🍐 #55: Dev influencer ad playbook, big LEGO set giveaway, and a powerful Hacker News content strategy

Hey,

How did a pear convince an apple to jump on the cutting board? Idk but it was very pearsuasive 🍐 ;)

This week on the agenda:

• Developer influencer ad playbook

• Early CockroachDB articles on Hacker News

• Big Lego set giveaway from Sigma Computing

• + a few bonus links at the end

Let’s go!

🪧 Promo

As I got a bunch of requests for homepage/blog/website/messaging teardowns. And they didn’t fit the 1-hour workshop or the longer-term advising plan.

Figured I’d create a Teardown plan:

• You request a teardown of your homepage, website, blog, messaging, ads, socials etc

• I run a ~90min audit and record a ~30min video with my thoughts/suggestions

• I send you the audit doc and the video

See how it works and/or book a spot ->

Developer marketing insights

1. Developer influencer ad playbook

This is a simple strategy that can deliver results really quickly.

Basically, you:

• Borrow the trust (ok buy) of the respected dev in the community.

• Get them to present the product in a way the influencer thinks would work for their audience (which is often a solid proxy for your audience).

• Distribute that to your target audience at the largest scale you can afford.

You can run that playbook with your tutorials too. You don’t get the borrowed trust part but you can more control over the product presentation. Has it’s perks too.

See more posts from Itamar on Linkedin ->

2. Big Lego set giveaway from Sigma Computing

Instead of giving away hundreds of small things that people will forget give away one thing that leaves an impression.

And a huge LEGO set is a great candidate for that one big thing.

There is a big overlap between devs and folks who love LEGOs. They are both builders after in their hearts.

Now, some important considerations:

• Create a giveaway so that you can still get all your KPIs like badge scanned, social mentions, GitHub stars

• Make the prize visible to conference participants. Put it out there. Make it obvious.

• Make participating relatively easy to complete.

You need to commit to it too.

Don't do 3 different things like that at a conference.

Focus on one play like this at a time and try other cool ideas at another conference.

Folks from Sigma Computing ticked all these boxes.  Love it!

Btw you may want to read this amazing article on dev conferences from DX Tips. 

For more dev tool swag/giveaway examples ->

3. Early CockroachDB articles on Hacker News

How to create good technical content that the HN audience likes?

The general tip is simple. Create content that the HN audience finds interesting.

𝗧𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘁𝘆𝗽𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹𝗹𝘆 𝗺𝗲𝗮𝗻𝘀:

• Something that feeds curiosity (how does X work, why did Y happen, what is it like to do Z)

• Something real, transparent, and written in first person (real stories)

• Something technical and focused on the dev or founder crowd

But how do you actually do that? Here is a lesson from CockroachDB

𝗢𝗻𝗲 𝗼𝗳 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗽𝗹𝗮𝘆𝗯𝗼𝗼𝗸𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝘀𝗼𝗺𝗲 𝘁𝗲𝗰𝗵𝗻𝗶𝗰𝗮𝗹 𝗳𝗼𝘂𝗻𝗱𝗲𝗿𝘀 𝗱𝗲𝗽𝗹𝗼𝘆𝗲𝗱 𝘄𝗮𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝘀:

• Get your technical founder or core developers to write articles

• Those articles are focused on the technical challenges of building your product

• Again, don't write what your product does but rather how you build it. Mistakes you made, ideas you tried, technical challenges you had to overcome.

• Share real value with that dev audience. And to give people real value, you need to have folks who actually understand their problems. Those are typically senior devs/founders.

• You will inevitably hint that you are building a product and the folks who are interested in your product and you will go deeper.  

That was exactly what folks from CockroachDB did at the beginning.  Heard about it on one of the episodes of the Unusual Ventures podcast with Peter Mattis from Cockroach Labs.

𝗘𝘅𝗮𝗺𝗽𝗹𝗲𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗮𝘁 𝗵𝗶𝘁 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝘁𝗼𝗽 𝗼𝗳 𝗛𝗡:

• "CockroachDB Stability Post-Mortem: From 1 Node to 100 Nodes"
• "Serializable, lockless, distributed: Isolation in CockroachDB"
• "How CockroachDB Does Distributed, Atomic Transactions"
 
Kudos Cockroach Labs team and thanks for sharing!

See more dev tool Hacker News content examples ->

Need more developer marketing insights?

1. Work with me

Every week I have a few slots for:

• Workshops: Whatever you can squeeze in 60 minutes.

  We can talk strategy/tactics, do brainstorms/live roasts, or debug your challenges together.

• Teardowns: I run a ~90min audit of your homepage/messaging/blog/ads/socials. And send you a ~30min video with my thoughts/suggestions and the audit doc.

• Advising: Weekly/biweekly coaching sessions and/or async work like reviews, audits, research, or planning.

See how it works and book a spot ->

2. Join our Slack community

1400+ dev tool CMOs, heads of growth, product marketers, and other practitioners talking about things like this:

Check out marketingto.dev ->

3. Bonus links to check out

• ✍️ Winning & Losing Big Google Updates: 50-Site Case Study - Zyppy SEO

• 🎧️ Optimizing Go-To-Market Strategies for Developers

• ✍️ Thought leadership for developers: Go beyond thoughts and avoid leading