mickens.

8)Spice it up with real energy. Rants can work when they serve the story. But only if the audience still leaves with a tactic they can use.

A few more resources I have on this:

• How to write an effective conference talk abstract

• Craft A Conference Talk Proposal That Sparks Joy

• How To Do IRL Conferences Good (and other stuff good too) 

And of course…

See more dev tool conference marketing examples ->

Need more developer marketing insights?

1. Work with me 🍐

If you want my help I do Workshops (60-minute session on whatever you want), Teardowns (audit+suggestions for your homepage, messaging, ads etc), and longer-term Advising.

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2. Bonus links to check out

• 📰 When and how to run a billboard campaign | Lenny’s Newsletter

• 🟦 Why do B2B companies use sooo much text in LinkedIn ads? | Adam Schenfeld LinkedIn post

• 🎧️ Meta CMO Alex Schultz on How All Founders Have to Change Their Marketing Playbook in a World of AI | 20Growth podcast  

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